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Of books and bears – Harold Macy launches San Josef

The first time I hiked into San Josef Bay I was wor­ried about bears. Didn’t even see a track. The second time, I woke up one morn­ing and grog­gily wondered why Rick was mak­ing so much noise out­side the tent.

Turns out, Rick had gone to in­vest­ig­ate the sea stacks and a bear was wan­der­ing through camp. Luckily, all our food and toi­letries were safely stowed in an im­pro­vised bear-hang.

I’ve ex­plored San Josef two oth­er times via the prin­ted page. The first was at a week-long writ­ing work­shop at Strathcona Park Lodge. That’s where I met an­oth­er wanna be writer, Harold Macy.

One af­ter­noon, while Harold’s wife and two young sons went for a walk, I sat on the floor of their suite next to a stack of pa­per. Harold poun­ded away on an old IBM Selectric type­writer (com­puters were few and far between in 1986) as I read a draft of his work-in-progress.

I re­mem­ber the evoc­at­ive lan­guage and the strong sense of a wild, wet land­scape and the haunted, hope­ful char­ac­ters that in­hab­ited it. The ma­nu­script began with a man in an oil­skin coat row­ing. For thirty some years I pondered the U.S. civil war deserter’s fate once he reached the strug­gling Danish set­tle­ment on north­ern Vancouver Island in Canada.

This sum­mer I found out when Tidewater Press asked if I’d write a blurb for the back of San Josef. Harold’s story ig­nited memor­ies of my vis­its to the re­mote bay and of the writ­ing re­treat that launched my career.

But most of all, I was struck by the de­vel­op­ment of the plot and per­son­al­it­ies. Both had ma­tured like a boda­cious red wine. Within three pages, Harold cap­tures the soul of a man and the land­scape he finds him­self in.

San Josef is a deep and some­times dark nov­el where hope goes astray but is nev­er lost. The char­ac­ters are as com­plex as a spider’s web, the lan­guage po­et­ic and the en­vir­on­ment a tan­gible force.

Harold Macy is the au­thor of The Four Storey Forest, As Grow the Trees, So too the Heart. His short stor­ies have ap­peared in PRISM International, The Malahat Review , Orion and oth­er publications.

On Saturday, Oct. 26 Tidewater Press and Harold Macy will launch San Josef at the Courtenay and District Museum at 2 pm. in down­town Courtenay, BC.

Admission is free; stor­ies will be filled with Harold’s trade­mark hu­mour and the his­tory that in­spired this novel.

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Takaya: Lone Wolf

In 2012, an ap­prox­im­ately two-year old wolf sud­denly ap­peared on Discovery Island, not far from the densely pop­u­lated mu­ni­cip­al­ity of Oak Bay on south­ern Vancouver Island, BC.

He’d prob­ably dis­persed from his birth pack on Vancouver Island and was look­ing for a mate and ter­rit­ory to call his own. But some­where along the way, he made a wrong turn and found him­self in an urb­an area. So, per­haps con­fused or spooked, he swam through chal­len­ging wa­ters to a small cluster of islands.

Wolves are highly so­cial an­im­als, so no one thought he’d stay. But, des­pite all odds, he has. For sev­en years he’s sur­vived – and thrived – in a loc­a­tion that has no oth­er wolves, no year-round source of wa­ter and no deer or oth­er un­gu­lates to hunt.

Cheryl Alexander has fol­lowed the jour­ney of the wolf she calls Takaya with her cam­era and heart for nearly sev­en years. The renowned wild­life pho­to­graph­er has watched him swim from is­land to is­land, seen him feed­ing on seals and listened to him howl to­wards the lights of Oak Bay.

On Friday, October 4, the story of this re­mark­able wolf and wo­man will air on CBC TV’s The Nature of Things. Takaya: Lone Wolf is an in­ter­na­tion­al co-pro­duc­tion, which will run on BBC, CBC and ARTE.

Cheryl was a won­der­ful re­source while I was re­search­ing Return of the Wolf and I can’t wait to see the doc­u­ment­ary fea­tur­ing her pho­to­graphs and in-depth know­ledge about this un­usu­al wolf.

Click here to view a trail­er of the documentary.

Photo by Cheryl Alexander

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The Wolf wins silver!

Return of the WolfReturn of the Wolf won a Silver Medal in Environment/​Ecology  at the Independent Publisher Book Awards!

Based in the USA, the an­nu­al award hon­ours the best in­de­pend­ently pub­lished titles from around the world.

