Okay. I’ll admit hitting the bear on the ass with a rock was a bad move. But there’s no way I was going to let him steal my last loaf of bread.
In retrospect, returning to the campground on Barclay Bay was just a poor decision. A few weeks prior I had stopped to camp there while paddling down the Missinaibi River and was confronted by the same darn bear. It walked through my site with someone’s roasted chicken in its mouth. I blurted out some sarcastic comment and it stole my bag of prunes in reprisal. Now, after deciding to drive back there after my trip to relax for a few days, I found the bear still hanging around harassing campers, including me.
I’m not sure why I snapped, lost control of my senses. I was stressed, however, and had a sudden urge to not let the bear intimidate me any longer. I also had encouragement from my neighbouring camper, a retired Ministry of Natural Resources biologist who knew about black-bear behaviour. Charlie claimed the bear was bothering me more than any other camper because I was afraid of it, just like a dog reacts differently to people who have a phobia of dogs. There was no sense trying to hide the fact; I was definitely afraid. He was a very big bear. In fact, I’ve always had a fear of bears. Too many encounters with them, I guess. I had a black bear steal my toothpaste out of my pack on a portage in Killarney, another take my bottle of Skin-So-Soft bug repellent right out of my tent, and another steal my thermos of coffee right out of my vehicle prior to a trip in the Adirondacks.
The list continues. Another bear came into my site in Algonquin, lured by muffins my brother-in-law hid under a rock beside the tent because he didn’t like them. My wife and I escaped an island in Quetico when a black bear gave us an unwelcome visit, only to have a second bear visit us on another island campsite an hour later. These were all unpleasant moments!
Charlie informed me, however, that most bears are simply nuisance bears and are just visiting your site to get food. “You must persuade them to do otherwise,” he suggested.
Under Charlie’s guidance, I tried banging pots at first. That didn’t seem to work. So I tossed a small boulder the bear’s way. He opposed my actions by giving me an evil stare, as if to say, “That was stupid!” and then charged me. The bear ran full tilt toward me, stopping dead only a few feet away to beat the ground in front of it with its front paws, while snapping and growling. It was a classic fake charge (of course, I didn’t know that at the time). I responded by waving my arms up in the air and yelling obscenities at it. And then, surprisingly, the bear ran away.
That’s when I should have called it quits. But instead I took the altercation further by chasing the bear out of my campsite. Maybe because I was having terrible flashbacks of being bullied back in grade school, but I copied the bear’s actions by beating the ground and making snapping and growling noises.
The coercion worked. It left my site, but not before swatting the bow of my canoe with its paw a few times (I have out-of-focus photos to prove it). It was the oddest thing. The bear ran straight past three aluminum boats and one kayak, then put the brakes on while passing my boat, gave it a sniff, started bashing it, and then sauntered off in a huff.
This was definitely a bear with an attitude.
In retrospect, the incident at least gave me less of a phobia about bears, and a few years later Charlie’s wisdom, which he handed over to me, was deployed. It was the last morning of a seven-day family canoe trip in Temagami. Alana, Kyla, and I had joined the Kipp family. It was a perfect trip. Nothing bad had happened the entire week — until the last morning.
Mike Kipp saw the bear first. Thankfully, he’s an early riser. I was second up, and spotted Mike motioning me excitedly from the shore of our island campsite. He pointed out the black bear swimming off another nearby island. At first, it was cool to see the bear — we had seen little wildlife on our trip. Then I realized he was beelining it straight for us. Mike was ecstatic. He hurried over to his tent and woke his family, inviting them to come out to share the experience. My reaction was a tad different.
I sprinted to my family’s tent and woke my wife and daughter, telling them to prep for a hasty retreat. In her morning haze, Kyla was distraught — it was her sixth birthday and she was anticipating a breakfast of chocolate cake and the mountain of presents she knew Mom had been lugging in her pack for the entire trip.
By the time everyone had shaken off the morning cobwebs, the bear was close enough to look us in the eye. Mike was enjoying the magic with his family. I was freaking out about the impending doom. We came to a compromise on the urgency of the situation and agreed to scare the bear off when it reached halfway between the two islands.
At the halfway mark, with the hair on my neck standing upright, I yelled at the bear to turn tail. I shot off a round of bear bangers. Still, it remained determined to make landfall on our island. Next, Mike fired his starter’s pistol. It sounded more like an air gun than the elephant gun I hoped for. The bear didn’t even blink.
I had an entire arsenal — air horn, bear spray, flares — but, a canoeist to the core, I instinctively reached for my paddle. I beat it against the granite shore and yelled obscenities at the bear. It worked — he retreated.
The bad news was that not only had I expanded the vocabulary of my young daughter and Mike’s kids with some new choice phrases, but the paddle I used was the one Mike had hand-carved for me a few years back. My abuse had split it right down the middle. Mike didn’t say much (Mike never really says much). He just solemnly stated, “I guess I’ll have to make you a new paddle.”
My daughter was none too pleased with my actions either. In an attempt to calm her, my wife had told her that I invited the bear over for cake. With a look of disgust she said, “Dad, I can’t believe you scared the bear away from my birthday party!” — Kevin Callan, from his book Dazed But Not Confused: Tales of a Wilderness Wanderer (read for free)
