Zane Fanning
© Copyright 2025 by Zane Fanning
Photo coutesy of Wikimedia Commons.
| Bears
And Rumours Of Bears Zane Fanning © Copyright 2025 by Zane Fanning |
Photo coutesy of Wikimedia Commons. |
Environmental concerns were little more than an afterthought in the early 1960s, and garbage was simply burned, buried, tossed over a hill, or thrown from a car window. In rural society, if a designated dump wasn’t conveniently close, new ones were cultivated like garden plots. Typically, these junkyard nurseries sprang up in old gravel pits or in hollows along neglected roads. All it took was a discarded fridge, a car body, and a few empty cans to get one started. Before long, others added to the mix, and an unofficial landfill would soon blossom. Broken glass, dead batteries, nail-infested wood, and expired medications were accepted without question. Civil and Human Rights were still on the drawing board, but when it came to garbage, there was no discrimination.
For reasons I still don’t understand, the Town of Newcastle chose prime riverfront property to establish its municipal dump. Some said it was because the high tides would carry away anything that floated; others thought the smoke from burning trash and tires masked the sulphurous fumes from the nearby pulp mill. Whatever the reasons, the caretakers made a practice of keeping half the site perpetually on fire—like Vestal Virgins with bulldozers. What didn’t burn or drift away was buried. “Out of sight, out of mind,” was the thinking of the day. Rats—enough for a medieval plague—grew fat on the cooler side.
Another prominent landfill was in Williamstown, a rural area about eighteen miles from Newcastle. This dump likely began as a seedling. The story goes that an old pickup truck, on its way to the town dump with a load of trash, broke down along the Williamstown Road. They pushed it off to the side to get it out of the way and emptied the box to make it easier to jack it up. Somewhere in the middle of it all, the pickup’s owner suffered a heart attack, and the truck sat abandoned for a month. Passersby began adding their garbage to the pile, and the rest is history.
Gradually, the site expanded into a fifteen-acre eyesore. At some point the dump was given official status and a custodian assigned to its care. The founder of the facility—now recovered from his heart attack—was given the job and he took his duties seriously. He was certainly not an environmental specialist by today’s standards, but he was more forward thinking than the majority of his contemporaries. His name was Clem, as I recall, and he was known, unofficially, as the Lord of the Landfill.
The site boasted the usual variety of trash—doorless fridges, car bodies, food scraps, rusted bedframes, old plumbing fixtures, and just about everything imaginable—but none of it was to be burned or buried.
Clem didn’t like smoke and feared a fire could spread to the forest. He believed the wildlife would consume all the edibles, while rust, rot, pickers, and scrap collectors would take care of the rest. Unlike the facility in Newcastle, the Williamstown dump had no view of the beautiful Miramichi River, historic Beaubears Island, or the charming little town—but there was no conflagration, and it possessed a peaceful serenity of its own. The only problem was that out here in this sparsely populated hinterland, the bears outnumbered the humans—and possibly the rats.
It became a popular spot for bear-watching. From the relative safety of their cars, people could observe these powerful animals as they competed for scraps and territorial rights. It was like going to a scary movie at the drive-in on free-night. If you couldn’t afford to take your date to the theatre—or abstained for religious reasons—the dump was the next best bet for entertainment—or a passionate pit stop.
If your trip to the dump was of a more pedestrian nature—just dropping off garbage—it was always wise to look around before stepping out of your vehicle. Bears were ever ready to assist with the unloading, even if you preferred to do it yourself. They were like the bellhops at a hotel that had seen better days. The smart strategy was to tip them in advance, tossing the bags with food scraps as far as possible. It bought precious time to unload the heavy stuff.
The dump was home to an uncommonly large black bear named Brutus. He may not have reached the eight hundred pounds that some claimed, but he was twice as big as the next in line and at least the size of a medium grizzly. Clem may have been Lord of the Landfill, but Brutus was Duke of the Dump—and the designated bully. What members of his own kind may have thought of him is best not mentioned here.
