I
hope my grandchildren and their grand-
children will be able to see B.C.’s Great
Bear Rainforest (GBRF) as I have seen
it. This thought kept running through
my mind as our boat approached the
dock at Bella Bella in October, 2016, ending
my first visit to the GBRF. I had just finished
nine glorious days aboard Bluewater Ad-
ventures’ Island Roamer, a 68-foot sailboat
carrying 12 passengers and a crew of four.
The GBRF is an area of 12,000 square
miles that stretches along the central coast
of British Columbia as far north as the Alaska
border. It is the largest temperate rainforest
in the world. Largely uninhabited, it is still
possible to sail for hours without seeing any
obvious signs of human presence.
The GBRF is home to the 1,000-year-
old western red cedar and 300-foot Sitka
spruce, as well as more than 1,800 salmon
streams and rivers and amazingly abun-
dant flora and fauna. Humpback and fin
whales and orcas visit its waters along with
Steller sea lions, harbour seals and five spe-
cies of Pacific salmon. Bald eagles cruise
the towering cliffs that line the shorelines
and islands that make up the GBRF. It is
also home to the rare kermode bear and
even rarer spirit bear. The kermode bear is
a subspecies of the American black bear. Its
range is more or less limited to the area of
the GBRF, so it is uniquely Canadian.
The kermode bear can have a very con-
spicuous genetic trait. When this geneticIn Search of
SPIRIT
BEARS
Photographer Bruce Raby
of Perth, Ont., shows us the
wonder and magic of
the Great Bear Rainforest
8 More of Our Canada SEPTEMBER 2019