The Bear Essentials June 1972

The Bear Essentials June 1972

I have never been a happy camper.

When I was a small child, my parents forced me to go to a portentously named “cub camp” in Drumbo, Ontario, located on the Nith River.

Even today, some sixty-five years later, repeating these diabolical names makes me quake with wretched foreboding.

I was the world’s worst camper, unable to swim properly or do a swan dive from the dizzying high board, and most of all completely blocked, not to say nauseated, when it came time to use the humble outhouse facilities designed for cub scout excretion.

Fast forward to the spring of 1972, when I entered into an ill-fated first marriage with an outdoor enthusiast from a family of happy campers.

My parents-in-law of the day clearly disapproved of all facets of my annoying personality, principles, friends, and appearance: I was a “hippie” whose friends my former father-in-law called “the Cubans;” I puffed on various substances, including chain smoking tobacco in that obnoxious, in-your-face, in-your-house, in-your-car manner so characteristic of those unenlightened times; I was an anti-Vietnam war loudmouth; I had dropped out of law school to study English literature, a cardinal sin presaging indigence for their daughter; I came from a family of destitute Poles on my mother’s side; I was the epitome of the effete city slicker, hopeless at outdoor pursuits such as waterskiing and canoeing; and I was something of a goofy Francophile, anathema to these old stock Anglos who were adherents of the “Bilingual today, French Tomorrow” doctrine that had a certain following back in the early 1970s in heartland Canada.

In an attempt to erase these seemingly indelible blemishes on my record, I foolishly agreed to give camping another shot.

So it was that in June 1972, my erstwhile partner and I packed all the requisite gear, including tent and copious provisions, and headed to Ontario’s Algonquin Park, where we rented a canoe and proceeded to paddle into the heart of darkness.

Completely knackered after a day of rowing, we pitched our tent on the shores of a lake – or at least my partner did, while I mainly flailed about, causing bodily harm – and hung our provisions in a tree, as per the instructions of the camping 101 manual.

Once therein firmly ensconced, we devoured a rather disgusting, rather charred, camp stove meal and keeled over within the confines of the rather disgusting, rather smelly, tent…

Only to be awakened with a start at the crack of dawn.

The tent was pervaded with an unfamiliar rank odour, wafting in the wake of a deafening din.

“Arrrrrgh ….Grrrrr….Arrrrrgh.”

Terror struck to the depths of my being, beginning with my bowels and spreading to my head.

“Arrrrrgh ….Grrrrr….Arrrrrgh.”

We peered out the front door slit of the tent.

A colossal, mottled, foaming brownish bear was methodically whacking the low-hanging fruit, i.e. our food provisions, out of the tree.

“Thwhack. Thwhack. Arrrrrgh ….Grrrrr….Arrrrrgh.”

The only possible escape route involved beetling to the canoe parked about 20 feet away on the edge of the water, while the ursine giant tucked into our provisions and sacked the campsite.

Shaking off paralysis bred of absolute trepidation, we finally made our move, scampering to the canoe and splashing wildly onto the lake…

Where we watched helplessly as the frothing creature turned its attention from the provisions to the tent, shambling right inside, as though by invitation, making the erstwhile shelter buckle and shimmy like a three-dimensional accordion kite.

From our vantage point on the water, we could do nothing more than shout imprecations at the beast, stringing together a torrent of anti-bear obscenities that of course fell on deaf ears.

Once satiated, the titan of the wilderness lumbered listlessly into the underbrush, while we paddled furiously back from whence we came to alert the park rangers about the frothing backcountry felon.