ROB MURRAY: What Bears Teach Us – a new book now available from Rocky Mountain Books with author Sarah Elmeligi and photographs by John E. Marriott, both joining me on the program. What’s inspired you to write a book on this subject?

SARAH ELMELIGI: I’ve been studying bears for quite a while. Both my Masters research and my PhD research focused on grizzly bear behavior and how grizzly bears share the landscape with people in a recreational setting. One of the things that I found challenging – it’s very difficult to capture bears fully in data points on a map or a graph. There’s so much more to bears than what can be captured in the scientific literature. I actually pitched this book to John a few years ago and it was like, how do we create a book that actually helps people to see and appreciate the complexity of bear behavior, and that there’s so much more than what I could possibly convey in my PhD thesis? John’s photos are so great. The text, when I’m talking about their behavior, we’ve been able to match that with John’s photos that show bears engaging in that behavior. I think the combined visual is very powerful.

RM: John, about how many photographs have you contributed to this book?

JOHN MARRIOTT: I think there’s just under a hundred in there.

RM: This is a pretty robust book at 224 pages. That must have taken you both quite a bit of time to put together.

SE: Honestly, it took a lot less time than my PhD thesis, so it actually felt quite relaxing to write the book. I am so pleased with how it turned out. The book really does match the vision of what I had in mind, and it is pretty robust because grizzly bear behavior is really complex. There’s decades of scientific understanding incorporated in the text of the book as well as some of John and my own personal stories about encounters with bears. I also invited some bear biologist colleagues to contribute some of their stories, because I think it’s really our stories from the field that add to the scientific data and add to John’s photos to create a really holistic sharing and examination of their behavior.

RM: What drives your passion for photographing bears and photographing wildlife in general?

JM: My passion stems from early experiences as a kid. I can still remember the first grizzly bear that I ever saw which was in Banff National Park back in 1992. I still remember seeing my first bear cub when I was six years old. That passion has kind of always been there. I literally would sit in the backseat of my parent’s car when we were driving around and I’d pay my brother and sister to watch the other side of the vehicle for me so I didn’t miss any wildlife as we were going along. Photography was just a really nice way to get into it, to be able to visually share my experiences with other people. To be able to team up with Sarah on something like this was, for a photographer…this is a dream to team up with a biologist and be able to get a project out like this that speaks to so much more than just the photos and just the science. It combines it all together into a book that’s visually stunning, but also is really interesting to read.

RM: You had to pay your siblings?

JM: It was back in the 70s and early 80s, and they got a nickel for a deer all the way up to a quarter for a bear.

RM: Where can people pick up this book?

SE: Café Books in Canmore, but the book is also available through Amazon and Indigo and anywhere that people buy books.

RM: I understand this one’s been selling pretty well so far?

SE: Café Books has sold out twice. John and I have been pretty diligent about going down and signing copies as soon as they get them, so if you want a signed copy that is the place locally where somebody can get that. It makes a great Christmas present. One of the things I’m most excited about is how our local Bow Valley community supports Bow Valley artists. It’s something that we’re both really proud of and we hope that everybody in our community can enjoy it.

RM: With COVID it’s a little difficult to do a traditional kind of book launch. Do you have anything in the works?

SE: I am going to be presenting the book through the Y2Y + Whyte Museum Speaker Series. That will be virtual and you can learn more about that here, that will be on the evening of December 2nd. I’ve also been talking to artsPlace about some kind of virtual / small number of people in person launch. I don’t have a date for that yet, so if anybody’s interested in that they’ll just have to follow John and me on Twitter or Instagram, and we’ll be posting details about that launch through our social media channels once I have them.

Filed under: Banff, Bears, Canmore, Rocky Mountain Books, Wildlife