SOOKE, BC -- A former Thunder Bay man decided to take a courteous approach when he encountered a family of bears in his Sooke, BC backyard.
Like any other polite Canadians, the bears responded in kind.
It was the barking of a tenant's dog that first brought 23-year-old Jordan Cote out onto his deck last week to see what the commotion was about.
What he found was a mother bear and two cubs grazing on something in the grass.
Cote took the dog inside, then returned with a camera to document his appeal to the bear family to move on.
"I need you guys to go...I gotta go to work," he can be heard saying in the video he's posted to Facebook with the caption "How a Canadian responds to wildlife."
The sow and her cubs responded appropriately, turning around and casually making their way back into the bush.
Cote, who graduated from Superior Collegiate and Confederation College before moving to BC three years ago, told tbnewswatch.com that it was the first time he's found bears outside his rural Vancouver Island home in the two years he's lived there.
But he'd seen plenty of bears during his life in northwestern Ontario, as well as more recently in BC.
He decided at the outset that staying calm and casual was the best approach on this occasion.
"There was no sense of hostility from either me or the bear, and the end result was both of us just going on with our day."
As the bears departed, Cote thanked them, adding "I hope you enjoyed my yard."