When a fresh load of garbage arrived, he stayed in the background until the table was set and the truck had rolled away. Then he forced his way to the head of the line and took inventory. After consuming all the choice bits, the lesser bears got their share under his watchful, sometimes-tolerant eye. He ruled by decree and absolute authority. Occasionally, there were foolhardy, half-hearted challenges to the pecking order, but serious conflicts were rare.
Confrontations between bears and humans are uncommon, but it is worth noting that when these animals become familiar with people—and habituated to human garbage—they can be far more dangerous than truly wild ones.
In the early part of the twentieth century, my maternal grandfather worked as a cook in a lumber camp. What follows is a story I overheard as a child:
Soon after the camp was built, a small garbage dump began to grow in a clearing behind the cookhouse. It wasn’t long before bears took notice. At first, their visits were only at night, but gradually their fear faded and they began coming during the day. After each meal, my grandfather—a polio survivor—would take up his crutch and hobble down to the growing scrapheap to empty the bucket of leftovers, the furry freeloaders waiting impatiently behind the trees. “I always led with my gimpy leg,” he would joke, “so the bears could see there wasn’t much meat on me.”
Then the story took a dark turn:
“One evening after supper,” he continued, “while the men were pitching horseshoes, a solitary bear wandered into the dump. One of the men picked up a scrap of meat, got close to the beast, and held it out to see if it would take it. When the bear reached for the offering, the man pulled it away. He did this several times, trying to get the animal to stand up on its hind legs. The lumberman was wearing a big grin when he turned to see if his friends were watching, but the frustrated bear failed to see the humour. A haymaker from a huge right paw disemboweled the poor man. It was a gruesome end to an otherwise lovely day.”
There
had been no human-versus-bear encounters at Williamstown, so far as I
know, but the potential was always there. It was said that a large
male had wintered
under the deck of a house a mile down the road.
The family that lived there didn’t seem overly concerned,
though they found the animal’s snoring unnerving at times.
Their children mostly played in the front yard—both
to avoid disturbing their guest and to give themselves more time to
run inside if the bear unexpectedly left its den.
On a Sunday in August, I walked the quarter-mile to my friend’s house on Sweeney Lane. Kyle, expecting me, was waiting on the front step. As I entered the driveway, his parents were just returning from their Sunday drive. His father, Albert, had a sly grin on his face when he got out of the car. Dorothy, his mother, and Silver, the family collie, seemed agitated. I was curious, because it was usually the other way around. Clearly, something significant had happened while they were out.
Inside, Kyle and I joined his father in the living room while his mother went to the kitchen to make tea. Apparently, the story would have to wait until the calming brew had steeped and everyone was seated at the table.
A little background:
Minnie, Albert’s older sister, lived in the old homestead sixteen miles from town. She was in her mid-to-late fifties, and her boyfriend, Arlington—called Arlie—was in his late sixties. Earlier that year, Minnie had decided she would learn to drive, and Arlie volunteered to teach her. He even offered to sacrifice his car for the project, but Minnie insisted on having one of her own.
“I want something used,” she insisted, “so I won’t feel bad if I put some dents in it.” After two weeks of combing the lots, she settled on a four-door, low-mileage, mid-sized sedan. It was perfect in every respect—except for the drivetrain. It had a column-mounted manual transmission with a clutch—the nemesis of all beginners—and a V8 engine. A six-cylinder automatic would have been a much better choice, but she liked the colour.
Every evening, weather permitting, Arlie took her to the hayfields behind the house, where the only hazards—for the vehicle, at least—were gopher holes, soft marshy areas, and long-lost pieces of farm equipment hidden in the tall grass. It was a good place to learn the mechanics of driving without the distraction of traffic. For several weeks she practiced shifting gears and maneuvering around fence posts, bales of hay, and garden patches, until the entire back forty looked like the Nazca Lines of Peru. Progress was slow, and after a month she was still not ready to venture out on the road.
“She’s getting pretty good at steering,” Arlie confided, “but she’s still struggling with the clutch and the gas pedal. I may need a neck brace before we’re done.” Minnie worried that she might be too old to learn new tricks, but her faithful friend’s constant encouragement kept her going.
