By For nearly two decades, Ruth Hasman has quietly built an unusual kind of practice out of her Vancouver home—one that sits somewhere between a repair shop, a hospital, and a place of memory. Her patients are not people, but stuffed animals: worn, damaged, and often deeply loved toys sent from across North America for restoration.
A retired seamstress, Hasman handles everything from pet-chewed limbs and missing eyes to toys worn thin from years of use. The work is meticulous. Fur is matched and grafted, eyes replaced, seams rebuilt, and stuffing renewed. Each piece is treated less like a product and more like an heirloom.
“I never know what’s going to be coming through the door,” Hasman said.
Her workspace reflects the unpredictability. Tables and walls are covered with sewing tools, spare parts, buttons, glass eyes, and swatches of fabric. Finding the right material can mean searching through dozens of thrift stores to match color, texture, and age. If the final result falls short, she starts over.
“Each toy is a new challenge,” she explained. “I learn something new almost every time I fix one.”
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The work is technical, but the draw is personal. Most of the animals arrive with a history—often a long one—and Hasman says those stories are what stay with her.
“It’s a pleasure talking to the people, finding out the history of the bears,” she said. “There’s a lot of poignant stories.”
“It’s the stories behind these bears… it just pulls my heart,” Hasman added.
Some of those stories stretch across generations. The oldest toy she has restored was 115 years old, passed down through five members of the same family. Others are more recent but no less significant.
Vedrana Petrovic recently brought in Sylvester, a plush golden retriever from IKEA that had served as her emotional support companion since her university years. After a decade of use, the toy arrived heavily worn—“like a piece of spaghetti,” she said—its structure collapsed and its body limp.
“I thought he was irreparable… I’m honestly shocked,” Petrovic said of the transformation. “He was completely deflated, half his body was flopped over.”
After the restoration, Sylvester was returned to a near-original condition, able to sit upright again and closely resembling the toy she first received.
“He’s been a near and dear companion to me,” Petrovic said.
Finished animals often wait in Hasman’s foyer, lined up for pickup—a quiet rotation of repaired companions ready to return home. But the future of the operation is already on her mind. Hasman is training a successor in nearby Maple Ridge, hoping the work will continue when she eventually steps away.
Until then, she plans to keep working—one repair at a time—restoring not just fabric and stitching, but the objects people have carried with them for years.
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