“Looks like a very remote location, 240 miles west of Williams Lake and maybe 80 miles from the Pacific Ocean, about halfway between Vancouver and the southernmost part of Alaska.“
IOW, prime grizzly country in the run-up to hibernation so the bears are voracious in eating to add to their winter fat stores to survive. Yes, definitely time for a jaunty walk in the woods without benefit of any truly effective deterrent. These people may claim “First Nations” status but they obviously have lost the instinct learned by their ancestors.
There has been an intense propaganda effort to convince people there bears are not interested in attacking people, and that bear spray is more effective at stopping attacks than firearms are.
Of course, the Canadian Government is not willing to trust its citizens with handguns.
To top it off, hunting grizzly bears was made illegal in B.C. a few years ago...
It is a hunting community. I expect bears withing a few miles of town are going to start turning up dead. No one will know anything about it.
Even a .22 into the gut of a grizzly bear is a likely death sentence in a few days.
Hard to be sure. Things happen when a community no longer trusts the government.