‘OUR SOCIETY LACKS CONSISTENTLY DEFINED ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE BLACK BEAR’: THE HISTORY OF BLACK BEAR HUNTING AND MANAGEMENT IN ONTARIO, 1912-1987 by MICHAEL COMMITO, B.A. (HONS), M.A. McMaster University DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (2015) Hamilton, Ontario (History) TITLE: ‘Our society lacks consistently defined attitudes towards the black bear’: The History of Black Bear Hunting and Management in Ontario, 1912-1987 AUTHOR: Michael Commito, B.A. (Hons) (Laurentian University), M.A. (Laurentian University) SUPERVISOR: Dr. Ken Cruikshank NUMBER OF PAGES: vii, 282 ii ABSTRACT What kind of animal was a black bear? Were black bears primarily pests, pets, furbearers or game animals? Farmers, conservationists, tourists, trappers, and hunters in early twentieth- century Ontario could not agree. Even as the century progressed, ideas about bears remained twisted and there was often very little consensus about what the animal represented. These varying perceptions complicated the efforts of the provincial Department of Game and Fisheries and its successor agencies, the Department of Lands and Forests and the Ministry of Natural Resources, to develop coherent bear management policies. Perceptions about black bears often conflicted and competed with one another and at no one time did they have a single meaning in Ontario. The image of Ontario’s black bears has been continuously negotiated as human values, attitudes, and policies have changed over time. As a result, because of various and often competing perspectives, the province’s bear management program, for most of the twentieth century, was very loose and haphazard because the animal had never been uniformly defined or valued. Examining the history of these ambiguous viewpoints towards the black bear in Ontario provides us with a snapshot of how culture intersects with our natural resources and may pose challenges for management. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost I would like to thank my doctoral committee. I am indebted to Dr. Ken Cruikshank for supervising this project, which began as a casual conversation in his office almost five years ago. He provided critical and constructive feedback on my work for years, and this thesis would not have been possible without him. I am grateful for his support throughout; he helped this northern Ontarian find a project to blend my passion for environmental history and my home. I also owe a great deal of gratitude to Dr. Nancy Bouchier and Dr. Karen Balcom for their support and feedback. They continually pushed me to think about my topic beyond just the bears and their perspectives were invaluable. Dr. Bouchier was also instrumental in helping me polish the final copy and greatly enhance its readability. A special thanks to my external examiner, Dr. George Colpitts. Your vast knowledge and insights have certainly strengthened the final copy of this thesis and will be invaluable in the future as I proceed to turn this into a book manuscript. I also truly appreciate the time and effort you took to travel to McMaster University in order to be a part of the defence in person. I would also like to thank the institutions that enabled me to conduct my research. I have received financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the School of Graduate Studies, and the L.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History at McMaster University. Archivists and librarians at the Archives of Ontario, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources Library, the Algonquin Park Archives, Exploration Place in Prince George, the Laurentian University Archives, and the National Archives in the United Kingdom were all very supportive and I owe them a great deal of thanks for their expertise and patience in facilitating my research. I also benefited immensely from exchanging ideas and sharing my work iv at a number of research presentation venues, including the Department of History at McMaster University, the Department of History at Laurentian University, and the American Society for Environmental History. I also owe a great deal of thanks to Wendy Benedetti and Debbie Lobban at McMaster University. While most of our communication occurred remotely, you both were always immensely helpful and went above and beyond to maintain my connection to Mac from afar. I could not have completed this project without the support and love from my friends and family. My parents, Tony and Patti Commito, provided me with emotional and financial support throughout this process, and without letting me continue to dwell in their basement for another three years I don’t know if I could have pulled this off. My sister, Kyleigh, has always been my biggest cheerleader and I’m thankful for her continued support. Chantal, you have been by my side when this project first began. You moved to Georgetown with me as my girlfriend so I could