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Canadian Geographic Magazine

Into the Lair of the White Bear
by Deborah Campbell

“Though I grew up next to the second- and third-growth woodlands of southern British Columbia, I was unaware that there are still places like this, where hundreds of dolphins race our ship over the course of half an hour one morning, leaping and diving like synchronized swimmers. It occurs to me that I have become an urbanite, as transformed in my vision of the world as the world itself has been transformed by my culture’s vision for it.

We are about as far off the grid as is possible in the modern world. Our bathing takes place at natural hot springs, our only communication is with the creatures we encounter, and every attempt is made to minimize our impact on a place threatened from all sides by the reality from which we’ve come: logging, mining, big-game sport hunting, salmon farming and mounting pressure to permit oil and gas exploration, as well as rising tanker traffic as the North melts….”