Anyone who visits the Rocky Mountains will read signs saying, “Don’t Feed the Bears.”
One person who would never disregard these signs is best-selling Canadian author Claire Cameron. Based out of Toronto, Cameron is special guest at St. Albert Readers Festival (STARFest). She will discuss her 2025 memoir, How to Survive a Bear Attack.
The multiple-award winner has been haunted by bear attacks since 1991 when a couple was killed in a rare predatory attack at Algonquin Park. Around that time, her father died of cancer and Cameron soothed her grief traipsing around the rivers, lakes and wilderness areas of Algonquin Park.
As an adult with a passion for nature, she led canoe trips in Algonquin Park and worked as an instructor for Outward Bound teaching mountaineering, climbing and whitewater rafting in Oregon and beyond.
While the outdoors soothed her personal grief, it also became a curse. As an adult, Cameron was diagnosed with the same skin cancer as her father. Feeling the terror of a cancer diagnosis, she became obsessed with the bear attack and headed to Algonquin Park to investigate.
How to Survive a Bear Attack is more than an intimate memoir of an extraordinary animal. It also details how she survived the wilderness within her.
The conversation begins Sunday, April 13 from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. at St. Albert’s Downtown Library.
St. Albert Gazette also spoke with STARFest director Julie Ruel to obtain additional insights.
Q. When did you first hear of Claire Cameron?
A. I've heard about Claire Cameron for many years. I know STARFest invited her previously for her novel "The Last Neanderthal" in 2017. However, she has been a big name in the Canadian literary scene since her release of "The Bear" in 2014.
Q. What was your initial impression to her novels?
A. Her novels really blend fact and fiction so well. Both The Bear and The Last Neanderthal are really well researched but compulsively readable and suspenseful. I was excited to see that she wrote a memoir because I was curious how the book would differ from her previous work.
Q. What are some of the major themes?
A. Claire Cameron does a fantastic job weaving together all of the elements of the book. It is at once a memoir but also a meticulously researched true crime investigation, a history of Algonquin Park and a meditation on nature and love.
Q. What made you decide the book would be appreciated by St. Albert and STARFest readers?
A. I knew that Claire Cameron was a favorite of our audience but also, I try to get a variety of authors and genres. I thought this book would be a perfect fit. She also happened to be travelling and doing events in Edmonton and Calgary, so the timing worked out really well.
Q. Were any sections of the book meaningful to you? If so, which ones?
A. There are sections told from the perspective of the bear that ultimately ends up attacking and killing the couple in Algonquin Park in 1991. She obviously researched bear behaviour extremely thoroughly and I found these sections so fascinating and compelling. The memoir sections of the book are also deeply moving and her love for her family, for her work and for nature really shines throughout.
Q. Why would you recommend this novel to readers?
A. If you're drawn to memoirs that explore resilience, the human connection to nature, and the struggle to reconcile past trauma with the present, How to Survive a Bear Attack is a must-read. This memoir is a very personal journey of grief, survival, and obsession. What makes it especially compelling is Cameron's ability to weave together themes of survival—both personal and in the face of nature's unpredictability...This memoir is for anyone who enjoys deeply human stories that are raw, honest, and ultimately hopeful.
