Woman Killed By Quebec Animal
Posted by: Loren Coleman on June 2nd, 2008
The apparent mystery animal attacks continue. Or, at least, that’s the way early media reports would have you thinking. In this case, the offending animal remains at large, and thus far, the cause of the death is only based on a nearby sighting of a bear. Something seems a little off about this in the land of the Windigo.
The Globe and Mail, late on June 1, 2008, reported that a “Bear kills woman in Quebec”, thusly:
Quebec conservation officers are on the hunt for a bear that killed a 70-year-old woman.
Provincial police say the victim’s husband went looking for her Friday evening when she didn’t return from a solo trip to a fishing hole at a camping area near La Sarre, about 600 kilometres northwest of Ottawa.
Police spokesman Gregory Gomez del Prado says the man, also around 70 years old, found his wife’s body and spotted a bear nearby.
Mr. Gomez del Prado said the man called police, but when officers ran into the bear it seemed very aggressive. He said it was also too dark for police to locate the body.
Police found the woman’s body Saturday when they returned to the area with conservation officers.
Mr. Gomez del Prado said wildlife officials have set traps in the wooded area to catch the bear.
However, the update tells more:
“Black bear attacks and kills grandmother, 70, on fishing trip” by Kate Hammer
From Monday’s Globe and Mail
June 2, 2008 at 3:53 AM EDT
The husband of a 70-year-old grandmother who was killed by a bear in northern Quebec fearlessly chased the wild animal off his wife’s battered body, according to family members.
Conservation experts set traps after Friday evening’s attack, but according to police, as of last night, the bear was still at large in the wilds of northern Quebec.
Cecile Lavoie and Alexandre Lavoie, 73, were in remote country nearly 600 kilometres northwest of Ottawa, where the retirees often spent the weekend fishing or hunting deer.
According to her daughter, Ms. Lavoie felt at home in the woods and on the banks of the Theo River, where the bear attacked.
As she scouted a fishing hole for walleye, Ms. Lavoie became separated from her husband. Barely 10 minutes later, Mr. Lavoie felt something was amiss and went searching for his wife of 51 years. Metres away he came upon the nightmarish scene of her body being dragged into the forest by a bear.
Mr. Lavoie chased the predator for nearly 200 metres and managed very briefly to scare it away from his wife. He tried but was unable to carry her limp and bleeding body back through the dense spring foliage.
He left her and went for help. When he arrived with police, the bear had returned and was combative.
“The bear was still around and the bear was aggressive,” said Sergeant Gregory Gomez del Prado, a spokesman for the Quebec provincial police. “It was dark so it was hard to find the woman’s body.”
The bear was so aggressive, police were forced to delay attempts to retrieve Ms. Lavoie’s remains until early Saturday morning, after it retreated into the deep woods north of the small community of La Sarre.
Yesterday Ms. Lavoie’s family gathered at her Beaucanton home. Mr. Lavoie, the retired owner of a logging machinery business his wife helped him build, is still in shock according to his daughter, Christine Lavoie.
“She was an angel,” Christine said yesterday in a telephone interview. “Fishing and hunting were her favourite activities, she was in her paradise.”
According to the Quebec Ministry of Natural Resources and Fauna website, black bears are the species most commonly found in Quebec. This species rarely attacks humans and only four people have been killed by black bears in that province over the past 25 years.
In 1991, a black bear killed a Toronto couple in Algonquin Park, baffling wildlife experts as it left the campers’ food stores untouched.
In 2001, a high-school student was attacked and partly eaten by a black bear 25 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife.
In 2007, a Calgary woman, who was cycling on a trail near a British Columbia resort, was stalked and killed by a black bear.
Attacks sometimes occur in the spring when bears awake from hibernation and are hungry. According to wildlife experts, a long winter and large amounts of snow meant this year’s hibernation season stretched a few weeks longer than usual.
In the event that one is approached by a black bear, the ministry website recommends moving slowly and avoiding eye contact in order to evade being identified as prey by the bear. Climbing a tree can be an effective way to escape attack.
According to her family, the attack on Ms. Lavoie happened so quickly she didn’t even have time to scream, let alone reach for the bear spray she carried with her. As accomplished hunters and campers who were born and raised in northern Canada, the Lavoies were well-versed in the recommended tools for avoiding and dealing with bear attacks.
It remains unclear why the bear attacked Ms. Lavoie.
In addition to her husband, she leaves behind five children and 11 grandchildren.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
I have never heard of such a thing this late in the year before. I can see the bear coming on the body and thinking it has gone to heaven, but black bears are usually pretty shy. Oh, that whole thing about climbing a tree…(closing eyes and shaking head) that all goes with a park ranger’s joke: A tourist asked the park ranger how he could tell the difference between a grizzly and a black bear. The ranger, without missing a beat said, “Kick a black bear in the rump and quickly climb a tree, it will chase you up the tree. Kick a grizzly in the rump and quickly climb a tree, it will tear down the tree to get to you.” Black bears are able to climb trees. May not be too graceful once there, but they may attempt to chase you up trees. All she had to do is fall and be unconscious when the bear found her. Black bears usually prefer already dead prey versus those needing to be chased. Oh, did anyone say anything about the bear being male or female (with cubs is my thought). That would make any of the tamest animal seem vicious. Either she got too close (whether she knew it or not) to a cub, or because of the longer winter the momma bear (who would have been feeding the baby(s) while in hibernation) would be coming out of hibernation hungrier than ever before. It is just so hard for me to believe that for no apparent reason she was attack by a black bear. Condolences and prayers to the family.
