Lo, the Mighty Nimrods, Senior and Junior

I moved to Tahsis a year and a half ago. This was once a busy sawmill town, with a cedar mill, a hemlock mill and a planer mill going three shifts a day, seven days a week. There was plenty of money, too much of which got spent on booze.

Then the bottom fell out of the forest industry and Doman got into trouble he couldn't get out of, the mills closed, and, in the words of the song, "the good times are all gone, and I'm bound for moving on." Now we are probably no more than 300 people, most of us retired, or as we put it "independently impoverished."

To me, Tahsis is much nicer now than when it was a busy place full of well-paid people. I lived here some 30 years ago with a husband I have since off-loaded and three kids I love and consider to be my friends. When Tahsis was busy, I worried about my kids constantly, because when young, hard-working guys get a skinful of booze they drive like idiots and do things that would break their mother's hearts if they knew. Now, the few kids in Tahsis are safe wherever they might want to ramble.

The first produced script I wrote for TV, Dreamspeaker, was written in Tahsis, and so was much of the subsequent novella. Much of Daughters of Copper Woman was written while I was in Tahsis, as well as much of Earth Witch, my first volume of poetry.

But I couldn't wait to get out of Tahsis as it was then! The mills roared constantly, the drunks lurched around the playgrounds, cars roared along as if that were really a road instead of an invitation to paralysis, and my personal life was going to hell.

Second springtime

I didn't visit Tahsis for almost 30 years. When I came back the mills were still, the town was quiet, the mountains, bluffs and steep hills were cradling the town, and the people I met were laid back, friendly, and for the most part sober.

And the place is beautiful.

So this is my second springtime in Tahsis. I walk to the river on a path flanked by bleeding hearts, yellow violets, and pink curly lilies, and the birdsong fades only because the sound of the river increases as I approach. The eagles are courting, the crows building nests, the Steller's jays have come back to sit and fling insults and we can see baby salmon in the shallows of the river.

Unfortunately, the bear hunters have arrived. I encountered the first ones in the store on Saturday. A boy of no more than 12 was proudly telling anyone who would listen that they had seen three bears but hadn't "taken" any because they looked skinny and "kind of raggedy" and they wanted a "prime bear."

This kid was no taller than you'd expect of a 12-year-old, but he was a good 30 pounds heavier than you'd want your child to be. He had three chins and a body like a squat fireplug, dark hair and a round face with eyes that looked small because of the blubber-cheeks. With him was an adult who couldn't have been anything other than the stencil from which the kid's design had been drawn. Not very tall, but extremely round, with a handful of chocolate bars, a couple of bags of chips and a basket of groceries.

Because they're bears

My bad luck, I was in the lineup behind him. The kid asked: "Do you live here?" I said yes. "Ever see any bears?" he asked hopefully. "All the time, son."  "Ever shoot one?" "Nope." "Why not?" he asked.

"Do you intend to EAT what you shoot?" I replied.

He looked at me as if I were just too crazy to be let out in public. "We're hunting BEARS," he said. "Nobody eats bears."

"Why are you hunting if you aren't going to eat it?" I asked. And he replied: "They're BEARS."

I really wanted to say something mature and maybe even clever, like "Oh fuck off, brat." But I just shook my head. What's the use? The government has taken their money, given them a licence, and permission to drive all the way from wherever-in-hell so they can pay a guide-outfitter in excess of $5,000 to take them out to slaughter a bear.

It's not as if the bears in and around Tahsis are man-eating predators who prowl the village looking for babies and small children to devour. It's not as if they are ripping the doors off our houses and snatching supper from our beds. Most of the bears I've seen around here are shambling, loose-limbed, laid-back and interested only in eating fish in the river or pigging out on a grass-and-clover salad in a vacant lot. And yes, for the most part they do look kind of "raggedy," especially this time of year when they've been denned up for months living off their own fat.

These people come from virtually all over the world for the chance to spend money and shoot a bear. The guide outfitter makes sure they have warm socks and a camo hunter's vest, then loads them into his boat and off theY go, roaring up the inlet, going in and out of every bay, cove, fjord and basin they see.

