A slight breeze was rolling down from the Rocky Mountains on a sunny day in early June, when Teresa Funnell motored up to the 17th tee at Stewart Creek Golf Club in Canmore, Alta., 10 minutes from Banff National Park.
Uh-oh. A mama grizzly and two cubs about 15 metres away.
Funnell, 33 and a sales manager for Morningstar Canada, froze as the hump-backed beast started lumbering toward her. Her mind raced: The five iron? No, too far away. The cart? Too slow. The guys behind her? Taking their sweet time.
The sow charged, stopped, then stood up on her hind legs, claws outstretched, and glared. After several minutes that felt like a lifetime, the cubs suddenly turned and ran back up the mountain. The mother dropped to all fours, took a few more steps forward and then, mercifully, galloped away.
"I didn't move for about five minutes," Funnell explained to her spellbound friends at a barbecue the next week. "Then I hit the longest drive of my life on the 18th."
It's the summer of the bear. Everywhere you go, someone has another hair-raising encounter to drop in your gin-and-tonic. Walk into any rural town, or any downtown dinner party with cottagers at the table, and you're bound to hear the same conversations: "Did you hear about Andrea Kidd who lives off Stoney Lake road? There she was tilling the vegetable garden when a bear hopped over the fence."
"How about her nephew 'round the bend? Almost ran into one on his way to catch the school bus."
Still, telling bear tales could qualify as a national pastime in any year in Canada. Why have we all been so acutely obsessed with bears these past few months?
The horror stories in the news have certainly focused our attention. First, there was the 19-year-old tree planter from Saskatchewan. A black bear took three chomps out of her leg near Chapleau, 150 kilometres north of Sault Ste. Marie, in early June. The next month, biathlete Mary Beth Miller was killed by a black bear while training in the woods on the Valcartier military base north of Quebec City. And just last week, author Hunter S. Thompson went gonzo while trying to scare a bear off his property near Aspen and accidentally sprayed his assistant with shotgun pellets. She was treated for minor wounds.
Then there's the thorny question of numbers. The contentious cancellation of the spring hunt in Ontario two years ago has added a bit to the bear population there. More important, weather conditions across the country have made bears' usual foods scarce this year, and with people vacationing and settling ever further north, hungry bears are more likely to be seen ripping apart garbage cans and wandering through backyards.
Even as far south as Hull, Que., police haplessly opened fire on a large male black bear that had ambled into a residential neighbourhood a few weeks ago -- and ended up blasting a car, a fence and the side of a house before finally killing the animal.
For modern city dwellers, a run-in with a bear is about the ripest whiff of nature they're ever likely to inhale. But bears have gripped the cultural imagination since prehistoric times. Neanderthal societies worshipped the animal as a liaison with the heavens. In Greek mythology, it was associated with the virgin goddess Artemis and symbolized strength. The Spirit Bear in native North American lore (and still living in the Great Bear Rainforest south of the Alaska panhandle) exists as a reminder of the land's glacial beginnings.
Bears loom large in Canadian literature, too, as in Marian Engel's controversial Bear (the 1976 story of a city woman's erotic transformation by one beast) or the Jungian bear-cave rituals in Robertson Davies's The Manticore ("Cherish your bear, and your bear will feed your fire").
We have even bred our own bear eccentric, the North Bay maverick Troy Hurtubise, who had a life-altering experience with a grizzly and lived to tell about it in the National Film Board documentary Project Grizzly.
Psychiatrists didn't know what to make out of Hurtubise's recurring bear dreams -- or his quixotic attempt to build a grizzly-proof titanium suit, the Robocop-inspired "Ursus Mark VI," for up-close bear research -- but Bruce Barnes, a Jungian analyst in Toronto, suggests the current bear mania may reflect some pent-up emotion in our collective cultural unconscious.
"We talk of being in a 'bear' of a mood," says Barnes. "And if bears are the current rage, it could reflect a larger frustration that is certainly evident in the 'grizzly' driving behaviour of some people in the cities."
Perhaps. But the simpler truth is that bear yarns, whether around the campfire or the water cooler, are irresistible social trophies. A raccoon or snake story just can't compare.
