MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Spring 2020

52 What if a typical day on the job turns without warning into a bloody scene from The Revenant ? It happened to Ministry of Natural Resources biologist Laura Darby, roughly 100 km north of Thunder Bay in 2011. Conducting a wildlife assessment for the MNR with co-worker Daniel Morrison, a research technician, the two were walking separate tangents near the shores of Wabikon Lake in early October—not in sight of each other but in radio contact. Darby radioed Morrison to tell him she had spotted a large black bear. After he responded but didn’t hear back, Morrison ran in her direction. “Probably over about two or three minutes [the bear] proceeded to … confront me, and then eventually charged me,” Darby told CBC News. In a presentation to the public reported in the Fort Frances Times , Darby added: “It was amazing how clear my mind was [during the attack]… Living on a farm, I’d worked with animals before. I knew I had to appear dominant and in control.” In spite of Darby repeatedly screaming at, punching, and kicking the bear, it continued to maul her, at one point throttling her by the arm. “He was playing with me. I was his toy,” she said. When the bear began to drag her deeper into the forest, Darby clung to a branch to impede their progress. “It must have made him mad because he went back to [mauling] my right side.” When Morrison came upon the scene, the bear turned on him. “I knew he wasn’t going to be leaving because he would test my ground,” Morrison told CBC News. He fended off the animal with a hunting knife, stabbing it in the mouth area and behind the shoulder blade. He did not fatally injure the bear, who ceased attacking but continued to linger within view. Morrison called for help on a satellite phone and applied basic first aid to Darby’s lacerated shoulders, legs and arms. “I was pretty close to being overwhelmed with pain and was immobile. I would not be here if it wasn’t for Dan,” she said. After airlift to hospital, Darby underwent a seven-hour surgery, where doctors used roughly 800 staples on her wounds. But in spite of broken bones, torn ligaments, and enormous blood loss, Darby was lucky: Nerve damage was limited and the attack did not impact any arteries or organs. By any measure, Daniel Morrison is a hero—but he doesn’t really want to talk about it. I spoke to him by phone but he preferred not to go on record. Instead of talking about himself, in his few public comments Morrison preferred to talk about his co-worker and her bravery. “Laura [Darby] is one of the bravest people I know,” he told CBC News. “She just kept herself really calm and, if she wasn’t that type of person that had that strength, it would be very different for everybody involved.” –Ned Morgan MNR Nightmare: Wildlife Field Worker “Living on a farm, I’d worked with animals before. I knew I had to appear dominant and in control.”