In October 1991, Claire Cameron, Artsci’95, was barely a month into her first year at Queen’s when she picked up a copy of the Globe and Mail. On the cover was a story about a black bear that had killed a couple camping on an island in Ontario’s Algonquin Park.
Ms. Cameron can still remember how the bear was described: “308 pounds of black fury.”
The 19-year-old history major was both riveted and haunted by what she read. After her dad died of cancer when she was 10, Ms. Cameron found comfort in the outdoors, spending time in places like Algonquin Park. She sometimes crossed paths with black bears out there and rarely felt afraid – they always seemed timid, “almost like overgrown raccoons,” she says. And for the most part, she wasn’t wrong. Over the last 20 years, there have been just 24 fatal black bear attacks in North America.
“So, when I read that story, a gap opened up between those two things,” remembers Ms. Cameron. “There was what I knew had happened on that island and what I knew of reality – and my imagination went wild in between those two.”
Flash forward 30 years and three novels to her name – including one loosely based on that bear attack – and Ms. Cameron was still fascinated and frightened by what exactly had happened on that cool fall evening in Algonquin in 1991. She was also facing a perplexing battle of her own: the same type of cancer that had taken her dad.
And so, she took to the page to try to unpack it all. The result is Ms. Cameron’s debut memoir, How to Survive a Bear Attack. Combining nature writing, true-crime investigation, and a deeply personal story of recovery, it dives into themes of fear, love, and facing the wildness within.
Back in 2018, when Ms. Cameron first started working on the book, she wasn’t sure what connections she’d find between her two big questions – why such an ugly event happened in such a beautiful place, and why she was stricken by cancer at just 45 years old. “But I knew I needed to to find answers,” she says.
Getting them took her from doctors’ offices to interviews with wildlife experts to trips to Algonquin – including to the site of the attack – and beyond.
Now, at the end of that journey, Ms. Cameron says the big lesson to take from it all is right in front of her — and us.
“There are so many big worries in the world right now, so this brought home for me to focus on what you can control rather than what you can’t, to focus on the day-to-day experience of life, of the people you love and doing what you love.”
In short, as she writes in the book, “Don’t let a fear of death eclipse your life. Run toward love, fight for it, and die for it.”
is available from Penguin Random House Canada.
