The Current - How a bear attack story helped this author understand her cancer diagnosis

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

Claire Cameron has been obsessed with bears since hearing about a bear attack while she was working in Ontario’s Algonquin Park as a teenager. But when she was diagnosed with cancer, Cameron revisited the details of that attack and the wilderness environment that’s shaped much of her life. She tells Galloway about her new memoir How to Survive a Bear Attack, and what facing death taught her about how to live.

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the At Issue podcast every week, wherever you listen. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. For a teenage Claire Cameron, the wilderness held the promise of adventure and gave her a feeling of strength. When she was 19, the author spent the summer working at a camp in Algonquin Park in Ontario. It was then that she first heard the story of the bear attack on Bates Island that killed a couple from Toronto.

It is a story that would grab her attention and not let go for the next 30 years. It inspired her very successful second novel called The Bear. But then something happened in her own life that made her reconsider the Bates Island attack and made her determined to investigate further, to find out what really happened to that couple in Algonquin Park and to reckon with her own fears about dying and what it means to survive. Her book, Exploring All of That is out now. It's called How to Survive a Bear

Attack, a memoir. And Claire Cameron is here with me in our Toronto studio. Claire, good morning. Good morning. Nice to see you and congratulations on this book. Thank you. Tell me about that couple's trip to Bates Island in 1991. What happened to that couple? It was Canadian Thanksgiving, so it was late in the year, quite cold, October, and they set out from the Opiango store in Algonquin Park, and then last they were seeing was paddling away from, or motoring away from the dock.

A search party found their remains five days later, and it was established that a black bear had attacked them. Pete Which was really unusual, right? Julie Berry, I can't tell you. It's almost, your chances are null statistically. Pete So rare, you say that it could be a statistic anomaly. Julie If you're going to get into trouble in a place like Algonquin Park, a wilderness area, statistically, it's heart attacks, the car drive on the way there, bee stings, dog bites, drowning, that sort of thing.

These are all the things that will happen to you before a bear attacks you? Much more likely, yes. When you heard about that attack, how did it stick with you? What did it do to you in learning about that? I was working at a summer camp in Algonquin Park, which is about three hours north of Toronto before the summer before and after. So when I returned to camp, I heard the story of this attack, almost like a ghost story around the campfire. I heard details that I didn't know if they were true or not. So for instance, that a broken paddle had been found at the campsite.

I didn't know quite what that meant, but it sort of implied a struggle. I also heard that a tray of ground beef had been found near the campfire on the rocks and it was intact, uneaten. It was that kind of detail. I didn't have a cohesive sense of the story. Pete Slauson Like a mystery, just pieces of a mystery that are waiting to be put together. Anna Slauson Exactly. Or waiting for a novelist like me with a wild imagination to put together. You became obsessed with bears. I mean, anybody who has seen what you post on social media would

understand this. How would you describe your thoughts about bears? I have an exact moment actually. I was a tree planter north of sort of halfway, I guess if you go straight from Toronto, halfway between Hudson Bay and Toronto, I tree planted there. And there was one night when I heard a, I was like, oh, what's that? And my friend Jackie was in, we slept outside in tents and she was in the tent beside me and she said, Claire, are you eating apples? And I said, no. But Jackie sounded quite nervous and she's the bravest person I know. So I decided I better investigate.

I stuck my head out and about a hundred feet away there was a small bear that was up on a table and we'd left out a box of apples. The bear was probably, it was like the size of a large dog, and bear stories tend to like increase sizes, so it really was small. It had opened the box of apples and dug in and was taking a bite and then throwing the apple away and it kept doing this. And I should have clapped, you know, you don't want bears, we shouldn't have left the apples out. I should have scared it away immediately, but I was just absolutely transfixed, because this was the best night of this bear's life. A small bear doesn't often get first crack at something so good. He, you know, he was inspecting the apples, he had these dexterous hands, or they were paws actually,

but I saw them as hands, The way he moved the apples around, he was so human in some way. I felt such a connection to him. I clapped, a couple other people banged pots and he ran off, but that was when I became just so enamored with bears. Your husband says you have some sort of superpower where you can smell bears, is this right? My husband's from California, he's American. So he's always amazed at all these Canadians with bear stories, we all have them. We were in Georgian Bay one night just having a beer on a porch and I just turned around and I said, oh, I smell a bear. And he was like, you what? And five minutes later, sure enough, we saw the hump of the bears back in the bushes.