After vacationing for seven years at a cottage in Go Home Bay, north of Honey Harbour, Ont., Tecca Crosby of Toronto finally caught a glimpse of the island's infamous wildlife -- from about three metres. Her family and a friend's were chugging along together through a channel in a small tin boat last month. They turned around and came face-to-face with a bear standing on the rocks, curiously sniffing the air. "We pushed the kids down onto the floor and then turned around to look at our oblivious husbands. Hello? They looked at us as if to say, 'What now?' . . . It totally made us reassess their so-called prowess in the great outdoors."
Lynn Hilborn, deputy general manager of the Toronto Transit Commission, and three friends were recently held hostage by a bear for five uncomfortable nights at a remote fishing cabin 75 air miles north of Cochrane, Ont., until they could radio for help. The hungry 250-pound black bear munched his way through an inviting dinner of leftover macaroni and pancakes that previous campers had dangerously dumped between the main cabin and a smaller sleeping cabin. "But more urgently," Hilborn explained, "between the outhouse and us!"
Some bears are more discerning. A furry guest in Cape Breton startled the owners of the Intervale Lodge in Margaree Valley in late May when he parked himself on the roof of the restaurant's kitchen. "He seemed to like it up there," said proprietor Ruth Schneeberger. "He had a better view of the river."
Others have more pedestrian tastes. On Rankin Lake near Parry Sound a couple of weeks ago, a nuisance bear was lured into a cage by the Ministry of Natural Resources with two cakes from Tim Horton's, slathered in vanilla and honey. The ministry's Ron Black says the conservation officers sometimes use doughnuts and other sweets when the bears are feeding on berries and are accustomed to a high-sugar diet.
Which makes you wonder what the bears in the Laurentians are eating these days. When trying to trap "Boo Boo," a small cub who had been amusing tourists at the Gray Rocks Resort in St. Jovite last month, officials from the Quebec Ministry of the Environment laid out a tasty spread of raw gizzards, bones and potatoes.
So, are we just sucking our paws, or are bears now a serious concern? In Ontario, at least, this has definitely been a problem year. Some blame the plague of brazen bears on the cancellation of the spring bear hunt. But while the already healthy black-bear population has inevitably increased, Josef Hamr, a wildlife biologist at Cambrian College in Sudbury says the effect has been slight.
"You're looking at an increase of about three per cent of the population," says Hamr. "Where you had a hundred bears before, you now have 103."
There are an estimated 120,000 to 150,000 black bears in Ontario. The spring hunt culled an average of 3,000 to 4,000. Since the fall hunt has been extended by two weeks, the numbers of bears in Ontario has probably risen by only 6,000 since the hunt was cancelled.
Yet residents across the province have been complaining, louder than usual, about bears rooting through their trash cans and tramping across their porches. The situation, like the abundance of bears roaming through North Vancouver last summer (and not nearly as bad as 1995), is mostly a matter of hunger.
"People only have to look at their own gardens and see how their tomatoes were delayed," says Martyn Obbard, a research scientist with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. Last year's drought meant the bears went into their winter dens hungry. An early thaw brought them out, but a cold snap, followed by two months of cool wet weather, has resulted in lean and late berry growth.
The bears have a short time to double their weight for hibernation. So some go for the grease carelessly left on the grill. Others opt for greenery along roadsides. Combine that with a heightened awareness around bears this year (which prompts more calls to police), and there's your explanation for all those unexpected cottage guests.
Sirkka Bobrowich isn't convinced. The 76-year-old widow lives alone on Highway 11-17, about 10 kilometres outside Red Rock, Ont. A few weeks ago she saw two bears feasting on her strawberry patch in one day. Another walked across her front law and peeked in the basement window (though he did run away when he caught sight of his own reflection). And there's a big one out there somewhere.
"It must be huge," says Bobrowich. "The tracks were about seven inches across." Bobrowich's son bought her a siren to wear around her neck, but she says she's still afraid to go outside. "I used to feel safer when the hunters were back there. . . . I just hope they stay away. Because I sure do like to make my own jam, and I haven't been able to do that this year."
It's understandable that people like Bobrowich are frightened. Patricia Van Tighem, author of the upcoming memoir The Bear's Embrace (see sidebar), had her whole life changed by a grizzly attack on Alberta's Crypt Lake Trail in 1983, when she was 25. "The biggest thing people underestimate is their speed and their strength," she said in a recent interview. She and her husband Trevor were both hurt, and Van Tighem's face was disfigured, "a huge thing at that age."
