The Black Grizzly of Whiskey Creek.

Beryl Hamilton is a freelance writer in Thunder Bay who specializes in
home gardening.

In 1980, a number of bear maulings occurred in the Whiskey Creek region of Banff National Park, triggering national news coverage and a perplexing conundrum for the caretakers of the park and the surrounding area. As Sid Marty reports of these events, “Up until the evening of August 14, 1980, Whiskey Creek was part of Banff’s backyard playground, but by September the people of Banff would shiver when the little creek was mentioned. [The area] was soon declared the most dangerous place in Banff National Park.”

Marty, a former parks warden and well-known for writing about Canadian wildlife, investigates here the background of the attacks, the human response to them, and their enduring implications for the Banff National Park and bear management more generally. Drawing on extensive research and interviews, he explains the initial mystery surrounding the event (was a big black bear or a grizzly responsible?) and its eventual resolution. As Marty explains, the eruption of Mount St. Helens in March 1980 likely led to the stunting of underbrush and a limited berry crop in Banff that year, which stressed bears throughout the region. Combined with poor waste management near human developments, inadequate communication between parks management and the RCMP, myopic politicians, and human error, the conditions were in place for severe bear-human conflicts.

A particularly engaging aspect of the narrative is the way Marty intersperses his descriptions of the human world with imaginative accounts of the events from the bear’s point of view. This “fictionalized” aspect of the writing helps expand our understanding of what happened and sharpens the critique of human encroachment on bear territory. Marty’s analysis of the way various factors combined to create the dangerous “black grizzly of Whiskey Creek” is detailed, persuasive, and makes for a compelling read. This book is, in short, an important work of investigative journalism as well as a powerful example of nature writing.