Fun Times – Algonquin Provincial Park (Part Two)

Now it was time to “enter” the park’s east gates and to start looking for “wildlife”. Back then the main larger wildlife were deer. We would drive along the winding park roads looking for wildlife (deer). Quite often we would come across a number of cars parked on the side of the road. A deer had stepped out of the forest, likely looking for food. Not “animal” food, but “people” food. Like the others, we would stop to take a look. My dad always had his camera (Super 8) ready to capture the moment (I’m not sure where the film went, a shame!). Fortunately, the deer where quite tame and ready for food from the tourists. I’m sure that park rangers weren’t too impressed, but accepted it as a reality. Unfortunately, the deer population seems to have dwindle over the years. Now the park hosts more moose than deer, a more dangerous animal. People still stop to take photos, but not to hand out food.

Another animal that frequents the park are black bears. On a very few occasions we would spot a bear crossing the road. One storey I heard was from one of my parents’ friends. They owned a cottage in park on Lake of Two Rivers (I think that this was the lake). We would drive from the east gates to the start of the Lake of Two Rivers. My father would then honk his car horn to alert his friends that we had arrived. There weren’t any “cell phones” back then. The friends would drive their motorboat to the lake’s parking area to pick us up. During one of these visits, our hosts told us of how they had encountered a bear around their cottage. It was the middle of the night and the bear was foraging for food. It must have smelled something it thought it could eat. The lady, who owned the cottage, told us that she just went out onto the porch and started banging on a pot with a spoon, making lots of noise. I guess it was frightened (the bear, not the lady) and it took off. I think that this kind of bear encounter happened to cottages often and that making a lot of noise chased them away.