They have a very distinct smell. They're all a bit different, but sort of wet leaves and a little fish and that sort of thing. They're also really smart. I mean, not that this whole conversation will be about bears, but you're fascinated with them and you learn a lot just in reading this book about how smart they are, right? That they can operate like touch screen devices maybe? Yeah, well there's a cognitive psychologist named Jennifer Vonk. I think she's actually from the Toronto area originally. She works in the US now, but she

has done research where bears have tested better on certain cognitive tasks than the great apes, which is kind of amazing because we compare our intelligence and our ability great apes, which is kind of amazing because we compare our intelligence and our ability to apes, but we don't necessarily to bears. Pete They can also smell us 20 miles away. Bethany They can. They're very – Pete I don't know that I want to know that, but I never know it. Bethany Well, but this is the most, so that it was unusual for me to see a bear eating apples. But usually, when we have bear counters, we

don't even know about them because the bears stay away from us. They're shy, they're hesitant to go near people, and they know where we are. We don't know where they are. You wrote your second novel, The Bear, which was, it's a work of fiction, but it's inspired by that 1991 bear attack, right? I was, when I started writing that, I went from these details, the broken paddle and the tray of ground beef, and I let my imagination go. I had young kids at the time and the story centered around, it's a survival story about

two young kids. So I was thinking about their vulnerability and their ability to get by in the world. This book is also a survival story. It is. In many ways. Yeah. You got a cancer diagnosis. Tell me about the specifics of this diagnosis.

This begins with a spot. This begins with a spot on my shoulder. It actually begins with my father, who died when I was young. He had melanoma and it was in the 80s. So when I was very young, I remember his chemotherapy then was a harsh regime and he died a very hard death. So I had the memory of that. And then when I was 45, he died when he was 42. And when I was 45, I was diagnosed with the same kind of cancer.

It started as a black spot on my shoulder, but then it turned out I had multiple instances of melanoma and it's actually a genetic. So I've been in the sun because of my outdoor activities, certainly, but the cause of my cancer is probably genetic. What was it like to get that same diagnosis? It was terrifying. I think it was very hard to imagine a future for myself

other than the one my father went through. So in some ways I felt closer to him than ever. You know, I was in a similar position, I had young kids and I had this disease, but my mind had trouble taking the next step towards life. All I could see, all I could imagine was a certain death and a hard one too. One of the things that you write in the book about this is that you can have a false sense

of security in being human. And that every now and then the mask of control slips. What does that mean? Well, I think especially being human, but you know, in Canada, in Toronto, in a house made a brick, you know, even when the wind blows were protected or if it rains, it doesn't land on my head. I, in the morning when I get up, I can open a refrigerator and there's food there, which I don't

know, from my time in my wilderness, in the wilderness, I, open a refrigerator and there's food there, which I don't know, from my time in the wilderness, whenever I come back in from a long hiking trip or something, I realize what a miracle that is, that there's food in my refrigerator. But still we are so vulnerable, whether it be disease or other people or anything else. And these, we have these moments, like my diagnosis was for me, that you realize that there's a fine line between life and death and you have to confront it. After your dad died, you spent, I mean, a lot of time outdoors. And outdoors, and Algonquin Park in particular,

became a really important thing for you. Yes. What did the park and paddling in the park mean to you? It was everything. I think when my father died, I was so young I couldn't cope. And I sort of shut down. I remember feeling very numb. I remember, like I remember my sister crying and I was unclear about why she was crying

because I didn't think that would bring him back. It didn't quite make sense to me. So I, I cope by cutting myself off and it was on long canoe trips and in Elgonquin's park specifically that I found myself again. I found connection to other people. I found a connection to the land and the world around me. So it was really my way of coping and healing. What do you, what do you think it was about that space? I mean, anybody who's been to Algonquin Park, it's this enormous area. Um, and you can kind of disappear. It's half the size of New Jersey.