Judges in­clude ex­perts in the fields of edit­ing, design, book­selling, re­view­ing and lib­rar­ies. Their de­cisions are based on qual­ity of con­tent, ori­gin­al­ity, design and pro­duc­tion with a spe­cial em­phas­is on in­nov­a­tion, com­pel­ling text and so­cial rel­ev­ance to cur­rent times.

A thou­sand thank yous to every­one at my pub­lish­er, Douglas & McIntyre, for  the time, en­ergy and sup­port giv­en to the Wolf. And also to the people who so gen­er­ously con­trib­uted their know­ledge, ex­per­i­ences and photographs.

A book, es­pe­cially an award-win­ning one, is truly a col­lab­or­at­ive effort!

 

 

 

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Wolf attack at Banff National Park, Alberta

Around 1:00 a.m. on August 9, Matt and Elisa Rispoli jol­ted awake when they felt the side of their tent move vi­ol­ently. Matt as­sumed it was a black bear so yelled and struck the tent where the an­im­al was push­ing on it. The an­im­al bit Matt’s hand and pro­ceed to tear open the tent. As their shel­ter col­lapsed around them, Elisa threw her­self over the New Jersey couple’s two young sons.

Through the new open­ing in the tent, Matt saw a wolf about a metre (three feet) away. Then it lunged at him, grabbing him by his up­per right arm. Matt, tried to punch the wolf in the throat but that didn’t de­ter it. As the wolf tugged the po­lice of­ficer out of the tent, his wife grabbed his leg and tried to pull him back.

The scream­ing woke up the Fees who were camp­ing nearby. Russ’s wife handed him a lan­tern and he sprin­ted to­ward the noise. The Calgary res­id­ent saw what looked like a large dog and us­ing the mo­mentum of his run, kicked it in the hindquar­ters. The an­im­al let go of Matt but didn’t leave.

With blood run­ning down his arm, Matt crawled out of the ruined tent, bran­dish­ing a tent pole. The two men threw rocks from the fire circle and yelled at the wolf un­til it backed off enough for the Rispole fam­ily and Russ and his wife to seek sanc­tu­ary in the Fee vehicle. The wolf fol­lowed Matt but the two men were able to keep it at bay.

Wolves are of­ten wary of people but can be curi­ous or even bold. They have entered tents — with and without people in them — but un­til this at­tack at Banff National Park, have al­ways been at­trac­ted to food or per­son­al be­long­ings of people — not the people them­selves. Although the wolf in this photo taken by Paul Sokoloff on Ellesmere Island did dam­age the tent, no people were injured.

Both fam­il­ies were badly shaken by the or­deal and Matt is re­cov­er­ing from bite marks and punc­ture wounds to his hand and arm. The next day a park em­ploy­ee found a wolf about a kilo­metre (half mile) from the at­tack site. When he got out of his vehicle the wolf ap­proached him and was shot and killed. DNA re­vealed it was the wolf that had at­tacked Matt.

Although wolves have at­tacked people in two Canadian pro­vin­cial parks and else­where in Canada, this is the first doc­u­mented wolf at­tack in a Canadian na­tion­al park. And the in­cid­ent has wild­life of­fi­cials some­what puzzled. There were no sig­ni­fic­ant at­tract­ants in or near the tent at the Rampart Creek Campground and no re­ports of a food-con­di­tioned or ha­bitu­ated wolf in the area, which are the primary cause of neg­at­ive human/​wolf in­ter­ac­tions in North America.

Results of a nec­ropsy de­scribed the con­di­tion of the wolf as old, ex­tremely ema­ci­ated (35 kg/​78 pounds) and with worn teeth. Unless fur­ther evid­ence of a conditioned/​habituated wolf comes to light, the mo­tiv­a­tion for this pred­at­ory at­tack ap­pears to be starvation.

The Rispoles and Fee did everything right. They made lots of noise, ag­gress­ively fought back and got to a safe place. Based on evid­ence avail­able at the time of this post­ing, this was an ex­tremely un­usu­al situ­ation that no one could have foreseen.

Two tools that may   have stopped the al­ter­ca­tion soon­er are bear spray and/​or a fixed blade knife. (It’s il­leg­al for any­one oth­er than staff to carry fire­arms in Banff National Park.)

There have been some com­plaints about the wolf be­ing shot. But, the real­ity is, the wolf would have been a danger to any hu­man it en­countered. And shoot­ing it meant a quick death, rather than a long, linger­ing one.

This un­for­tu­nate in­cid­ent is a good re­mind­er to be pre­pared when in wild areas and that wolves are large, strong pred­at­ors that can, on oc­ca­sion, be dan­ger­ous to humans.