‘I had a beary close encounter on my visit to Canada’

Last year I travelled to Canada to see my son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren. In addition to seeing family, a major appeal of the trip was the possibility of encountering wildlife while driving around. On a previous trip, we’d sighted several black bears, so I was hopeful.

On this trip however, it seemed moose were out in force. We spotted many, as well as rabbits, groundhog, raccoon, beaver, squirrels in abundance, and — one of my favourites — the cheeky chipmunks. There was also the delight of watching the hummingbirds hovering at a feeder positioned in the window and around the garden flowers at my son’s house. They are so tiny and have lovely iridescent feathers.

As the family worked and went about their daily ritual, I would head off to provincial park or some of the small settlements nearby. My family lives in Timmins in northern Ontario and towns are few and far between. The town is a gold mining town and is not very attractive, with mines visible and the old part of the town looking rundown. The various parks nearby with their lakes however, I loved. 

I’d had my plans for walks disturbed by the presence of bears, even if the only ones I’d seen were in the distance across the lake near the path I had hoped to walk. The arrival back at the carpark by a school group of young five or six year olds all looking a bit shell shocked and the two teachers bringing up the rear very alert and armed with a can of bear spray each confirmed other bears were present. They were quick to warn another school group to abandon the walk.

I organised lunch and headed to another park only to find little wildlife. There were loons on the lake, a few Canadian geese, one rabbit and tadpoles in the lake.I sat in the car, away from bugs and ate lunch as I watched the activity of the birds. Lunch over I headed back to the house. 

I parked on the lawn and gathered up my rubbish and belongings and headed to the bins by the drive. The bins were all knocked over and while I pondered this my walk slowed. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something large, hairy and black. I let out a cry and it made a similar noise as we had completely taken one another by surprise. I reversed up the path to the front door keeping a close watch on the bear.

He, probably as most the females had cubs with them, was beautiful, big and powerful-looking, and although he moved along the drive to get a better look at me he didn’t approach. On the verandah with the front door unlocked I took the time to take photos. Once I had gone inside the bear headed off across the back lawn into the trees. I hurried his departure by banging tin lids together and shouting loudly, as I could hear next door’s children outside. 

I was just about to go over to warn them when my son rang. I told him about the bear and he immediately hung up and did  the bear alert to neighbours. It seemed to be a common practice, as we received one ourselves around 10pm one night during my stay that alerted us to a bear on our front verandah.

The moral is be careful what you wish for. I wanted to see bears, but maybe not so adrenaline-producing close.

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