I read recently, which is kind of interesting, but it's enormous and it's this wilderness space. And weirdly it's gives me a sense of proportion. It makes me feel small and, and I understand my place in the world. It's hard to hold on to petty problems or the little struggles that come with life when you're in that vast kind of beauty. And so you get this diagnosis,

and we've talked about this before, but one of the things the doctor says is that in the wake of this, the ideal exposure when it comes to the amount of sun that you should get is zero. You should have no exposure to the sun at all. What does that do to your relationship to the outdoors? That relationship that, I mean, as you said, it kind of made you feel human in some ways. When I got that diagnosis, it was almost like I thought the universe was joking.

I couldn't believe it because if there was one thing I needed to do, it was get in a canoe, an aluminum canoe on a reflective lake and go for a month to be able to cope. And that was my way of coping. And to have that taken away was just, you know, it sort of felt like a punishment perfectly designed to get me. I still almost can't believe it. But I have friends who could just put on a shirt and a hat and be fine. But you know, I've always weathered the elements and that's my way of being. So I found myself without a strategy for getting through this diagnosis and for getting better.

So how do you then in the midst of all of this, find a path back to that attack in 1991? So that, I had an operation after my cancer was diagnosed, so I had these big long slashes down my back. One of the nurses actually said, "'Oh, you look like you were attacked by a bear.'" They were like huge slashes. And I had to heal and I was in my chair in my

office. I couldn't write. It almost felt like the surgeon had like slipped and cut out my creativity at the same time as cutting out the cancer. And I just started, I actually was looking at the bear, my second novel, and I saw this detail in it where I'd written in the preface that an oar was found at the campsite, a broken oar. And I remembered back to the stories I'd heard and I thought that was strange because I remembered it being a broken paddle. And- Can you just explain the difference for people who don't know paddles and oars?

Yeah, an oar's bigger, like probably five or six pounds. They tend to be on the edge of a motor boat. So if your motor breaks down, you can use them, but they're designed for leverage. So they're sitting, they're like attached to the boat and the boat's taking the weight of them. A paddle is much smaller and probably two or three pounds. So it struck me that if it was an oar, that was a much bigger fight. How does an or break? You know, they're quite big. Something serious had to have happened. Something serious and what was it? And then also, that felt like the last book I might write,

in one of the last, and I'd got this wrong. And you know, what a disaster. And then I started spinning and I started reading the articles and some of them said paddle, some of them said or, and I said to myself, obviously I need to get to the bottom of this. And that was when I started contacting police officers and first responders and things to try and get more information about what had happened. Can I just ask you about something you said, which was that you found like the doctor had sliced out some of your creativity or something. What was it like as a writer not being able to write?

It was so hard. Because I do it every morning, I wake up and I write. And it's, I don't know if you know the concept of flow, but I sort of feel like a pianist when I'm writing well, it's more like a performance. And like a pianist when I'm writing well is more like a performance. And it's a time when I'm outside myself and my subconscious just goes. And so you couldn't start to get into the flow? I couldn't get in the flow at all. I couldn't even understand how I could take a word document

and make it into something. It seemed like such an odd idea. I became completely detached from that. One of the things that you say in the book is, I had been so caught up in dying that I'd forgotten something more important. I needed to focus on being alive. Mm-hmm. Yes, I think it was- That's kind of one of those lines that just sort of stops you. It was this, I think having watched my father die of the same kind of cancer, that became my future. That became my fate. And it's in my genetics, so I didn't see any other way forward.

