Emergence
ON THE RETURN OF SUNLIGHT, BEARS, AND WAKING UP POLITICALLY
In early May, a female bear and her yearling cub emerge from their den in northern Alberta. (Video by Trina Moyles).
I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’ve been half-awake this winter, rising against the dark, poking half-heartedly at the coals, and sleep walking through the tasks of life feeling the weight of…maybe burnout, maybe seasonal affective disorder, maybe climate grief, maybe existential dread.
I’m sorry, folks. This is not exactly an uplifting way of welcoming you back into my resurrected newsletter, but it’s an honest one. Maybe you will relate.
I’ve been feeling a lot of weight over the past few months, stuck in a state of fear and confusion, and admittedly, inaction. Unless I’ve been working on a deadline, I haven’t felt that whole-body urge to write. I haven’t picked up a slab of clay. I’ve barely been able to hold my concentration long enough to finish reading a book.
My behaviours, instead, have felt involuntary, like a nervous tick, like picking a scab: scrolling through reels of genocide, glacial recession, wildfires and Nazi-saluting fascists, peppered with bears, ads for bathing suits and products to reduce the appearance of fine wrinkles. It’s hard to sort through the vile contradiction of content that’s spewed at us, what’s necessary to pay attention to, what’s real and pressing, from that which is designed to hijack our focus. Our brains just aren’t built for it.
Addicted, we scroll on.
When I get stuck in this dark, disconnected state, I often forget a simple thing about myself: I am an animal—no different from a bat, a snowshoe hare, or a bear—hyper-sensitive to the rapidly changing world around me.
Emergence is a process that doesn’t happen all at once. A female black bear dozes on a sunny slope in northern Alberta. She’d cached her single cub in a nearby tree. (Photo by Trina Moyles).
Every spring, the return of sunlight reminds me of my animal body. The light shifts my focus and sharpens my recognition of what’s at stake. The sun caresses my skin and I feel more widely awake in the world. How attuned we are to the light. How our bodies hunger for its effects after a long, dark winter.
Biologists define “photoperiodism” as the physiological reaction of plants and animals to the length of light. The return of light triggers a hormonal response in snowshoe hares who change from white to brown, an evolutionary strategy to blend into their shifting landscapes and hide from predators. The black bear, burrowed in her dark den, feels the penetrating rays of the sun, of the melting of the snow crust above her, of the warming earth. Groggily, she rolls over in her den and prepares herself.
Emergence from the den is a process that doesn’t happen all at once.
Every spring, for four years, I watched the emergence patterns of the black bears whom lived around my fire tower in northern Alberta. I was struck by the practiced consistency of their rituals. The way the same female whom I fondly called Osa would appear at the mouth of her preferred trail and gaze up at the steep slope on which my tower and cabin sat, scanning for any sign of early vegetation. One spring, she collapsed on the sun dappled hillside and dozed for fifteen minutes. Unbeknownst to me, she’d cached a single cub—her first—in a nearby tree. I saw the same dominant males, every season, captured on the trail camera, rubbing their oily backs against the power poles that lined the grassy road. Male bears don’t emerge from the den hungry for food, but rather, hungry to mate.
People who’ve lived closely with bears observe these emergence rituals.
Elder Chuck Hume, a member of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, stands with a traditional fishing gaff on the banks of the Klukshu River in Klukshu, a summer fishing camp/village in southwestern Yukon. (Photo by Peter Mather).
Over the winter, I worked with award-winning photographer, Peter Mather, to interview Elder Chuck Hume, a member of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations (CAFN) in southwestern Yukon for a Canadian Geographic story called “The Good Bear”.
Hume grew up with grizzly bears and black bears in the region, which is home to one of the densest grizzly populations in Canada. The summer fishing village of Klukshu shares a salmon spawning system with bears and wolves. Years ago, when the rivers were still “thick with salmon”, as Elder Doris Allen described it, people learned to coexist with grizzlies along the river by observing the hierarchical behaviour amongst the bears. Older, dominant bears kept the younger, more risk-taking bears at bay, regulating the population—and thus, people allowed those grizzlies to stay close by.