It is a myth that blackbears attack in defense of cubs. That is grizzly behavior and often researchers can walk up and snacth a cub without being attacked. I watched that on animal planet.
It may be considered that blackbears in the NE are generally shy but quite often those who eat garbage are less shy and larger and better fed than those who live by forage.
There are many bear attacks documented. Especially if the bear is surprised all animals may be considered unpredictable,so ascribing the attack to a mystery creature and saying the bear was just an innocent bystander is most likely off the mark
About 25 years ago a boy in his early teens was killed by a black bear in a provincial park near Red Lake in far western Ontario. The boy had been fishing alone in a stream when the bear came upon him. The bear was cornered and shot by rangers a while later and was found to be suffering from starvation, as well as in a great deal of pain, due to his gut being impacted with plastic wrappers it had ingested while scavanging thriugh garbage cans at the park. Essentially the bear was driven insane by the condition it was in.
It’s almost as if nature is rebelling against man with all these attacks. Its just odd to be hearing all these reports of attacks.
Rangoon:
I wouldn’t be so fast to call it a myth that black bears don’t defend cubs.
I have been in situations with black bears and cubs in which I would have been attacked if the bears were grizz. It is true that it is virtually certain that you will get attacked by a ma griz with cubs if you get within a certain “attack distance” (forget what it is; I’d just say when you see that situation coming, provided God gave you notice, go in the other direction and don’t stop ’til you are back at the trailhead). It is true that black bear mothers put up with cub harrassment that would get you killed if ma was a griz.
But it is best NEVER to fool with a bear cub, of any species. When you see one, find out where ma is, soonest, and go the other way.
Not only are habituated black bears more dangerous. Bears in remote areas where they rarely see humans – such as northern Quebec – will hunt humans for food. It is not at all unclear why this bear attacked; it was hungry. Period.
Terrible story and my thoughts go out to the family. Have to love the need to attract readers by not clearly defining that it was a bear.
The idea that nature is rebelling against man is unreasonable to me. We are moving into the habitat of these beasts, and they are moving into ours, just as animals are want to do. Encounters and yes, attacks, are inevitable. We kill them because they bother us, they kill us because we bother them.
Bears will be bears. Also, who knows? This particular bear may have been ill or injured. Regardless, this is no mystery animal attack. From start to finish, it was a bear. Unless new facts are presented saying otherwise, I’m going to accept the reported, most-likely data.
On a final note, presenting these animal attacks as “mystery cryptids” without any definitive reason to do so reminds me of those paranormal investigators that claim every light spot on a photo is a “ghost”. It devalues the nature of this scientific field.
My thoughts go out to the family of the victim.
Whatever is going on with the “increase” in animal attacks,” one cannot deny the fact that weird things are happening.
Is there actually an increase in animal attacks, or are the attacks just being more widely and immediately reported and circulated?
I believe that there is a moderate increase in the actual number of attacks, and I attribute that to the fact that there are many more people living in or near what used to be “wilderness” areas. Then with cellphones being so common and add the internet, the attacks that occur are reported more quickly, and to a wider audience, than ever before.
Goon, I believe that a black bear would be at least as likely a a dog or a raccoon to defend her young – maybe not in the same way a grizzly bear does, but there have been documented cases of black bears attacking people who got between them and their cubs – I actually saw one case profiled on Animal Planet or maybe NGC where that happened. I, for one, certainly would not want to put it to the test :-).
I’m very sorry for the families loss and it sounds like they knew something about living in bear country.
The problem is Black Bears tend to be more unpredictable even than Grizzlies. Part of the problem is that people assume they are simply not as aggressive and therefore are a lot more careless around them. Stalking behavior is not uncommon in black bears if the bear has learned that people will throw them food–which some do thinking the bears are retiring and non-aggressive, even friendly and cuddly so they tend to lose their fear of people. I’m not suggesting this is what Mrs. Lavoie was doing by the way, but this bear may have been conditioned to expect something from humans.
I suspect that the increase in wildlife attacks comes in part at least from man’s attempt to treat wild animals like family pets. They forget these are wild animals and need to be given the respect and distance deserving of any dangerous creature.
I’m also a little amazed at the ministry’s suggestion that climbing a tree is good way to escape a Black Bear! Makes you wonder just how much these guys get out of the office! These bears are very good climbers!Sounds like a good way to end up Black Bear droppings to me!
The second report seems to sensationalize the story a bit. Doesn’t seem objective in my opinion.
Regardless, I’m pretty sure anything would be unpredictable if something came in between its offspring.