But kind of leaning into this story, as you said, you started to spin. I started to spin. Is that a way of being alive in some ways? I think it ended up being that. I'm not sure I knew it at the time. I wasn't completely sure, to be honest, what I was doing. But I met incredible people along the way who were willing to... I met a bear biologist named Jeremy Inglis and I said to him, he was a little bit skeptical because he said, bear attacks don't happen very often. I'm not sure you should be focusing on this.

And I explained that I was diagnosed with cancer and that for much of my life, I've thought about what I do if I was attacked by a bear and I pretty much knew and I thought I'd be fine. But when I was diagnosed with cancer, I wasn't so sure of the answer and I felt so vulnerable. And so I was telling this to Jeremy and he gave me a little, you know, cocked his head and he wasn't sure what I was talking about. And I said to him, I thought maybe I'd be attacked by a bear, but it turns out the dangers inside me, it's been in my DNA this whole time.

And you know, what's going to kill me is in my cells. I'm Zing Zing. And I'm Simon Jack. And together we host Good, Bad, Billionaire. The podcast exploring the lives of some of the world's richest people. In the new season, we're setting our sights on some big names.

Yep, LeBron James and Martha Stewart to name just a few. And as always, Simon and I are trying to decide whether we think they're good, bad, or just another billionaire. That's Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Find it on bbc.com or wherever you get your BBC podcasts. You talked to people who had been attacked by bears, people who survived bear attacks,

right? Yes. Tell me about this woman, Laura Darby. She's incredible. So she was working, so there's things, the couple that I based the part of the investigative part of this book around went to the island and they weren't seen after leaving the dock. And because of where I started from, of wanting to know the unknowable in some ways, I looked part of my investigative technique was to look to other people who've had similar or

sort of comparable experiences. Laura Darby was working in the field in Northern Ontario and she'd had bear training. She was with a partner, but he had gone off to they were doing survey work. And she saw a bear coming at her, a black bear, and she knew it was a black bear. And she knew it was, it started running. And she thought, oh, maybe it's being chased by something, which is a very reasonable thing to think. So she sort of stepped back and out of the way. And then it came towards her, ran past, and then started coming again. And she thought, oh, this is trouble. She knew the signs of aggression in a black bear, which again is very rare. But she was actually attacked by this bear and in a prolonged struggle. She's one of the bravest people I've ever talked to.

What did you learn from her? I mean, you talk about bear training and what have you. What did you learn from her about what we're supposed to do in the unlikely occurrence that we are attacked by a bear? She did everything, was all she had with her. She had a radio, luckily, and she got a call out for help. And then she had her steel toe boots and her clipboard, and she just kept going. So she had this amazing thing happen where her mind kind of split, and she said half

of her was sort of hysterical, half of her was like, oh, the bear's biting my arm. Wow, I better not give up at this point. She knew with a black bear in this very rare instance where they come after you, you need to fight back, you need to show that you're not an easy meal. One of the things that you wanted to do, and I'm just thinking of that in terms of how she's responding, but also how the bear is responding. One of the things you wanted to do in this book is understand the story from the bearers perspective. Yes.

What does that mean? So I was in Algonquin Park doing this investigation. I was in the archives, which is this dusty office in the room down under the visitor center. And there's all these files and scientific studies and that sort of thing. I found in a small folder in like the back corner an old newspaper article about the attack and there was a picture of the bear in there. And he was, it looked like he, it was fair that because after this attack happened, he was shot as the bears almost always are if they're found. He was lying on his side and he had this thick glossy coat. He looked so healthy. There was some speculation after the attack that he had done this because he was diseased or otherwise unhealthy.

