Clair Cameron's Memoir How to Survive a Bear Attack Receives the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction

Jason:  Hi Claire. Let's start with some nostalgia. Share with us one of your favourite moments during your years at Northern.

Claire:  Early one morning, I remember walking through the hallway of Northern. There was a student-run station playing over the PA, art hanging along the walls, and people rehearsing for the fashion show. My locker was in what we called Gasoline Alley where auto mechanics was taught. I looked through the door to the shop and saw sparks flying because someone was welding. That’s what I loved about Northern, it had something for everyone. 

Jason:  Talk to us about your experiences at NSS. How did you choose to join Student Council? Are there any inspirational students and/or teachers & staff who stood out?

Claire:  Mr. Harold Lass was my English teacher in grade nine. I already loved books when I came to Northern, but he helped me understand how to read a novel. I gained an enduring love of Kurt Vonnegut from him and we are still in touch. Every time I publish a book, he reads it and sends me an incredibly thoughtful note. If it weren’t for him, I’m not sure if I’d be a writer. 

J:  Your new book How to Survive a Bear Attach is your first memoir. Please share with us how this writing experience differs from your other successful novels? 

C:  Yes, With fiction, it’s just me and my computer. With non-fiction, a memoir, it’s different because writing it comes with a responsibility to a community. I had to adhere to the facts, but also, I was conscious that I was representing the people I wrote about -- all who were involved in some way in a bear attack in 1991 when two people were killed in Algonquin Park. The family of the victims, the rescue party, first responders, scientists, and bear biologists, I wanted to represent their experiences and opinions as best I could.

I also wanted to write a clear-eyed representation of the bear. His actions changed everything that happened that night. It is extraordinarily unusual for a black bear to kill two people. I wanted to try and help the reader understand why he made that choice. 

J:  As a memoir dictates, personal revelations cast the author into a place of vulnerability. You are welcoming the reader into your personal emotions and experiences – almost as an eavesdropper to the person most don’t really know. In Chapter 13, you bring the reader through personal moments between you and your husband, Dave, where he says: "I always assumed we’d grow old together." Were there moments, when writing this memoir, where you found limits to your own vulnerability, unsure of how to bring the reader along with you?

C:  I wrote the personal parts of the book last. The story turned into a memoir because it was my personal experience that drove my obsession with this bear attack. In order for the reader to understand my motivation, I had to show some private moments. When it serves the story and I have the consent of the people involved, I don’t mind getting personal.

Everyone has to go through hard things in life. One thing we all have in common is that we have to figure how to get through them. Writing this book was about taking my hard time and trying to make it into something bigger. I hope it can offer something to others who find themselves in similar situations. 

J:  At the end of Chapter 23, you have a conversation with your two sons, Ben and Max, when you speak about your Cancer for the first time. You frame your diagnosis and the fear that the gene could have a 50% transmission rate to them. You write: "I’d been so caught up in dying that I’d forgotten something more important. I need to focus on being alive." Is this a realization that every person who fights for survival, cancer or not, must come to .... in order to sustain their own life? 

C:  Our day-to-day life matters. Realizing this can be part of having a disease, illness, or it comes with growing older. Goals, dreams, and future aspirations are important, but what about today? This afternoon, the next hour, or even the next minute, what do you want to do with it? I didn’t ask for cancer, but surviving it has been clarifying. It helped me realize the importance of choices I make every day. They might seem ordinary, but the truth is they are much more – they are a life. 

J:  The victims of the 1991 Black Bear attack in Algonquin Park – 32-year-old Raymond Jakubauskas and 48-year-old Carola Freh – are the focus of your memoir as it relates to your "obsession" with this and other bear incidents. You combine police evidence, biological evidence, and pathology evidence to create the account of the attach. Do you ever wonder how their story would have continued had this horrific, life-ending event not happened? Would they have grown old together? Would they even know to fear a Black Bear or be prepared in the future had this not happened? 

C:  That’s a great question. Generally speaking, my imagination is overactive. Part of the reason I wrote this book was to try to tame my mind with facts. However, this is one area where I haven’t tried to imagine forward. When a traumatic accident happens, there can be a tendency to look into the victims lives for clues about why it happened. This is a natural way to try and insolate ourselves — if they made a mistake, all I have to do is not repeat that mistake, and I’ll stay safe.

From the start, I believed these two people did nothing to bring this attack on themselves. The couple died: I took this fact as a starting point. And I guess that also limited my willingness to imagine them beyond this incident. I asked their friends and family to contribute to the book. This was a way of allowing them to fill in the story, rather than me. 

J:  As I read your memoir, thinking of our friendship at Northern and our time together on Student Council, I was in awe of your experiences and time with Outward Bound. My 17-year-old NSS student-self went on a 3-week journey of discovery in Northern Ontario with Outward Bound. It literally changed the focus and intentions of my life. It made me who I am today, in just three weeks. How did being an instructor in Oregon for Outward Bound impact you then and do you take away any lessons today (in addition to the good fortune of meeting your husband-to-be)?

C:  I completely agree about being in the wilderness. It is life changing to go out there. Especially now, getting away from a phone, the constant contact of daily life, allowing yourself to become a little lost – it’s a luxury. For me, when I was young, it was my outdoor life that helped me recover from the death of my father.

It’s still a place where I find meaning. What’s changed is how I define the wilderness. Now, I see it everywhere. It’s in a ray of sun that comes through the window, in the alley behind my house, and in Lake Ontario where I go running most days. I no longer need to go north to find the wilderness, it’s in Toronto. It’s everywhere. 

J:  From page 206-207 of your memoir, you describe how being in a canoe has "defined my life." 

"We were quiet as we paddled. We left any noise of the store and the dock behind. I watched the blade of my paddle slice through the water, as I have so many times. It’s hypnotic. The water showed the impression of the tiny adjustments to my stroke, the deep curl that comes after a bend of my left hand. The pooling twist of the blade was further guided by my right palm on the top of the paddle. Being in a canoe is such a large part of my existence. It’s been so much more than a way to travel; it’s the way I’ve met some of my best friends, claimed my strength, and defined my life."

When you read this back to yourself, what would a young Claire Cameron say to you today, on May 17, 1983, the day your dad passed? 

C:  I would say that life involves making it through hard things, but you will find ways through. Surround yourself with people you love and prepare to be amazed by what you can do.

J:  When is the last time you walked the hallowed halls of Northern?

C:  My son was considering going to Northern! He loved it for so many reasons, but ended up choosing a high school that is closer to where we live in the west end of Toronto. 

J:  What advice would offer to NSS students AND/OR alumni who want to pursue a career in publishing or as a hobby?

C:  It sounds simple, but if you want to be a writer, the best thing to do is spend time writing. Setting aside time every day, or every week, is so important. You don’t have to write for hours. Sometimes, I only write for an hour, or I’ll set a short word target, like 500 words. You can only get better at thinking and writing by doing it.

Beyond that, to work in publishing, or have your work published, it’s important to connect with people who enjoy reading the same things. This can be through courses, online, or at a local library. Writing is a solitary effort, whereas publishing is about finding a community. 

Clair Cameron's most recent novel, The Last Neanderthal, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the 2017 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Her second novel, The Bear, was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and was a #1 national bestseller. It won the Northern Lit Award from the Ontario Library Service, which her first novel, The Line Painter, also won.

Claire has led canoe trips in Algonquin Park and worked as an instructor for Outward Bound, teaching mountaineering, climbing, and whitewater rafting in Oregon and beyond. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Guardian, and she is a monthly contributor to The Globe and Mail. She lives in Toronto.