When I was around ten, our family lived in a small two bedroom clapboard shack in the Prospect area. We were sent to bed early, still light outside. Just before dark, there was a terrible crash outside (as we found out later a bear had torn the fence down), and then we saw his shadow in the window and he was reaching and trying to tear the window out from the top. That tells you how big he was. Our mother came in and said, “Be very quiet!” instead of taking us out of the room. Were we scared! A neighbour was watching from across the road and was ready to come to our aid. The bear eventually left and our neighbour decided he would do something about it because it was bothering him – he had chickens – so he killed a chicken and put a half of a stick of dynamite in the dead chicken and wired it up to a detonator. He was sitting in the outhouse with the detonator waiting for the bear. After an hour or so he got bored and came up to my father and asked if he would come sit with him to pass the time. When they got back, the chicken was eaten, the dynamite spit out and the bear was gone. This same bear was said to have been responsible for following the milkman early in the morning and drinking the milk that was left on the front steps of the houses. How he got the lid off I never knew. And he never broke a bottle. His final act was to break into the Rundle Mountain Trading Store. He got in through the wall into the butcher shop and pigged out on butter and everything else he could find. He practically demolished the butcher shop before the policeman, who had been alerted, arrived. The policeman was very very nervous and shot the bear with his pistol several times, never hitting a vital spot. The bear left and tried to swim across the creek, which was below the store, and drowned. It was never known whether he was weighted down with lead or just went swimming too soon after eating so much butter and meat. Some men and the policeman pulled the bear out of the creek and draped him over a log guardrail in front of the YMCA. A lady came along and said, “Do you think all that butter and stuff he ate would still be good?” He was enormous, draped over that log.
I was walking down the railroad track going to school some time later and this gentleman was walking all bent over with his hands clasped behind his back and black bear was following him. I guess the bear thought the man was too slow so passed him. The man looked at the bear and the bear looked at the man and went on his way, neither seemed bothered by the other. I stayed well back to let the bear leave.
In Canmore Seniors at the Summit, ed. Canmore Seniors Association, 2000, p. 280.