She spent two-and-a-half initial months in the hospital for five reconstructive surgeries, and has since suffered chronic bone infections and a total of over 25 operations. Unlike her husband, she said, she lost her sense of personal security. Still, she said, "I can mourn for the loss of one eye, or look across my face and think, 'I didn't lose both of them.' "
Three weeks ago, she and her four children (aged 3 to 14) encountered a brown bear on a walk in the Kootenays, this time without incident. Her children, she said, had a healthy attitude. "We were singing Leavin' on a Jet Plane at the top of our lungs, waiting for it to go away."
Still, she said, "I feel a trememdous ambivalence about bears. It's their turf and we should respect that, we're visitors. But if that bear had turned, or if any bear hurt one of my children, I'd feel like I wouldn't mind if there weren't any in the world. I have a brother [Kevin Van Tighem]who's an environmentalist, and has worked with bears and written a book about them. After the attack, I often wondered, is it politically incorrect to hate bears?"
Incorrect or not, the feeling is widespread. But despite the trauma of the encounters that do happen, most people are about as likely to be attacked by a bear as they are to be struck by lightning.
Steven Herrero, a professor of Environmental Science and Biology at the University of Calgary who has written a book called Bear Attacks, said there have been only 45 black bear-inflicted fatalities in North America in recorded history. (Mind you, over the last decade, that rate has risen to about one per year.)
Black bears, Herrero said, are less dangerous than the fearless grizzlies, even when they're with their cubs. And contrary to common perception, wild bears are more likely to prey on people than are those who habituated to people.
In fact, contact with humans is more likely to be harmful to the bears. A fed bear is a dead bear, they say. In jurisdictions across North America, said research scientist Obbard, it's been proven that once a bear become accustomed to feeding off human garbage, it is all but marked for death: It will keep coming back until people's tolerance drops off and the police are called in to relocate or shoot it.
The chances of bears coming into contact with humans is only going to get worse. The boomers will be heading into retirement en masse in the next 10 years and, as real-estate prices in the Muskokas attest, they're buying up cottages at a phenomenal pace. Development encroaches further north every year, and more and more summer retreats turn into year-round homes.
"There's increasing pressure for new developments," said Obbard, who noted that hiking, camping and canoeing trips to the provincial parks' back country have been increasing just as quickly.
The situation is worst in Alberta and British Columbia, he added. There, the vulnerable grizzly population has been pushed further and further up into the mountains. The new golf course where Teresa Funnell spotted her grizzly is a good example. And the owners are currently building two more courses in the area.
Although relations between ecologists and National Parks officials in those provinces have improved in past years, the pressure from tourists (who can't understand why they should be cut off from the gondola at Lake Louise during the summer) remains. Not to mention the outpouring of misplaced resources -- grizzlies are still shunning the expensive wildlife overpasses built over the TransCanada Highway.
"People are going to have to come to terms with the fact that they're occupying a bear range," said Obbard. "We're going to have to learn how to coexist." He pointed to places such as Pennsylvania, where outreach programs have been so successful that residents now consider it a status symbol of sorts to have a bear denning under their porch.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare says the answer to the bear problem lies in a non-lethal, get-tough approach developed by California conservation consultant Steven Searles (a.k.a. "the man who talks to bears"). It involves pepper spray, loud bangers, bean-bag bullets and a lot of yelling. The IFAW kits have gotten a lot of funding from Robert Schad, the same Ontario industrialist who paid for the slick lobbying campaign that stopped the spring bear hunt.
Alec Cantley of Red Rock, Ont., however, thinks he's found a cheaper, no-fuss method for keeping the bears away from his corn crops. A few years ago he read that animals use urine to mark their territory. He figured, why not give it a try?
"So I go out there every day and 'water the garden,' " the cheerful 80-year-old explained. "I guess that's a good way of putting it." He swears the bears haven't shown up since.
GRIZZLY ATTACK
On a sunny fall day in 1983, Patricia Van Tighem and her husband, Trevor, set out to hike the Crypt Lake Trail in Alberta's Waterton Lakes National Park. Seventeen years and more than 25 bouts of surgery later, she tells the story in her upcoming memoir.
