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A Story of Siblinghood and Survival
by Trina Moyles
Book Reviewed by:A dazzling memoir about one woman's coexistence with bears in the boreal forest and a singular meditation on sibling loss.
When Trina Moyles was five years old, her father, a wildlife biologist known in Peace River as "the bear guy," brought home an orphaned black bear cub for a night before sending it to the Calgary Zoo. This brief but unforgettable encounter spurred Trina's lifelong fascination with Ursus americanus—the most populous bear on the northern landscape, often considered a nuisance to human society. As a child roaming the shores of the Peace in the footsteps of her beloved older brother, Brendan, she understood bears to be invisible entities: always present but mostly hidden and worthy of respect. Growing up during the oil boom of the 1990s, the threats in the siblings' hard-drinking resource town were more human, dividing them from a natural reverence for the land, and eventually, from each other.
After years of working for human rights organizations, Trina returned to northern Alberta for a job as a fire tower lookout, while Brendan worked in the oil sands, vulnerable to a boom-and-bust economy and substance addiction. When she was assigned to a tower in a wildlife corridor, bears were alarmingly visible and plentiful, wandering metres away on the other side of an electrified fence surrounding the tower. Over four summers, Trina begins to move beyond fear and observe the extraordinary essence of the maligned black bear—a keystone species who is as subject to the environmental consequences of the oil economy as humans. At the same time, she searches for common ground with Brendan on the land that bonded them.
Impassioned and eloquent, Black Bear is a story of grief and a vision of peaceful coexistence in a divided world. It captures the fragility of our relationships with human and nonhuman species alike, and the imperative to protect the wild—along with the people we hold closest.
Excerpt
Black Bear
It was my fourth season working at a fire tower in northern Alberta and my patience with the bears was running out. From the cupola, I watched for them, as though they were tiny black ticks that I wanted to pick clean from the landscape. On the ground, my encounters with the habituated mother bear of yearling cubs were becoming increasingly tense. We were both visibly stressed by the presence of the other and on the defensive.
The rubber slugs were just a band-aid solution for a problem that wasn't going away. I'd become numb to the act of firing off a couple of shots into the bear's backside. I'd even sent a round of birdshot, a projectile made up of lead pellets, into the nearby bushes to try to scare the mother bear, but it quickly learned that neither the shots nor the slugs—even if they stung a little—were a real threat.
I knew that I was privileged to live immersed in a wilderness that few would ever get to know so intimately. But it made me feel ...
The book is full of fascinating information about bears as well as changes in government policies, shifts in relationships over time, and the march of history. Black Bear is so restrained and varied that I wouldn't define it only as a bereavement memoir. Its focus is wider; it's a clear-eyed nature book with a social conscience. Indeed, I most treasured Moyles's passion for the environment and explanations of how climate change will increase conflicts with wildlife. It's inspiring to see her determination to keep going despite personal and ecological setbacks. She also gives a beautiful picture of the potential for living peacefully alongside bears—and places value on trying to do the same with fellow humans, even when some hold ideologies that seem to make this relationship unsustainable...continued
Full Review
(963 words)
(Reviewed by Rebecca Foster).
David Litt, national bestselling author of It's Only Drowning
Black Bear isn't just a beautifully written memoir of nature and family. It calls on us to notice, to appreciate, to examine the world and our place in it. Trina Moyles tells her story in a way that will make you think differently about your own. Tove Danovich, author of Under the Henfluence
Moyles' heart-clenching memoir about siblinghood and bears shows us the value of embracing what scares us. Moyles' brilliantly balances the human and animal worlds in a way that will leave you loving each one a little more. I couldn't put this down.Many Indigenous people view themselves as stewards of the land and nature and, in North America, have special relationships with bears. Tribes such as the Chippewa, Creek, and Mi'kmaq have Bear clans, while others perform a traditional Bear Dance. The Haudenosaunee Bear Dance, performed as part of a midwinter ceremony, imitates a bear's movements and is intended to cure medical complaints. The Zuni also believe in bears' healing powers and wear carved bear talismans. Historically, Native leaders and warriors have worn bear claw necklaces as a symbol of strength.
As Trina Moyles learned while writing Black Bear, understanding bear hierarchies allows First Nations to live in communion rather than conflict with bears. For instance, ...
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