Now back to the present:
On this particular day, Kyle’s parents had travelled to Upper Derby after church to visit Minnie and Arlie. After a quick lunch, it was decided to skip the usual driving lessons so the four of them could go for a Sunday excursion. They would take Minnie’s car so it could feel what pavement was like and blow off some hayseeds. Arlie would drive, and Minnie, naturally, sat next to him. Dorothy and Albert sat in the back with Silver between them.
For the first half-hour, they made the usual tour of neighbouring villages. Finding everything in order, they decided to make their way to the Williamstown dump for some bear-watching. It was shortly after 2:00 p.m. when they arrived and already the best viewing spots were taken. People were parked in cozy cars, doors locked and windows mostly up. All shared a common goal: to see and be seen—but not eaten.
Arlie navigated further into the dump, where he found a newly dug pit with no other cars around. He parked a hundred feet back from the edge of the hole, turned off the engine, and everyone rolled down their windows. Deep in the pit, the bears could be heard but not seen. Judging by the grunts, growls, and snorts—along with the cacophony of rattling cans and tearing bags—the pit was at full capacity.
Albert and Arlie decided to have a look while their partners remained in the car with the dog. When the men reached the rim of the crater and looked down, they counted a half-dozen bears ravenously rummaging through the rubbish.
Watching these creatures browsing through trash can be mesmerizing—it’s easy to let your guard down. The bears, no doubt, were aware of their presence but paid them little heed.
“How long would it take a bear to climb up that bank?” Kyle interrupted. “And isn’t a hundred feet a little far from the car?”
“Arlie’s a lot slower than me,” he laughed, “so I wasn’t too worried.”
While the bears meandered through their mouldering buffet, putting on pounds for the coming winter, the two men stood in silence, staring down from the edge. The women, relaxed in the comfort of the car—content to watch men watching bears. All was peaceful and serene, until about 3:00pm.
It was about that time that Brutus, Duke of the Dump, awoke from his midday nap and headed for the dinner table—time to remind everyone who was in charge. Neither the snap of a twig nor the grumble of an empty belly, hinted at his approach as he padded silently toward the unsuspecting sedan. When he settled beside the left rear door, the humans remained blissfully unaware. Only when his gigantic forearm made an exploratory probe into the rear of the cabin did anyone get an inkling of its presence.
Dorothy, leaning against the left rear pillar, was the first to notice the immense, hairy limb as it brushed past her cheek. She froze in place when she realized what it was. Silver, however, saw no reason to hesitate. She leapt in front of her mistress and latched on to the massive paw with unrestrained ferocity. Dorothy, caught in the middle, found herself in a delicate predicament. She instinctively leaned back to protect her face, but when the bear tried to withdraw its arm, she realized the dog was still attached. She wrapped her arms around Silver’s torso and pulled frantically in the opposite direction.
By now, of course, Minnie was in a panic. Her screams, mingled with the growling of the bear and Silver’s savage snarling, finally caught the men’s attention. Fortunately, the dog released its grip. After a few seconds of fisticuffs, the bear lost interest and continued toward the awaiting smorgasbord. With Brutus now between them and the car, the men weren’t sure what to do.
“That’s when something truly terrifying happened!” Albert exclaimed. “Minnie decided she would come to our rescue. She slid over behind the wheel, started the engine, and popped the clutch. The car pitched forward—convulsively—several times, nearly running into Brutus, then miraculously stalled just short of plunging into the pit. With the sudden stop, her chest jammed against the horn rim. Well, you can imagine—with all that racket, bears were flying in every direction. One of them came up over the brim in such a panic it nearly knocked me down!”
“All’s well that ends well,” said Dorothy, “but that’s enough bear-watching for me this summer. After all that excitement, we went for ice cream. Anyone up for Auction 45s?”