It doesn't take long to cover this part of the trail. We are already at the bottom of the big elevation gain, with the boulders where we passed the kids from Red Deer in front of us. There is such an abrupt change here from open rocky slope to thick forest. In a minute, we will be in the trees again. I hear the tramp, tramp of our boots on snow and gravel. The sound of Trevor's singing ahead makes me glad. "Blue skies smiling at me, nothing but blue skies do I see . . ."
He's gone around a bend now and is obscured from sight by trees. I quicken my step to rejoin him. The trail has widened, and we could walk beside each other, hold hands and talk.
A bear.
And Trevor.
Two more steps forward. I stop. A bear? From the side. Light brown. A hump. A dish-shaped face.
A grizzly. Charging. And Trevor. Fast. He half turns away. The bear's on him, its jaws closing around his thigh, bringing him down.
Seconds pass. Time holds still.
A grizzly?
I take two steps back. Where am I going? What should I do? My heart beats loud in the silent, snowy woods. I can't outrun a bear. It knows I'm here. I can't leave Trevor. Panic rising. How will I get past the bear? Trevor? My mind racing. Legs like jelly. Shaky weak. Think.
The bear has Trevor. I can't see anything because of the bushes. I can't hear anything.
Not a bear!
I can't run. Take off my pack. It might divert the bear. After summers of handing out "You Are in Bear Country" pamphlets at the Banff Park gates, instructions for a bear encounter flash through my brain. I throw my pack down. So fast. My mind whirling.
Climb a tree.
Grizzlies can't climb trees. Nor can I! I have to. A tree with small, dry branches all the way up, right beside me. Get up! Steady and slow, shaking. Don't fall. Don't break the branches. They get smaller the higher I go. I have to stop. I feel very high. The branches are thin. Can't go higher. Stop climbing. Look down.
Trevor?
Scared. Snow falling. Soft, Absolute quiet.
I freeze. Terror fills me. It's right there. Eye contact. Small bear eyes in large brown furry head, mouth open. It's charging the tree. A scream, loud. It's moving so incredibly fast. It can't. Grizzlies can't climb trees! Everything so fast. It launches itself at the tree. Three huge lunges, branches flying and cracking. Twenty feet up. I'm frozen. Up. Brown ball of muscle and fury. So fast. Another scream. Cut off. Knocks the branch out from beneath my feet. Swats at my leg. My mind folds in.
On the ground. What's happening? Protect my head. Which way is up? Roll on my front. Play dead, and it will go away. It will go away. Trevor and I are not supposed to die yet. Don't fight, make it worse. Be passive. Hold still. Tuck my chin in. I won't die. It will leave.
A grizzly is chewing on my head.
Crunch of my bones. Slurps. Heavy animal breathing. Thick animal smell. No pain. So fast. Jaws around my head. Not aggressive. Just chewing, like a dog with a bone. Go away! I'm holding still. Horror. I can't believe this. Scrape of teeth on skull. Which way is down, so I can put my face there? Slurping and crunching. Lolling my head in its jaws. Playing with my head.
I'm angry.
I don't want to die. Get lost, you stupid bear! My mother will be so sad. I don't want to be a tragic death. Everyone will cry. Thoughts flit through my head. Incredulous. Angry. Terrified. Helpless. The bear is doing so much damage. Crunch and scrape. Anger wants to explode from my head. I don't want to die.
One hand pinned under my head. Work fingers free. There's a huge, distorted black nose right there in front of me. My fingers reach to tweak it. Gently. A diversion. Don't want to make the bear more angry. Big and black and sensitive, like a dog's nose. Divert it from chewing on me. A light twist. Blurred view. Don't look now. A woof! It's backed off. Am I dead?
Open an eye. Peek. It's still there pacing in front of me. Walks ten feet, turns. Swinging its head back and forth. Ten feet and turns. Looking at me. Low woofs. Little eyes, looking right at me. Quick, close my eye. Perfectly still.
Please God make it go away.
Please God make it go away.
Please God make it go away.
Over and over in my head. How long?
-- Excerpted from The Bear's Embrace by Patricia Van Tigham, coming in October from Greystone Books/Douglas & McIntyre.
Alexandra Gill