By Nathan VanderKlippe -- In Arctic national parks, polar bears can enter – but firearms can’t. Conservation must or safety hazard?

“There’s a one-in-a-million chance we’ll get a polar bear up here,” Tim Wheeler told his eight hikers over dinner on a tundra bluff in Canada’s northernmost national park. Wheeler was working as a guide for international wilderness-adventure company Black Feather, leading his group through Quttinirpaaq Park, a 38,000-square-kilometre expanse of blindingly white ice caps, sharp peaks and iceberg-flecked fiords. Straddling the 80th parallel at the top of Ellesmere Island, the park is so high on the map even the North’s most iconic beast doesn’t tread its slopes. At least that’s what Wheeler told his clients that brilliant July night in 2006.

In a few short hours, they would discover just how wrong Wheeler had been. But at the time, his words were comforting to the group -– which, like any visiting Canada’s national parks, was travelling unarmed. Unlike in territorial or provincial parks, visitors to national parks are barred from carrying firearms. The longstanding Parks Canada policy holds true whether you’re in Point Pelee, Ontario, where the worst menaces are ticks and poison ivy, or in an Arctic park thronging with polar bears.

Originally enacted to prevent poaching in parks, the no-gun policy has attracted growing criticism over the years as more Arctic parks are established – three in the last decade. The policy has provoked enough anger among Northern outfitters that some have taken to bending – perhaps breaking – the rules. One has even quit offering trips in polar parks altogether, out of fear for his clients’ lives.

Though no fatal maulings have yet been reported in these High Arctic parks, critics of the present park policy say it all comes down to this: If visitors aren’t allowed to defend themselves against one of nature’s fiercest predators, it’s only a matter of time ‘til someone dies.

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Canadians camp in bear country all the time. In lower latitudes, forests are thick with black bears, while grizzlies also wander through much of the country’s backwoods. When hungry or desperate enough, both species have been known to attack humans. But the dark bruins generally stick to their preferred diet of fish and berries. Polar bears, on the other hand, dine on flesh. “If a hungry polar bear starts being interested in a person, there’s a very high chance that one of them is going to end up dead,” says Ian Stirling, Canada’s best-known polar bear biologist. Polar bears are so dangerous that Stirling tells fellow researchers if he ever catches them without a gun – even if they’re only out on a short walk – he will send them home.

Arctic adventurers feel just as strongly. Jerry Kobalenko, one of Canada’s most accomplished explorers, has touched most corners of the North and has spent more time trekking Ellesmere Island than anyone else alive. He knows what it’s like to travel near polar bears. Living in Canmore, Alberta, he also knows what it’s like to be around grizzlies, and he says the two species are nothing alike. Go unarmed near grizzlies and you’ll likely be fine. Doing the same in polar bear country he likens to Russian roulette. Maybe you won’t be harmed. But if luck fails, the consequence is usually deadly. “Polar bears are predatory,” says Kobalenko. “A polar bear will never simply rough you up. If it’s interested in you, it’s interested in you as food.”

It was that realization that prompted Kolbalenko last summer to pen a Canadian Geographic editorial shining a national spotlight on the guns-in-parks question. “No one – hunters, non-hunters, scientists, Inuit, adventurers, guides – travels in polar bear country without a firearm,” he wrote. “The Arctic is the only place I know where if the local Mounties ask whether you have a gun, and you say yes, they visibly relax.” On a visit to Torngat Mountains Park in Arctic Labrador, Kobalenko and his partner had toted a shotgun, since Parks legislation allows the “transport” of a gun through parks to campsites outside official boundaries. But, he wrote in his column, “If an emergency forced us to use the gun in the park, well, better to deal with that infraction later than to have the polar bear kill us.” Kobalenko’s view on the law are clear: Being forbidden to carry guns in polar-bear country, he says, “is absolutely insane.”

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Minutes after nodding off, one of Tim Wheeler’s hikers in Quttinirpaaq woke to what she thought was someone urinating just outside her tent. Annoyed, she sat up, whipped off mask that shaded her eyes from the midnight sun, and gasped. She was face-to-face with a polar bear. It had stuck its head inside the vestibule of her tent and its nostrils were pushing against her screen door. If she had stretched out her arms, she could have touched it. Terrified, she roused her husband, who yelled at the bear and grabbed for the bear spray.

The bear retreated. Locked inside their tent, the couple couldn’t see where it had gone. All they knew was that a polar bear was within striking distance, and that their tent’s walls provided about as much protection against its claws as a cardboard shield against a tank. Then, suddenly, the bear was back, nosing in through their back vestibule. Clinging to their bear spray they yelled again. It worked, and the bear again retreated. The couple screamed to alert the others.

When Wheeler heard what was happening, he and his fellow guide grabbed their bear spray and bangers and leapt out of their tent. It was impossible to miss the bear, which he estimated to be a 400-kilogram four-year-old. It lumbered by the hikers’ tents, sniffing at packs and socks hung out to dry, as though carrying out an inspection. Wheeler tried to keep his distance, but soon the only thing left for the bear to inspect were him and the two people now standing behind him. The bear looked up at them and began to advance.

