Never Cry Wolf, author Farley Mowat鈥檚 romantic account of his experiences with wolves in Canada鈥檚 Far North, changed public perception of a creature that has terrified humans for millennia. The book, published in 1963, earned him fans across the country, but probably not too many in the Lakes District.
Most people who grew up here viewed wolves in a vastly different light than Mowat because their relationship with the predator was less than amicable. Ranchers lost livestock to the beasts, and several homesteaders had 鈥榰nsettling experiences.鈥�
There were, say old timers, few if any wolves in this country when the first Euro-Canadians arrived here shortly after the turn of the 19th Century. All that changed around 1917, though.
Florence Hinton, who taught at the tiny Streatham School, is credited with the first wolf sighting, and it was a memorable one.
According to Arthur Shelford, the log cabin that served as a school also included Hinton鈥檚 living quarters. 鈥淥ne evening, the school mistress looked out the little cabin window to see a huge black wolf gazing back at her at real close range,鈥� Arthur wrote in his book We Pioneered. 鈥淚鈥檒l bet that Florence Hinton鈥檚 thoughts flew back to the tale of Little Red Riding Hood.鈥�
By 1923, wolves were everywhere. Local ranchers, gathered at the home of one of the Shelfords for a stockmen鈥檚 meeting, watched as six or seven of the animals trotted single file along the far edge of the meadow. Cattle started disappearing shortly thereafter.
It was around this time that Arthur鈥檚 brother Jack, another Wistaria resident, had his own 鈥榗lose encounter鈥� with a wolf.
One Sunday, according to Arthur, Jack decided to take his wife Safie, the couple鈥檚 children, and their collie dog named Paddy to visit the Blackwells. On the way back, a large timber wolf appeared and started following the wagon.
It didn鈥檛 take long for Jack to figure out that the drawing card was Paddy. The dog, sensing danger, had enough sense to stay under the wagon, but the wolf was determined.
鈥淭he wolf tried his best and came right up close to the wagon, so much so that Jack got scared for the safety of his small children,鈥� wrote Arthur. 鈥淕iving the reins to Safie, he sat at the back of the wagon with the only weapon he had, an open jack knife.鈥�
By the time Jack reached Arthur鈥檚 homestead and found a gun, the wolf had vanished.
The most publicized encounter between a local man and wolves occurred in 1932. In May of that year, Tommy McKinley of Ootsa Lake, who had spent the winter trapping in the Big Eutsuk country, returned to civilization with a tale that made the front page of several newspapers.
The previous January, McKinley was pulling a sledge across frozen Pondosy Bay when he saw what he thought were fifteen caribou walking on the ice. Short of meat at the time, he unpacked his rifle and started toward them.
After traveling a short distance, he realized he was mistaken. The animals on the ice were not caribou, but wolves.
Normally, wolves shun humans. These ones, though, did not. Led by a huge black beast, they veered toward McKinley and broke into a run.
When the wolves showed no sign of stopping, the lone trapper shouldered his rifle and opened fire. He killed one wolf, then another, but the rest kept coming. It wasn鈥檛 until he dropped the alpha male at a distance of less than thirty yards that the pack retreated into the bush.
Low on ammunition and with darkness approaching, McKinley dragged the body of the lead wolf back to his cabin. When he finished skinning it out, the beast measured seven feet six inches from nose to tail.
The following morning, McKinley, eager to recover the other two dead wolves, went back to the scene of the attack 鈥� only to find that during the night, the pack had returned and eaten both carcasses.
The animals were starving, which suggested to McKinley that they had killed all the big game in the area.
McKinley鈥檚 battle was just one of many. In another documented incident, Pete Johnson, a steam shovel operator, was traveling along the Canadian National Railway line near Prince Rupert in a speeder when three wolves emerged from the forest and started chasing him. He survived by barricading himself in his steam shovel.
鈥淭he wolves leaped after him repeatedly,鈥� stated the Interior 亚洲天堂. 鈥淭he marks made by their claws can be easily seen.鈥�
The wolves, said Johnson, didn鈥檛 depart until he trained the steam shovel鈥檚 hot water squirt on them.
For these and other reasons, a state of war existed between wolves and humans in British Columbia for much of the 20th Century. Around 1909, the provincial government deemed the wolf a 鈥渘oxious animal鈥� and began paying bounties as high as forty dollars for each carcass. These financial incentives encouraged people to hunt wolves and resulted in the destruction of more than 25,000 of them, including pups, over a forty-six year period.
But killing wolves by traditional means was difficult and time consuming; the animals were clever and quickly learned to avoid detection. In 1950, the provincial government gave bounty hunters permission to use cyanide and other poisons against predators, and the struggle for top spot in the food chain continued.
Yet as trappers like Alford Harrison discovered, even this method of killing wolves from a distance could be hazardous.
One winter in the early 1950s, Harrison walked into Fulton Lake and set some poisoned moose meat on the ice. The following morning, he heard wolves howling and saw seven of them circling his bait. He watched for a while, and when the wolves left, walked out to where he had placed the meat.
None of it had been touched.
He was examining the tracks in the snow and pondering the matter when a sixth sense told him something was amiss.
鈥淚 looked up and here were these seven wolves coming after me, right all abreast, coming straight forward, just like a bunch of horses running neck and neck,鈥� he recalled years later. 鈥淲ell, I didn鈥檛 know what to do. It didn鈥檛 take me long to make up my mind, though, and I just (headed for) the shore as hard as I could. I had about a hundred yards to go, I guess, and it was good on the lake, but when I got on the beach, the snow was about this (thigh or waist) deep, and the crust would break right through, so I went on my hands and knees. It could hold me that way, and I went up the first tree I got to.鈥�
Harrison breathed a sign of relief as the wolves ran past his perch, but it was premature. They came back, picked up his scent, and followed it to the tree.
鈥淭hey just lay down there waiting for me to come down the tree,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 cursed them and hollered at them, and I guess they stayed around there for about twenty minutes. They finally wandered off across the lake again.鈥�
Harrison waited a decent length of time before climbing down from the tree and going back to the cabin. In the days that followed, he didn鈥檛 go anywhere without at least an axe.
The provincial government ended the wolf bounty program in 1955, and today, predator populations are again on the rise here. Livestock kills are common, and fish and wildlife officials say wolves outnumber caribou in Tweedsmuir Provincial Park by a wide margin.
Who is 鈥榗rying wolf鈥� now?
漏 2021 Michael Riis-Christianson and the Lakes District Museum Society
