BEFORE I MOVED to Whitehorse, I read everything I could about bear attacks. I grew up in suburban southern Ontario, where the most interesting wildlife were deer and skunks. I wanted to know how to avoid getting mauled, and consuming horrific stories made me feel grimly prepared. As soon as I arrived in the Yukon, I followed the advice I’d read and bought bear spray. On solo trail runs, I’d carry it, along with a bell and sometimes bangers, my heart
racing, prepared to see a bruin around every turn.
I worried that if I saw a bear, it would try to kill me. Once, convinced I’d stumble upon one, my anxiety spiralled out of control and I started crying in the woods. The first time I actually encountered a bear, I called my sister in a panic to pick me up. The sow and her cubs were far enough away that, in hindsight, I could’ve simply turned around and kept on with my run.
Often, I hiked with friends—best practice in bear country—and felt safety in numbers. In 2020, five of us sat on rocky ground in Kluane National Park to put on our socks and hiking boots after crossing Sheep Creek. When we looked up, we saw a grizzly with two cubs, about 100 metres away. We froze. She kept a watchful eye on us as she followed her cubs past us, down the creek bed and out of sight.
I’ve now lived in the Yukon for nearly 10 years, and as I spend more time on the trails, I see bears more often. One weekday morning a few years ago, my partner and I were hiking down from the cave on Grey Mountain in Whitehorse when a brown head popped up out of the bushes 75 metres away. The bear looked as surprised as I felt, then dunked its head back down. Walking around Hidden Lakes, near the city’s Riverdale neighbourhood, with my sister and a friend on an overcast day, we saw a black bear and three cubs on a far-off slope. They wandered off into the woods atop the hill. Thinking they were gone, we continued on the trail. As we hiked along the base of the slope, through the trees, our friend stopped suddenly. I could see a tiny cub looking at us. We moved back
the way we’d come, talking loudly.
With each uneventful experience, my anxiety lessens. Stories about bear attacks blow up in the news, making them seem more common than they really are. But bears typically want nothing to do with humans. They’re living their lives, trying to eat and care for their young. Just like us. I’ll probably always be a little nervous to run into one, but I take precautions. I whoop and shout as I run, hike and bike because I know that if I give them a heads-up that I’m coming, they’re likely to get out of the way. I always carry bear spray and I’ve practiced with an inert can to make sure I know how to use it.
Last summer, while training for an ultramarathon, I spent seven hours running and hiking in the woods around my neighbourhood. With a couple of kilometres to go, I emerged from the trails onto Grey Mountain Road. A woman loading her children into a truck shouted at me: “There’s a grizzly over there!” I turned to look, and 50 metres away, totally unbothered, was a cinnamon-coloured black bear, feasting on grasses with her cubs. I marvelled at the little family and felt lucky to live in a place where I can see formidable wildlife up close. I walked across the road onto the trail and, once the bears were out of sight, calmly continued running.