Wheeler’s mind churned through a series of horrific scenarios. He had bear bangers to fire, but what if they didn’t work? He had heard the story of hikers who had fended off a polar bear with a pocketknife in a Nunavut territorial park a few years before. They had been seriously injured, but they had lived. Would it work for him, even if the only weapons he could think to use were rocks and tent poles? Should he as a guide making a poor man’s salary give up his life to protect his group? Or should he sacrifice one of his hikers so he could get the others to safety?

If those thoughts weren’t horrible enough, there was the unfortunate fact that, as he faced off against an animal that could kill him with the swipe of a paw, he was naked. He didn’t have a gun. And he didn’t have much time. The bear was walking straight at him.

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Perched at the top of Baffin Island, Sirmilik National Park is a 22,200 square-kilometre expanse known for its striking glaciers and rare rock formations, and notorious for its healthy polar bear population. Dave Reid is the only person licenced to guide visitors there. He raves about the park’s landmarks, including still-unclimbed peaks and a field of perfectly round rocks he calls “marbles” that are “the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen in your life.” But Reid no longer takes anyone to see them – or to any of the other sights inside Sirmilik. “Given the fact that we’re not allowed to ... adequately protect our clients, we’re not going to go,” he says. “Simple as that.”

Last summer, after a photographer had convinced Reid to return to the park, they found themselves staring out from their camp at five polar bears. The experience made Reid even more certain of the counsel he gives those who want to visit Sirmilik: “You would be taking an enormous risk.” For Reid, the usual bear deterrents like pepper spray and bangers just aren’t enough. “You might as well stick your tongue out.”

Reid’s is not the first complaint fired at Parks Canada over its outdated gun policy. Polar trekkers and guides have been raising red flags since the first Arctic parks were established more than three decades ago. So what’s been the hold-up? In part, the answer rests with the historic significance of the gun ban, which can be traced back to 1885, when Sir John A. Macdonald set aside Banff as the country’s very first national park. The firearm prohibition was one of the legislative pillars of the new park, which was hewn out of prime mountain-sheep hunting territory, largely to create a safe nursery ground for the mercilessly hunted animals.

Over the years, Parks Canada refused to reconsider the gun-ban, even in the face of compelling arguments. In one striking example, when the nursery idea proved wildly successful, and Banff became overrun with elk and deer after World War II, Parks flatly rejected calls by hunters who wanted to help with a cull. The policy had become too central a tenet of the parks system. Plus, Parks officials claimed, the policy had very likely saved lives over the years. Just think of the damage an errant bullet could do in a park full of hikers.

But as more national parks dot the High Arctic landscape and encompass the hunting ground of polar bears, safety concerns may finally trump the Parks policy. In the past few years Parks has asked the oversight boards at Northern parks for their opinions on a new set of rules that would allow licenced guides to carry guns into only the nine parks spanning Canada’s Arctic: in the Yukon, Ivvavik and Vuntut; in the NWT, Aulavik and Tuktuk Nogait; in Nunavut, Quttinirpaaq, Auyuittuq, Sirmilik and Ukkusiksalik; and in Labrador’s new Torngat Mountains Park. The rules in lower latitude Northern parks – such as NWT’s Nahanni – wouldn’t change, nor would those for southern parks.

“We’re in a situation where we have a regulation that predated having Northern parks with a polar bear population, and we’re playing some catch-up right now, says Darlene Pearson, Parks Canada’s director of legislation and policy. “But there’s a process that has to be followed, and the regulatory process does take a certain amount of time. It is not an overnight process.”

Dave Reid has heard it all before. “I’m tired of talking about it while the bureaucrats in Ottawa have the luxury of taking their time changing the rules,” he says. “I have a business to run. So rather than sit and wait, I’ll take my business somewhere else.”

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Tim Wheeler had nowhere to run. As the polar bear closed in on him, he had no choice but to act. He aimed his bear banger straight up and fired. The small cartridge spun into the air in a burst of smoke. If the banger exploded behind the bear, it could chase the animal straight at Wheeler. If it misfired, the bear might not notice. Worse, it could anger the bear.

The banger exploded in a shattering burst of noise, and the bear sprinted away, slowing to a gallop after a few metres. Wheeler fired another banger, low and straight at the bear. It loped off. Wheeler was running now, hoping he could chase the bear as far as possible. He fired a third banger. The bear kept going and finally disappeared over a ridge five kilometres away.

As his adrenaline began to dissipate, Wheeler finally had time to sift through what had just happened. He knew one thing: his close call may have ended as best it could, but it shouldn’t have been that close. “There’s no question that at that moment, yes, I wanted a gun, and not just because I wanted to kill the bear right away,” he says. “But if it had gotten aggressive then unfortunately there’s no other way to save human life than to put down the bear.”