pursue my dreams of getting my PhD, you supported me in the middle of the project as my fiancé, and now, as my wife, you get to see the culmination of our efforts. You have probably heard about black bears more than you would care to and for that I am grateful. I love you. I would also like to thank Moe and Sue Longchamps for their support as well, and cheering me on down the final stretch. I carried out much of this project in Sudbury, Ontario. I could not have done that without the support and friendship of Dr. Mark Kuhlberg. Thanks for keeping me on task and your ongoing willingness to hear about my project and offer your insights. My friends in Sudbury, thank you for not letting me take myself too seriously and for always being willing to share a beer. Last but not least, thanks to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Your inability to make the playoffs v during the four of my five years at McMaster University undoubtedly allowed me to be more productive from April to June in each of those respective seasons. vi CONTENTS ABSTRACT iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: Walking Contradictions: Managing Ontario’s Black Bears, 1914-1941 34 CHAPTER 2: ‘The black bear is the most destructive animal’: The Bounty Years, 1941-1960 78 CHAPTER 3: ‘Unbearable Bonnets Bad for Bears’: Spring Bear Hunting for the Queen, 1959-1960 121 CHAPTER 4: ‘The bear is a game animal’: Changing Attitudes and Big- Game Status, 1961-1970 162 CHAPTER 5: ‘Ontario’s world-famous black bear deserves nothing than the most modern management’: The System Progresses, 1971-1989 205 CONCLUSION 255 BIBLIOGRAPHY 267 vii PhD Thesis – M. Commito; McMaster University – History Introduction Lou had an unexpected encounter with the wild. When the Toronto-based archivist travelled to a northern Ontario cottage to catalogue donated material, she found herself charged with caring for an unlikely pet, a black bear that had lived on the property for years. Over a short period of time, fear of the wilderness creature gave way to love, and Lou soon found herself involved in a complicated, and even carnal, relationship with the bear. Elsewhere in northern Ontario, five-year old Anna witnessed a vicious assault by a black bear on her family’s campsite. The family had done nothing to provoke the attack, yet Anna and her younger brother found themselves orphaned, fending for themselves in the Canadian wilderness. Both of these stories are products of human imagination. Marian Engel prompted some controversy with her portrayal of sexual relations between Lou and a black bear in her 1976 novel, Bear. Claire Cameron’s account of an attack in her 2014 novel, The Bear, was inspired by an actual bear encounter that circulated as a story through Algonquin Park when she was an outward bound guide in the 1990s. She imagined the experience of that attack for her readers in graphic and unsettling detail. For each novelist, the black bear is less a real creature than an opportunity to explore in fiction the complicated human connection to wildlife. In doing so, each novelist seeks to draw on images of the black bear that will resonate with readers. Engel’s bear is wild and unpredictable yet almost human, Cameron’s bear is wild and unpredictable, with lethal consequences. 1 PhD Thesis – M. Commito; McMaster University – History In drawing on popular images of the black bear, Engel and Cameron give their fictional explorations of the human condition great power. Our images of bears have other consequences. By exploring the human management and regulation of black bears in Ontario, we can better understand how the stories and attitudes we have about non- human nature can have real consequences for management. Bears provide an intriguing point of entry for such an exploration for the very reasons that Engel and Cameron understood – we have often seen bears as both wild and dangerous, and yet somehow closer to humans than other wilderness creatures. Historian Jon T. Coleman points out that bears’ eyes face forward, allowing humans and bears to look at one another eye to eye. Like humans, bears can stand up and be mobile on two legs, and they are omnivores, capable of ingesting almost anything. Perhaps most creepily, Coleman discusses how “hunters marvelled at the eerie resemblance between a small skinned bear and a dead human.”1 As a result, humans have had a complicated relationship with their wild counterpart. As German author Bernd Brunner has written, our forebears simultaneously “venerated, killed, caressed, tortured, nurtured, ate, respected, and despised” bears.2 How these complicated and often contradictory attitudes shaped decisions about the management and regulation of relations between humans and bears in one particular jurisdiction – the Canadian province of Ontario, home to the third largest population of bears in North America -- forms the subject of this dissertation. Bears are Not Human 1 Jon T.