“He was a kind of teacher to our people,” Hume told me, “he” referring to grizzly bears. Hume was careful not to say the word ‘bear’ aloud, as it’s considered disrespectful to the animal.
Hume noted how they’d observe the different plants that the grizzly bear fed on during spring, after months of hibernating and fasting in the den, to stimulate their digestive systems. People mirrored the bears’ emergence strategies, seeking out the same plants that would cleanse their systems.
The CAFN possess strict protocols for moving through the bush: the bears sense if people fear them, or speak negatively about them, which could imply human superiority over bears. If there’s a big scat on the trail, “you walk around — you don’t step over,” Hume told me.
It wasn’t as if people never had to kill bears that showed signs of aggression towards people—they did, and do today—but when the animal is killed, specific rituals are followed: placing the bear’s skull in a high place, the limbs of a tree, for example.
Bears are respected in close proximity to Klukshu because people recognize the ecological benefits they have on the landscape. Grizzlies and black bears deposit nitrogen-rich salmon carcasses along the banks of rivers that literally feed the forest. Where bears feed on salmon you’ll find thick, healthy plant life. The kind of vegetation that attracts browsing species like moose, one of the CAFN’s preferred sources of large-game meat. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship between people and bears.
The “Ice Grizzlies” of Klukshu, as documented by award-winning photographer, Peter Mather, who (with permission from the CAFN) relies on remote camera technology to facilitate his work.
The way we choose to live with bears says a lot about us, as people, our politics, and the way we live with one another.
This is a theme that I’ve been meditating on, over the past winter, as I’ve balanced the task of working on two very different human-bear coexistence stories—one that’s based on observation of and respect for bears, and the other that stems from an agenda of fear and antagonism.
My research in southwestern Yukon for the “The Good Bears” overlapped with research for a feature for Alberta Views called “Problem Grizzly or Problem Politics?” about the UCP government’s new “wildlife responder program” in Alberta that invites licensed hunters to apply to kill “problem grizzlies” despite the fact that the species is still considered “threatened” and there’s been a hunting moratorium in place since 2006.
This controversial program was announced in July 2024, shortly after Forestry and Parks Minister, Todd Loewen (a former hunting outfitter) quietly amended the Wildlife Act to authorize the “hunting of problem grizzlies”.
Not surprisingly, this program was met with enormous public outcry and backlash. I mean, that’s what happens when our political leaders keep us in the dark and make decisions without open and informed public consultation.
That said, more than 7000 Albertans applied for a chance to kill a “problem bear”. The Minister insists it’s “not a hunt”, though hunters are allowed to keep all parts of the animal except the gallbladder. No doubt, targeted grizzlies will become taxidermy trophies, rearing back on their hind legs, paws swiping, jaws wide open with “snarling lips and tongue” (check it out, it’s a taxidermy look). Trophy bears reinforce the ‘problem bear’ archetype—even long after they’re dead.
A photo of hunters and black bears they’ve just killed, posted on the website of Red Willow Outfitters–founded by Todd Loewen and now run by his family. The company offers black bear hunts starting at $5,250. Loewen is Alberta’s Minister of Forestry and Parks.
There’s a lot that triggers me about Alberta’s new program, including that it undermines much of the amazing conservation and coexistence work that’s been done by biologists and communities, alike, over the past two decades. But fundamentally, Albertans should be alarmed by the program, not only because it sends the province back into the dark ages of reactive bear management (trap, move, euthanize), but because it blatantly ignores well-documented science and data, including that killing “problem bears” without identifying root causes of conflict—typically anthropogenic food sources—doesn’t actually solve the problem.
When I reached out to the Alberta government last winter, I wanted to speak with a provincial biologist about the new program. Namely, Paul Frame, who is one of Alberta’s leading large-carnivore biologists. The government’s response: “you can speak with the Minister”, instead. This, to me, reinforced what my sources—including an anonymous government employee—told me. The program didn’t come from biologists, or wildlife managers. It came from the Minister, himself.