Tea and cake were served, and the usual teams were formed—Dorothy and me against Kyle and his father—cards were dealt, and the game was on. Winning the rubber only heightened Albert’s simmering good mood. He casually turned to his son and said, “If you boys promise not to get up to anything too rambunctious, I suppose you can take the car tonight.”
Such an offer was as rare here as it was at my place, and Kyle needed a moment to compose himself. He had planned on taking his girlfriend to a movie that evening, but this unexpected development expanded our horizons. He excused himself and went to his room to call Roxanne. A few minutes later, he beckoned me to join him. He put his hand over the receiver and said, “She’s already seen Dr Strangelove, so all of us are going to the dump. I told her what happened, and she wants to see Brutus up close.”
“What do you mean by, all of us?”
“Roxanne’s cousin Sally is visiting from Toronto. Sally’s never seen a bear outside a zoo, and she’s pretty excited. Roxanne can’t very well abandon her, and I trust you won’t abandon me.”
We arrived in Williamstown just after sundown. In the dying light, the scattered pits put me in mind of a moonscape. The usual crowd was already there. Some of the older folks had brought their children—decoys or offerings, I imagined—while the younger crowd sipped beer surreptitiously and tried to make out.
Kyle parked on a quiet lane and turned off the lights. As darkness deepened, our voices dropped to a whisper, and we waited for the curtain to rise on the evening performance.
It wasn’t long before I noticed silhouettes and shadows moving past the car. Act Ⅰ, as it turned out, was a mother and her three cubs. I pointed to the left, and everyone squeezed up against the windows for a better look. Before long, the place was thick with bears, and a few of these animals were curious enough to leave nose prints on the glass. I thought it was a good time to share a story:
“Last year, one of my friends borrowed his father’s car, and he and his girlfriend went parking up near McGraw Brook. They had takeout and then went for a stroll along the river. When they got back, the car was a wreck and what was left of their fish & chips was gone.”
“He should have locked the door,” said Kyle.
“He did. The bear opened the door from the hinged side.”
It grew quiet, suddenly, and then Sally moved close enough to deliver a gentle elbow to my ribcage. She stayed close.
Only their outlines were visible, but we counted more than a dozen bears rummaging through the day’s deposits. We snuggled closer, peered into the darkness, and tried to become one with nature, like the creatures around us. The longer we sat and stared, the more relaxed we became. Few among the spectators realized that a thin veneer of automotive metal offered paltry protection against determined teeth and claws. It was like exposure therapy for sufferers of zoophobia.
Sally was leaning comfortably against my right shoulder when she abruptly clutched me like a long-lost friend. She pointed at the window. “What the hell is that?” I turned to look. For a blind date, she had excellent eyesight. Even in the pitch-black night, there could be no mistake. Barely a foot from us stood Brutus. His back was in line with the Comet’s roof, and his body was half the length of the car. He moved past us, like a great ship sliding along a pier, and I could hear the coarse hairs brushing along the side of the car. A minute later he stood broadside—ten feet in front of us—his prodigious profile, outlined against the starry sky. Ursa Major seemed benevolent to our presence—until Kyle foolishly turned on the lights and blasted the horn.
The enormous animal exploded sideways with surprising agility but paid little attention to where he was going. He narrowly missed the couple cuddled in a tiny Ford Anglia, but his shoulder collided with a big Chevy just beyond. The impact caved in the door as if it had been struck by a semi, and the car flipped onto its roof. Like a vaulting gymnast, the bear leapt over the tumbling vehicle and quickly disappeared into the ether.
Kyle started the car and flipped on the brights so we could look for survivors. To our great relief, it was just an empty car body. But the loud bang and the bellowing bear turned the dump into a scene of chaos. Spectators were starting their engines and aiming their headlights, anxious for a view of the carnage. Kyle carefully urged the Comet forward through the scattering scavengers. At the top of a rise, we found Brutus squinting into our high beams, standing knee-deep in a bog. His sides heaved from the exertion, and clouds of vapour vented from his nostrils. The poor old boy had already had two close encounters with the same family in one day.
He seemed no worse for wear, and now we had our own story to tell.