When Fenelon Falls. Dorothy Ellen Palmer
trip to Mrs. Miller’s General Store, when we heard shouting, the clanging of metal and the roaring of a bear. Not entirely unexpected sounds, for where our gravel met their highway stood a rusting homemade bear cage, home of Yogi the Bear.
Now before you get all Michael Jackson on me, thinking how jazzed you’d be to have your own personal zoo next door, you should know straight up that Yogi did not belong to us and that neighbouring a captive creature taught us but one thing: bears should belong to no one but themselves. Her very existence brought us shame, an edge that sharpened in our teens, a jab that March adults either did not feel or did not speak. Same difference.
At twelve, when Jordan tried to share it with Mom, MC had shrugged. ‘Steel walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.’ Jordan looked her bang in the face and said that was, bar none, the stupidest thing she’d ever heard anyone say about an imprisoned bear. Of course bars make a cage when you’re the one in it. MC had smiled. ‘A fool may ask more questions than a wise man can answer, dear. Stupid is calling your mother stupid.’ That’s the first time BS got sent to bed sans supper and the last time she went to MC with anything real. For once, Mother and the family March agreed. In their collective shrug, the alpha birthed the omega: March became Yogi’s saviour and the agents of her demise. Hear it all before you judge us harshly.
In the spring of ’64, Grayden, our eldest cousin, had been hunting deer up in MacIsaac’s back bush when he accidentally shot a black bear. ‘Accidental’ is the term he used when he discovered it to be illegal. He came upon her cub bawling like it had just lost its mother, which of course it had. Gray diapered it up in a hunting tarp, plopped it in the crib of his pickup and sped home. Somehow – I never got this part of the story straight – Kronkowski, the drunk who ran the all-but-defunct bait stop at the top of our road, convinced Grayden to hand the cub over, explaining that he’d raise it right there in Rosedale and Gray could visit anytime he wished. My cousin, no doubt seeing ‘his baby’ as some kind of animated trophy – one that guaranteed him equal if not greater bragging rights without the mess or bother of having to have it shot, eviscerated, stuffed, mounted, financed or dusted – agreed.
A bullet to the brain would have been kinder. The only thing worse than watching a living creature fade is watching human beings stare at suffering and refuse to call it by its name. Killing with kindness – it’s not just an expression. First Kronk erected a makeshift cage. A concrete slab, fifty feet of chain-link fence taut around four iron poles, and Yogi became the slave of no domain, trading the wilderness for seven paces in any direction. In a calculated generosity, Kronk gave his newborn a toy: he ran a yard of chain through an old tire and drilled it to the crossbeam. Now, dangling centre stage, Yogi had a swing, or more accurately a sway. It didn’t have much of an arc. Jordan said the same thing, word for word, each time we passed it: ‘Hold me back Brother Mine! I’m seized by a sane desire.’ I took that bait only once. ‘Okay, BS, what sane desire?’ She’d grinned. ‘The need to push.’ I asked if that was sane, what did she consider insane? She’d shrugged. ‘Doing nothing.’
Out on the highway, in red, in the all-too-Canadian tradition of flexible public spelling, Kronk posted a homemade plywood sign, its letters perpetually dripping: SEE YOGI BARE.
If you ever drove up Highway 35, you’ll remember her. If you veered north at the turnoff to Fenelon Falls and drove another twelve minutes over the Trent-Severn canal bridge between Cameron and Balsam Lake, then you drove right into our hamlet of Rosedale. With a gas station, a marina, a bait store and a bear cage, our Rosedale bore no resemblance to the affuent Toronto neighbourhood of the same name. Ours began its life in the previous century as Rosadale, but the locals rechristened it for their ease. As we did Yogi. For Yogi was a she, a girl with a boy’s name. And for our ease, and our entertainment, we put her in solitary for life.
And that cage changed everything. It caged a changeling, a bear in form, one who dimly remembered being a baby bear, but who’d been forcibly transformed into Almost Bear, Display Bear, She Who Never Belongs, She Who Must Pretend. In short, One Majorly Pissed-off Ursa. Yogi became what we called her: a cartoon, an animated inmate, lacking birthright or any right to define herself as a wild female bear. And we stared – as easily as the well-fed denizens of Toronto’s Rosedale might do at yet another bag lady. And we laughed – until Yogi reclaimed her birthright in a manner natural to bears but with consequences unnatural to the rest of us. To quote MC: Give a dog an ill name and you may hang him. Enough said.
