A man in Fort Severn, Ontario, is recovering from injuries he received Tuesday morning, when he fought off a polar bear that was attacking his wife in their driveway. Authorities with the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service released the basic details around the incident later that same day.
Around 5 p.m., the press release states, the couple walked outside their home in Fort Severn, which is a First Nations community on the remote coastline of Hudson Bay. The husband and wife had gone out to check on their dogs when a polar bear lunged at the woman.
“The woman slipped to the ground as her husband leapt onto the animal to prevent its attack. The bear then attacked the male, causing serious but non-life-threatening injuries to his arms and legs,” reads the NAPS press release. “During the attack, a neighbor arrived with a firearm and shot the bear several times.”
NAPS media relations coordinator Scott Paradis confirms with Outdoor Life that a local patrol was dispatched to the scene shortly after the attack. They found the polar bear dead nearby. Paradis says patrollers then searched the community and found no other polar bears in the area.
“There have been no major updates since then,” Paradis says. “But we believe the male involved is going to make a full recovery. His injuries were significant but not life-threatening.”
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Paradis adds that because the man’s injuries weren’t life-threatening, he was taken to the community nursing station for treatment instead of being transported to a hospital elsewhere. The nursing station could not be reached for comment Thursday, and it’s unlikely they would be able to provide information about a patient due to the province’s privacy laws.
Paradis was likewise unable to share the identities of the man, woman, neighbor, or any witnesses to the attack.
However, a Facebook user named Elaine Crowe shared a post on Dec. 3 claiming that she and her husband, Kirk, were the ones attacked by the bear. These claims are unconfirmed. Crowe details in the post how the polar bear charged her near their truck, which caused her to slip and fall.
“I thought Kirk was going to [run] around the truck but the bear jumped on him. Kirk was wrestling with the bear yelling [and] my heart dropped,” she wrote around 4 a.m. Wednesday. “Now I know my husband would die for me.”
Crowe’s post also details how their neighbor, Hector, came “running with the gun and shot the bear while it was still on Kirk attacking him.” It’s unclear what kind of firearm the neighbor used (Crowe’s post mentions a .270), but an investigation by NAPS revealed that he hit the bear several times.
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Outdoor Life reached out to Crowe Thursday to confirm these details, but she did not immediately respond to the request for comment. She also made a follow-up post Wednesday afternoon.
“I wouldn’t want to do an interview so soon,” she wrote. “I’m still in shock and I keep seeing the bear on top of my husband.”
Polar bear attacks on humans are exceedingly rare, especially compared to grizzlies and black bears. There have, however, been at least two fatal attacks confirmed in the last two years. In January 2023, a polar bear killed a woman and young boy in the Inupiaq village of Wales, Alaska. And in August of this year, a Nunavut man was attacked and killed by two polar bears while working for the Nasittuq Corporation on Brevoort Island.
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