Desmonds Stand Off with a Bear in May 2013

Even in my 90s fortune smiles on me, or could it have been St Anthonys doing? The other morning as I was ending my walk on Rena Crescent, which is up on West Vancouvers timbered mountain slopes, I saw a bear coming straight towards me. When we were only twenty feet apart I forced myself to acknowledge that I was really seeing what I was seeing, and so with heart pounding and legs shaking, I came to a sharp halt. So did the bear. The stand off was torture. Then, miracle of miracles, it was the bear that broke off contact. It turned and headed straight down a driveway - our driveway. My retreat cut off, I still dared not move and inch. And no good calling out to neighbours. There was not a soul on the street. But then, after agonizing for some escape, I saw the creature emerge from the bushes at the far end of the property, cross over Rena Crescent, and at a lope head straight up our neighbours driveway.

Taken thirty-two years earlier, this is a shot of my brother Jocelyn walking along Rena Crescent. Though coming from the opposite direction he is at the spot where I stood facing the bear. Our driveway is the one leading down from the parked car.

They are Cantonese speaking Chinese those neighbours of ours, the father with Canadian English way superior to my bastardized China Coast English, the mother having good Mandarin, their four sons, ne natural Canadian English speakers. I slipped indoors and got immediately on to the phone to warn them. The mother answered, then came running down the driveway to see if I was OK. Chasing right after her was a Chinese x-it man doing a job at her place. He shot out at her in rapid re Mandarin that a huge bear was tearing apart her garbage cans and was feeding on the contents. How big is it, I asked. Three hundred pounds he told me. Then he wanted to know how was it possible that such an old decrepit Westerner like me knew Chinese? An hour later when my wife Deb got home she told me a bear had been sighted seven blocks away but that it had since disappeared up into the higher slopes. That was good news, splendid news. I never would have reported the bear to the authorities. They shoot those magnicent creatures.