Initially, the opposite appeared true. Rechristened with a celebrity name, our Yogi became a yogi and for a few short years our blink-and-you’ll-miss-it gas stop became a tourist mecca, where pilgrims participated in the vicarious recapturing of one small resident of the Great Canadian Wilderness. Recaptured on film, that is. Like that other 1960s yogi, the one with the next-to-unpronounceable name venerated by Beatles, our Yogi built a transient following, one that measured its weekend great escape from Toronto in minutes to and from her cage. The usual chant, ‘Daddy, are we there yet?’ became ‘Daddy, are we at Yogi yet?’ The most devout stopped twice, making offerings both times. Of crap. Non-stop crap. Edible wampum. Demeaning the purchase and the purchaser, exchanging worth for worthless.
Now I understand it and admit it: as a kid, I was fascinated. Every morning, as much as an hour early, Jordan and I would head to the top of March road to await the mail truck. We’d nuzzle in close to Yogi’s cage, hand-feeding her dandelions and Pablum-soft branches, mesmerized by long pink tongue and ivory triangle teeth. We’d hunt down nests of tent caterpillars and shriek as she crunched them like Smarties. But we were kids, excused by definition. The worshipping fools who pulled off the highway in droves were grown adults, at least chronologically. Repetitiously insane, each had the same scathingly brilliant idea: ‘Hey! How ’bout a shot of you/me/Grandma/Uncle Bertie/Baby Susie feeding a real live Yogi bear! Bobby, get the Instamatic!’ So Yogi ate junk all Friday on the crawl up, and all Sunday on the exodus down. Did Kronk bother to feed her weekdays? Who knows. Her weekend worshippers never stopped. Such bare-fisted photographic bravery: Yogi licks ice cream from outstretched cones, Yogi nurses Orange Crush, one long-tongued baby. One shot left? Chips! Little fingers fit right in! Good one.
Did Kronk foresee the danger? Of course. He profited from it. Who else could look at a cub and see Jack Daniel’s? Our Kronk: Rosedale’s unreasonable facsimile of Donald Trump. A man with a plan. Research: Drive to Fenelon. Scout day-old baked goods. Purchasing: Acquire the cheapest. Ignore mould. Logistics: Unwrap, place in wicker fishing basket. If tourists notice the smell, tell ’em Yogi likes it. Marketing: Make sign: ‘Yogi’s Pic-a-nic Basket. Stolen from Jellystone Park.’ Operations: Sell each deathly stale Ding Dong and doughnut at triple cost. Sidelines: Overpriced film and trinkets. Hours: To paraphrase the theme song, Yogi ‘might sleep till noon but before it was dark she’d have eaten every picnic basket in Rosedale Park.’ Employee Morale: If bear is sluggish, find hose. Soak her till she earns her keep. Bookkeeping: Unscrew peanut-butter jar. Profit Management: Buy booze. Security: Put jar, basket and rifle in old Coke cooler with the bait. Look for the GD keys. Employee Benefits: Don’t be a retard. It’s a bear. Big live bait for big fat fish. Health and Safety: Frogs on the doughnuts? Scrape ’em off. Year End: Never. Sell Christmas trees. Tell ’em Yogi likes snow.
I can’t forget the butter tarts. Kronk called them homemade, declared them his and Yogi’s favourite. It was half true: Yogi loved them and Kronk loved to show off how he’d trained her to appreciate them. He’d stand beside the cage, swinging the box back and forth. Pendulum arms, with his flat round face as the clock. She’d match him, moaning, tossing her snout in anticipatory pleasure. Rifle cocked between his knees, he’d unlock the padlock, stand in the doorway, raise his arms and twist the box around in the air, ‘Dance for it, baby girl! Dance for it!’ An obedient if ungainly ballerina, Yogi would rise up, clasp claws overhead and stomp in circles. You could all but see the tutu. I’m sure Kronk saw it. He drooled. At his drunkest it slid out in one wet slur, ‘Dansfuritgurlie! Dansfurit!’ When he tired of her, he tossed the gooey mess in her face.
Now, I grew up watching Dancing Bear on Captain Kangaroo and never once asked myself why a kidnapped, captive bear would want to dance. Today I wonder what kind of sadist looked at the muzzled and starving and saw entertainment for toddlers. Today, at the sight or scent of butter tarts,