Bears

In August of 2005 my friend Karen and I embarked on a 10 day camping trip in Tobermore, Ontario. BLACK BEAR COUNTRY. Not a week before leaving we heard about a woman who was sitting in her lawnchair, on her campsite, and attacked by a black bear. Not only attacked, mauled and killed by the bear. She died in the hospital from the wounds she had received during the attack. The husband of the poor woman who was fatally wounded tried to save her by repeatedly stabbing the black bear as it attempted to drag his wife off into the woods. Hmmm, and people think I am paranoid because I choose to research bear safety before a camping trip? I didn't learn much, expect that bear whistles don't work, make a lot of noise when you're hiking and if you encounter a bear play dead...(play?).
There was a part of the camping trip where we went for an evening stroll. Now, I know that sharks like a little snack when the sun was setting, but I had not been educated in the dining hours of the black bear. Now, I dunno about you tree huggers out there, but I don't want fucking know about black bears. I don't want to know the difference in the size, shape and smell of their dropping depending on what they ate (and believe me I found all of this on the net) I just don't want them to eat me. Anyway, so the 4 of us are on our evening hike and we see the park rangers just up ahead of us. They are both standing outside of their truck and one of them is holding a radar detector that resembled what attaached to my parents roof in the days of converters before cable television. My friend Gary (always the inquisitive one) asked what they were doing.
I didn't want to know.
"Tracking bears", said one of the wardens.
I felt my legs hollow.
Gary; "Really, are there any around"?
Warden; "Yeah, there's one through the bush this way", pointing in a direction.
My bowels turned to water.
Gary; "How close"?
I thought about plugging my ears.
Warden; "About 100 yards"
I don't know what happened to me at that point, but it wasn't good. Then, the two wardens put the antenna into the bed of the truck and drove away. Leaving the 4 of us wandering within 100 yards of a fucking black bear. I wanted to chase after the truck, jump in the bed and scream DRIVE!!! DRIVE!!! with little to no concern about the other 3. But, as I always do, I fought the urge and pretended to be as unconcerned as my hiking buddies. Apparently I did a piss-poor job of hiding my fear because the three of those bastards made jokes about how much faster i was walking. We made it back to the campsite (and not before passing a sign that read 'Bear in area, travel with caution'). That night we got hammered. They did it for the sake of the party, I did it to feel less when the inevitable mauling occured. As you can probably surmise no mauling took place, but I slept that night, and I only have Labatts Blue to thank for it.
Two months later I moved to Calgary, ALberta.
In Ontario we know the western provinces for 3 reasons; Mountains, Cowboys and Large Animal Attacks.
I didn't want to get off the fucking plane in case a Grizzly was snacking on the customer service agents at the WestJet desk.
I have been here for three months now, and have not yet seen a bear (however, i did see a Coyote running across the street not 2 blocks from my house, you don't see that shit in the GTA).
Why bears can't be trusted.
Well, they eat people, nuff said!