The Kermode bear is a black bear with a genetic mutation that makes its coat white. Tourists spot ‘spirit bear’ in Sooke park First local sighting of white Kermode
SANDRA McCULLOCH
Times Colonist [email protected]
A Saskatchewan couple on holiday came face to face with what they say was a white “spirit bear” in East Sooke Park last week.
“I was mesmerized by its beauty,” said Barb Farthing yesterday in a telephone interview from her home in Saskatoon. She and her husband Fred are absolutely certain what they saw was a bear. If so, this would be the first local sighting of a black bear with the genetic mutation that makes its coat white, similar to those found on Princess Royal Island on the central B.C. coast. They’re known as kermode or spirit bears.
The couple were on a holiday to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary and attend a nephew’s wedding when, on May 13, they decided to hike the coast trail in East Sooke Park.
“We went down to Beechey Head and the petroglyphs and we were actually on our way back,” said Farthing. It was between 5 and 5:30 p.m. when they saw a flash of white ahead of them on the trail. “I thought it was people coming along,” Farthing said. “Then my husband said, ‘Holy cow! It’s a bear!’
“Sure enough, I saw this big, cream-coloured bear. It turned around to look at us and started to come toward us. We were something like 50 feet away.”
The sight of a white bear, with dark eyes and nose, had the couple momentarily frozen in their tracks, said Farthing.
“We were just mesmerized because it was so beautiful. I never knew that, besides polar bears, there was such a thing as a white bear.” They scrambled down the cliff to the beach and walked along the rocky shore for half an hour, then climbed back up to the trail farther on. They got back to their car at 6:30 p.m.
The next day, Fred was in a car with another man when they spotted a black bear at the roadside, and he is convinced the white bear he and Barb had seen was much bigger.
“My husband had told a couple of colleagues at work and one of them was a hunter, and he said ‘Wow, I think that’s really rare. I think you should let somebody know you saw it,’” Farthing said. So the couple sent an e-mail this week to the Sooke tourist centre, part of the Sooke Region Museum.
Elida Peers, the museum’s executive director and a lifelong Sooke resident, admits people will be skeptical about the claim, but said she’s “inclined to go with this,” noting “it doesn’t sound like it’s a mistake.”
The Farthings are excited with the discovery of the white bear but Barb said they have one regret: “Darn it, we didn’t take a picture!”
Jeff Ward of Capital Regional Parks said he has not had any other sightings reported to his office of a white bear in the park.
“I’m sure that would have been hot news here,” he said yesterday.
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