Last week, I spoke with Real Talk, hosted by Ryan Jespersen, about the silencing and censorship of government biologists. This is something that should concern all Canadians because it’s not so different from the autocratic politics that are currently wreaking havoc south of the border. It’s a frightening example of THE FACISM THAT’S INCREASINGLY EMERGING IN NORTH AMERICA.
Our eyes should be wide open at the numerous harms being committed by the U.S. administration right now (not to mention, the Alberta government’s alliance with them). Scientific programs, universities, and research institutions are being defunded. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs are being dismantled. LGBTQ and transgender individuals are being identified and targeted within institutions. Thousands of U.S. Parks employees have lost their jobs and public lands—including, wildlife refuges and habitat—are at risk.
A mother brown bear and two cubs swim near Brooks Falls Camp in Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. With the recent loss of thousands of jobs in the parks sector in the U.S., critics worry about the future of parks and public lands. (Photo by Trina Moyles).
And these politics are filtering into the media, too, impacting scientific research and communication publications, including National Geographic. Recently, former and current employees and contractors of the National Geographic Society, including Jane Goodall, penned a letter urging the NatGeo Board of Trustees to speak out against the systemic dismantling of U.S. science-based organizations. To date, National Geographic hasn’t uttered a word of protest.
As Canadians, with a federal election on the near horizon, we should be deeply concerned of the wider geopolitics at play, and the early signs of emerging autocracy within our own borders.
If there’s anything that the return of sunlight has taught me, this spring, is that we can’t afford to lose focus of what’s sacred to us—we can’t take anything for granted.
It’s time to wake up and do what we can to protect what we love: speak out, have conversations with our neighbours, coworkers, and family members, volunteer, buy Canadian-made products, read books to inform ourselves, spend time in Nature, connect with the land around us, sign petitions, hold our politicians accountable, vote, make noise—and make art!
As always, thanks for reading.
-Trina
Claire Cameron’s How to Survive a Bear Attack: A Memoir will be published on March 25, 2025, by Knopf Canada.
If you’ve waded all the way through this meandering essay/rant, my final offering is a review of Claire Cameron’s new book How to Survive a Bear Attack: A Memoir (Knopf Canada), which will be released on March 25, 2025.
Last month, I was lucky enough to get my paws on an advanced reader’s copy, which I read as voraciously as a hyperphagic bear in a berry patch. I couldn’t put the book down, and not only because of my love for bears—and, in particular, black bears—but the way that Cameron weaves in the larger themes that challenge us as a species: our fear of uncertainty, our fear of the Other, and our fear of death.
The book explores two parallel narratives, Cameron’s obsession to investigate and scratch beneath the surface of events of a fatal black bear attack that occurred in Algonquin Park in 1991, along with her sudden diagnosis with the same type of rare, deadly skin cancer that claimed the life of her father when she was a child. The prose moves seamlessly between the two storylines.
It isn’t the first time Cameron has written about the couple who was killed by a black bear in 1991. The same attack inspired the fictional events of her 2014 novel, The Bear, which is a harrowing, hair-raising read about two young children whom are forced to survive on the same island as the free roaming bear that killed their parents. I read the book before my first season at the fire tower and, I’m quite sure, I white-knuckle gripped the canister of bear spray because of it.
In her new memoir, Cameron returns to the “rogue bear” behind the 1991 attack, and, through extensive research with biologists and wildlife managers, seeks to reframe the narrative without sensationalism. Boldly, she writes from the point of view of the bear in a way that builds empathy and forces us to question our own fears—and misunderstanding—of the species. Through Cameron’s richly descriptive writing, we’re immersed in the ursine experience, one that’s governed by scent, curiosity, and a deep, singular hunger to survive.
How to Survive a Bear Attack hits shelves on March 25, 2025. Find a copy at your local bookstore.