A cornucopia of anecdotes

Bears in the Alley recalls the carefree days when residents and visitors to Jasper were careless with their garbage and just as casual in their relationships with the bears that swarmed to the waiting feast.

“Jasper and bears go hand in hand,” Val Delill writes in the forward to the 112-page collection of anecdotes and photographs she compiled from the collections of  the Jasper-Yellowhead Museum and Archives.

“For many years bears were seen throughout the town foraging in the alleys and garbage dumps, As bears lost their fear of man, they became bolder and more of a nuisance.”

The anecdotes relate experiences for bears and humans that swing wildly from hair-raising to humorous and consequences that were sometimes fatal for man and beast. 

One of the funniest stories is told by Gordon Burrows about a visit to Jasper Park Lodge by Governor General Lord Julian Byng and Lady Marie Evelyn Byng. 

Lady Byng, an avid hockey fan whose name graces the trophy for the NHL’s most gentlemanly player, wanted to camp in the rough. 

A tent was put up on the hotel grounds and Lady Byng and her maid retired for the night. Enter a bear. Lady Byng was hysterical. The bear bolted through a tent wall; it was seen later that morning near the lodge, with a piece of lady’s underclothes around its neck. 

Lisa Brenne, then a recent immigrant from Germany, describes a roadside encounter in 1956 with a mother bear and her three cubs: “being used to domestic animals, we were not afraid of these trustful wild bears. We fed them some bread and took pictures. With the car windows wide open, our baby daughter was peacefully sleeping in the back seat.”

With the exception of Howard O’Hagan’s account of the death of Warden Percy Goodair at the Tonquin ranger’s cabin, the anecdotes are related without the art  and artifice that professional writers and skilled storytellers bring to human experience:  

“By lunchtime we were in snow and later on in the pass it lay two feet deep, gleaming against the sun until it seemed to blister the eyes. Crossing the pass, Mount Geikie, the Ramparts and other peaks above the Tonquin came into view, white-robed, majestic, like a frozen vision of eternity.”

Those who have read Sid Marty’s Men for the Mountains may find Warden Ed McDonald’s harrowing tale of survival somewhat dry, but it is still a gripping account of a stricken man beating the odds with courage and determination.

Parks policy toward bears has changed since Maclean’s Magazine artist James Simpkins created Jasper, a benign and bemused bruin later adopted by the Chamber of Tourism and Commerce as the town’s mascot. 

“Bears are still a common sight in Jasper,” Delill writes, “but are now usually seen grazing along side park roads” - often on dandelions, a favorite food.

Bears in the Alley: exhibit opened last on the weekend at the Jasper-Yellowhead Museum and Archives.