A Personal Tribute to a Polar Bear

While I love what I do professionally, my personal passion is the wellbeing of polar bears. Inukshuk was a polar bear who touched my heart and changed my life.

This is Polar Bear Week, an initiative of Polar Bears International to draw attention to the plight of polar bears in an increasingly warming Arctic.

Running from October 27 to November 2, 2024, it coincides with the annual gathering of polar bears near Churchill, Manitoba as they wait for sea ice to form on Hudson Bay from which they hunt seals.

Twenty-one years ago, a polar bear cub accompanied by his mother should have been among those venturing onto sea ice. Instead, that three-month-old cub was orphaned when his mother was fatally shot while guiding her young from their den toward Hudson Bay. The cub, who was found in Fort Severn, Ontario and taken in by the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service, has lived in human care ever since.

That cub became Inukshuk who was beloved by many, including me. He died August 26, 2024, and will be missed always and loved forever.

Polar Bears Change Your Heart

Inukshuk, Tuky for short, was the senior polar bear of the three who reside at the Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat, the world’s only non-profit centre for polar bears in need of human care.

The week before Inukshuk died, Polar Bears International posted a video profiling its work. In it, Chief Scientist Emeritus, Dr. Steve Amstrup says, “If you look a polar bear in the eye, it’ll change your life; it’ll change your heart.” He’s right. I know he’s right because it happened to me.

I posted that video to LinkedIn along with the comment: “I’m a fan of Polar Bears International and privileged to work with the Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat. Come visit, look a polar bear in the eye, and be changed.”

Inukshuk was the polar bear into whose eyes I looked, and my life and heart changed forever.

My Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat Experience

Live-stream webcams have enabled me to bear-stare almost every day since first learning about the Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat in the fall of 2007. It took me until October 2022 to visit when, for a life-altering four days, I was privileged to spend time with these spectacular polar bears, the dedicated team who cares for them, and the good people of Cochrane, Ontario.

On one of those days, I watched for a solid 10 hours as Ganuk, Henry, and Inukshuk roamed their lush 24-acre natural habitat located in the boreal forest of Cochrane, a tight-knit, hard-scrabble mining town found literally at a 90-degree corner of Highway 11 where it takes a sharp turn to the west in northern Ontario. An hour’s drive north of Timmins if you’re speeding and the Ontario Provincial Police are elsewhere, the Town of Cochrane and its surrounding area is blessed with clean air, freshwater lakes, and rocky terrain in a remote, subarctic region of the Canadian Shield otherwise known as God’s country.

The bears had spent an active morning swimming in their very own lake, roughhousing together on the grounds, and when they deigned to be seen, being admired by visitors who come from around the world to learn about these magnificent and majestic Canadian icons.

That afternoon, I observed from about 30 feet away as Henry, the youngest bear at age nine, and Inukshuk, then 19, sat together in the Baffin section of the Habitat. Both bears and I had been watching each other intensely when suddenly Inukshuk and I locked eyes. He sprang to his 13-inch-square furry feet—as sprightly as a 1,000-pound bear can spring—and starring straight at me without blinking or breaking eye contact, stomped headlong toward me.

I don’t scare easily, but I’ll admit that even though he and I were separated by two sets of people-proof fencing—a whole other story—a frisson of paralyzing fear shot through my body rooting me to the ground. My fear dissipated into delight when he reached the fence in front of me and began scruffing the side of his massive and heavily winter-coated body against it. Weak with relief and thrilled at Inukshuk’s simple desire to scratch an itch, I couldn’t help but laugh.

When Magic Happened

At the Habitat, the bears have hours. In the fall, their hours are 7:00 am to 5:00 pm unless Henry-the-renegade decides he’s going to stay outside for the bulk of the evening and sometimes overnight, an act of single-mindedness that makes me love him even more. Laid-back Ganuk knows that if he comes in at the end of the day, he’ll be sleeping in his own bed. Inukshuk, the best daybed-maker of the bunch would often come in at the end of the day but in the last year or so would sometimes join his pal, Henry, for an all-night camp out.

On this day at closing time, when all the bears chose to come in, was when magic happened.

After five o’clock that afternoon, I was thrilled to be invited into bear holding. Bear holding is a building that serves as a hub for food storage and preparation, training and medical examination, and where the bears have their own rooms that enable privacy throughout the day and bedding down for the night.

I watched in awe as the bears had dinner. Ganuk, 12 at the time and one of Inukshuk’s three male offspring, is a notoriously fussy eater with a Zen-like temperament that inspires me to try to live as gently as he does because it’s a good way to go through life. Because he can’t abide the crunch of bony fish heads and tails, Ganuk insists that his food is mashed and served to him on—wait for it—a long-handled silver spoon. Henry had dinner delivered by a food drop where high-fat pellets made of meat, fish, and seal oil were dropped onto the floor of his room enabling him to choose which pellets he wanted, and to eat at his leisure. Inukshuk, lying in his room on his stomach and propped up on his elbows, was hand-fed slices of mackerel and trout.

Once dinner was finished, the bear keeper who had been seated cross-legged on the floor to be level with Inukshuk while feeding him got up to do other things.

Directly across from Inukshuk’s room and scrunched down against a wall in my attempt to be inconspicuous, the departure of the bear keeper who had been seated in front of me meant that Tuky and I were face-to-face a scant two feet apart.

Lying there in regal countenance, he looked straight into my eyes and I into his. In a flash, I was awestruck, shattered, and mesmerized. Never in my life did I ever expect anything like this to happen, nor could I have even begun to fathom what I would see when our eyes met.

A Changed Life

The worlds I saw in his liquid bronze eyes defied description. All I could think—and have thought numerous times since—was that this was what it must feel like for astronauts outside of a spacecraft floating in the lightless depths of endless outer space. The worlds in Inukshuk’s eyes had no spatial boundaries. Instead, it seemed like a black velvety darkness extended through and beyond his eyes to infinity. I saw a limitless and unidentifiable universe; galaxies and worlds I never dreamed existed.

Never before had this happened, and I doubt it will ever happen again to such an extent and intimate degree with any of God’s creatures.

In simplistic terms, he lowered his guard to enable me to see into his world.

There are no words that fully describe the experience. Unforgettable isn’t descriptive enough. Profound might come closest. The truth is that I was affected to the depths of my soul and changed forever to the core of my very being.

James Raffan, a Canadian geographer, international speaker, and author of Ice Walker: A Polar Bear’s Journey Through the Fragile Arctic, believes that in the context of climate change, we are the polar bear and the polar bear is us. Looking into Inukshuk’s eyes, I know this belief to be as real as it is true.

This is why my personal passion is the wellbeing of polar bears. And it is why I am honoured to serve as pro bono markets advisor to the Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat.

While my life’s passion for polar bears was ignited over 20 years ago, it has become even more deeply and fully embedded into my heart because of the life-altering gift of when the innately complex and intuitive, emotional and curious, and distrustful yet comical Inukshuk placed his trust in me long enough to allow me to look deeply into his clear and unblinking, glorious chocolate-bronze eyes and bear witness to the magical wonders of his world.

The Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2024. In Polar Bears Forever?, you will find a PDF attached that outlines the Cochrane Polar Bear Habitat’s mission, and how the Cochrane polar bears and those who care for them are striving to support and save polar bears in the wild.