A hole as big as your fist

Bears are the beach janitors here. They prowl the rocky shoreline snuffing up dead crabs, stranded fish, dead seals and otters left behind by the tide. They even deal with those beached whales who have succumbed to the pesticide poisoning, dioxin poisoning and the depredations of the navies of two nations who think nothing of dropping depth charges just to see them go bang and who seem determined to test their latest sonar devices to be sure they work even though they know the damn things can rupture the brains of whales and sea mammals.

Without the bears the place could well start to stink. And then there are the salmon who, as we all know, spawn, and then die. Without the bears the carcasses would wash out to sea. But bear cleans everything up then wanders into the bush to take a comfortable dump and leaves a rich fertilizer that ensures the trees will grow in dirt that otherwise would have been leached barren by winter rains.

And here comes the Great White Guide Outfitter in his boat, bearing Mighty Nimrod Senior and Junior. When they see a family of bears busy in their larder they cut the motor and drift in as close as they can get. The bear is not alarmed, the weirdest damn things in the world float in on the tide. When they are close enough, the largest bear is targeted and POW, a slug that could rip through concrete blows a hole as big as your fist right through the body of the bear.

Fuck, eh? Such a challenge. Your GRANNY could do it, except I expect your Granny has more sense than to bother, not to mention more self respect and more moral integrity.

Sometimes the entire bear is towed back. More often the bear is skinned out where he or she fell. The skin, with the head and paws still attached, is turfed in the bottom of the boat and off they go, stalwart fellows all, leaving behind a couple of hundred pounds of wasted meat and a life squandered so some puke can fulfil a wet dream.

How to pick clover

Raggedy at this time of year. Come back in a couple of months when they've put on some fat and their pelts are gleaming blue-black in the sunlight. Sit on my deck and watch her in the vacant lot teaching her baby how to pick clover, how to skin berries off the salmonberry thicket I refuse to cut. Take a few photos.

I'll drive you up to the landfill, we can park and watch the really big ones busy ripping open garbage bags and feasting on what we've thrown away. These ones aren't raggedy. The entire town of Tahsis is making sure these ones are well fed, by the end of July the "Big Guy" is so fat he is still jiggling after he's quit walking to sit on his bum and stare at your car. Gosh, he's even fatter than the Nimrod in the grocery store.

I know there are places where bears absolutely cannot and will not co-exist with us. West Vancouver, North Vancouver, New Westminster. I know the game wardens have to shoot some every year, I understand why, and I'm not going to have a nervous breakdown about it, nor am I going to cry myself to sleep. I figure the bear should have known better and if it didn't, well, that's how it is.

I know there are poachers who go out and kill bears for particular parts they sell on a black market to an ever-hungry market, usually Asian, and I don't understand why the government doesn't put the poachers out of business by flooding the market with the various parts of the bears they had no other option but to destroy. If the market is sated, there's no market and so no reason for the poachers to head off into the bush.

But we're not having any huge problem with marauding bears. It's not as if we made hysterical phone calls begging someone to come up and rid us of a dangerous problem. Tahsis isn't having a problem with bears. If ever we do, we have guys with guns who will deal with the problem for us.

So do us all a favour, okay, fuck off, leave us alone, leave our bears alone, fill your faces with chips and chocolate bars somewhere else. Take up skeet shooting or something. Better yet, take up aerobics and get rid of some of the ugly blubber you're packing around. Teach the kid to play soccer, go bike riding with him, but for Pete's sake leave us and our neighbour bears alone. We aren't busy filling up the garbage dump with food for them just so you can drive your $50,000 four-by over the road and kill the big ones.

Like we say around here, get lost, eh?

Anne Cameron's 1979 film Dreamspeaker, directed by Claude Jutra, won seven Canadian Film Awards, including best script. She has published more than 30 books, including Daughters of Copper Woman, a retelling of Northwest Coast Indian myths.