“I knew about bears in this abstract theoretical way, but I didn’t really know what it meant to live closely with them.”
What happens when a mother black bear refuses to leave the hillside beneath your fire tower?
For bestselling author Trina Moyles, the answer became the heart of Black Bear: A Story of Siblinghood and Survival. While working at a fire tower in northern Alberta, Moyles found herself living in a black bear corridor, where a resident mother and her cubs returned to the nearby slope. She tried noise, rubber bullets and even a helicopter to drive them away, but nothing worked. Eventually, she began to question what she thought she knew about bears.
Moyles joins Explore host David McGuffin to discuss how she learned to share the landscape with the bears and what years of observing them revealed about their behaviour. They explore the challenges of living alongside black bears as towns and cities expand into their habitats, as well as the practical choices that can help prevent conflict.
Black Bear also tells the story of Moyles’s relationship with her late brother, Brendan, who chose a life working in Alberta’s oil fields. She reflects on the distance that grew between them, their efforts to reconnect, and why writing about him became inseparable from writing about the bears.
Black Bear is a2026 finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.
Trina Moyles is a bestselling author, environmental journalist and afrequent contributor to Canadian Geographic magazine. Her first memoir, Lookout, won a National Outdoor Book Award and the inaugural Memoir Award at the Alberta Literary Awards. In 2022, she received the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award. She lives in a cosy Yurt outside Whitehorse.
Explore: A Canadian Geographic Podcast is hosted by David McGuffin and produced by David McGuffin and Graham McGuffin ofExploreProductions.ca in partnership with Canadian Geographic.
Canadian Geographic
- Editor-in-chief: Alexandra Pope
- Digital and travel editor: Madigan Cotterill
- Digital marketing manager: Caroline Workman
For more stories of adventure, science, history and exploration, visitcanadiangeographic.ca
Read more from Trina Moyles;