Or starving. Exactly. Or he had like a cyst on his brain or something, but this bear looks so healthy. I almost had this feeling looking at the photo, like I could put my hands on his coat and feel life, you know, warmth. And it was that photo that bear came alive to me. And I realized I couldn't figure out this, what happened, because I wanted to know what happened

and why I couldn't figure it out because I've been focused on the people. I was telling a story about people But this story was about the bear. It was his decision that changed everything. Do you worry about I? Don't know looking at the bear adding things to the bear. It's a bear. It's it's not a person It's a bear. It's not a person, but it's easy to kind of cross that line in some ways It's very easy to cross that if you're saying that you're I mean, because part of this is piecing together what the bear was doing in the months before the attack. Yes, yeah, in the year,

the book follows the bear and his journey. And trying to understand why he, it, he would have attacked these people. Yes, so I've mentioned my wild imagination, which is well intact, I'll have you know. But also I worked with biologists, and the one I mentioned before, Jeremy Ingles, when we started working together, he said to get to know a bear, you need to follow his stomach.

So he's done all this field work and actually started a big study of adult male bears in Algonquin Park after this attack happened. And if you start piecing, they wake up, they think of food their whole day and yearly cycle is filled with what they eat and where their food sources are and they follow a very clear pattern between them. So that's what I did was I followed that bear stomach. Did you get a better understanding? I don't want to give everything away, but did you give a better understanding as to why the bear would have attacked people? I did. I actually, my husband and I went to camp on Bates Island on Lake Opiango. And

I'd been to the island with people from the search party and knew the layout of what happened where. After doing all that work of learning about a bear's yearly cycle, I kind of arrived at that point understanding where it fit in his, you know, a successful bear is a big bear. And especially the males, the ones that get to mate are the biggest and that can fend off rivals. And that spoke to his motivation. Why did you do that? Why did you go with your husband back to that island? Well, that's exactly what my husband asked actually. He was like, are we sure this is a good idea?

And he was actually quite quiet the whole night before. When we lived through the night, he had more questions. But in a way, I think I was making an appointment to meet up with myself again. You know, I'll heal and then I'll be able to canoe like I did before. That part of you is still like in the park? Part of me was trying to go back to my old life before cancer and when I got there, we decided to go, I was strong enough to paddle and I realized there's all this reflection from the lake and you know of all the ways I could move in the world,

this probably wasn't a wise one, but it was October and I had sunscreen and we were going for the night. But when we got out on the lake, it was, there's this, one of the park officials at the time in 1991 said, you know, this wasn't the couple's fault at all, which it wasn't, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And as we were paddling towards the island, that kept going to my mind, into my mind. And at one point we were about to pull up to the campsite where they stayed that night and I turned and I saw the sun directly in the perfect angle to

watch the sunset from the front of the campsite. And I thought, you know, maybe they were exactly where they wanted to be. Maybe they were in the right place for them at that time. And I think it was that kind of thing that you'd never see unless you go there. How are you doing now, I mean, with health and stuff at that? And I ask that partially because of what you said earlier about this idea that, and you write about this, I have cancer, it's wild inside of me. Yeah. A big part of, I guess, what I've learned on writing this book is I thought of the wilderness

as a set, Algonquin Park, this place I love, it has very strict boundaries around it and it's north. I think a lot of Canadians live along the border, the southern border, and we think of the wild direction as north. I'm pointing up. It's just so firm in me. And when I started digging into the history of Algonquin Park, it's actually 40% open to logging, and that shocked me. And just this pristine, untouched place that I love is actually logged. Then it's a construct in some ways. We've created the boundaries of the park.

Absolutely, the only shocking thing is that I was shocked because it's actually on the Algonquin Park website. It wasn't like some big scoop. But I started to see that my idea of wilderness is something with borders around it, but that's not true at all. I started learning a new way of being outside.

I've started running much more, and specifically being in Toronto going to the lake or even the alley behind my house, there's wilderness there. And I think when you start taking those boundaries off and realizing that it's a much broader thing, the wilderness, that is something that helped me heal because there's wild inside me too. Cancer is a proliferation of cells and it's wild inside me. I really enjoyed this book and it's great to talk to you again, Claire. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

Claire Cameron's new book is called How to Survive a Bear Attack, a Memoir. me. Claire Cameron's new book is called How to Survive a Bear Attack, a Memoir.