Читать книгу Deadlines - Tom Hawthorn - Страница 8

Bergie Solberg

Cougar Lady

(September 5, 1923—November 13, 2002)

The body of the Cougar Lady was found on the floor of her shack, where her companion, a dog named Bush, stood lonely vigil for two days. Bergie Solberg was seventy-nine.

Solberg spent her life roaming the mountains and ocean inlets of the Sechelt Peninsula on the Sunshine Coast, surviving on her wiles as a hunter, trapper and logger. A herd of goats provided fresh milk, which she drank raw. The goats also acted as lure for cougars, which she killed.

Ken Collins, a reporter who visited her isolated cabin, tells a story of her fearlessness. Alerted by her dog to the presence of a cougar, an unarmed Solberg chased the wild cat up a tree before returning to her cabin for her rifle. “She was something Walt Disney would like to make a story of,” he said. Solberg skinned cougars for their pelts and sold them, as she did those of bobcats and river otters. A deadeye shot at four hundred paces, she patiently tracked quarry for days, scrambling over mountains and pushing through dense underbrush with her head down and shoulders hunched.

Over time, civilization encroached on her seventy-hectare property, a wilderness paradise accessible only by boat. A multimillion-dollar real-estate development was built just two kilometres away. At night, owners of waterfront properties could hear the distinct putt-putt of her boat’s 50-hp engine as they lounged in hot tubs. Her own shack lacked electricity and running water.

“There’s not many animals left,” she once complained to reporter Keith Thirkell. “Many people are moving to Sechelt, building houses, and more people are sport hunting, which scares away the game.”

After the death of her older sister, she was a last living reminder of a celebrated way of life otherwise confined to memory and history books.

Herman Solberg, a logger from Norway, moved his wife, Olga, and two daughters, Minnie and Bergliot Asta, to Sandy Hook on the peninsula in 1928. Bergie, as she was called, and Minnie joined their father in the woods, learning the dangerous job of logging. She took over her father’s trapping permit after his death, selling mink and raccoon pelts to city furriers.

The Solberg sisters lived alone. They had little use for the conveniences of the modern age, preferring the solitary independence of the old-time homesteader. They spoke to one another in Norwegian and their English carried the accent of a homeland they could barely remember.

Over the years, Minnie Solberg settled in at an old logging camp at Deserted Bay. The closest store was fifty kilometres away. The sisters were not an uncommon sight in Sechelt, visiting monthly for provisions. Bergie Solberg wore a heavy purple cowboy hat, the weight of which left the tops of her ears bent like a terrier. She dressed in heavy sweaters and other thrift-shop fashions. Many in town thought her a recluse, yet she was no hermit. Some years ago, she was profiled by a European television crew, making her better known in France than in her own country. Reporters who visited her shack were treated to tea served on china, or offered a rusty can of soda pop.

Collins once joined her on a hunting expedition. He recalled her spotting cougar scat. “Like a connoisseur rolling a favoured Cuban cigar with her fingers,” he wrote, “she fondled the piece of feces, broke it in half, and put it to her nose, inhaling deeply.” She pronounced it fresh, before describing the cougar’s diet. Asked to pose for a photograph, she stood atop a stump and slung her bolt-action carbine over her shoulder, grasping the barrel with her left hand.

Her rifle once got her into trouble with a local conservation officer, who served her papers explaining hunting regulations, and once reportedly tried to seize her firearm. Solberg did not know how to read, the reporter said, and had a difficult time understanding the concept of seasons for hunting. If she saw game, he said, it was in season.

Her home was jerry-built from pieces of wood scavenged over the years. Her many possessions were piled high against the walls “in case,” she said, “there’s ever shortages again—like during the war.”

Solberg stayed in contact with the outside world through a citizen’s band radio. (Her handle was Cougar Lady.) When a friend was unable to reach her over two days, another friend was dispatched to the shack, where her body was found. Sechelt RCMP said she died of natural causes. Her friends suspect she suffered a stroke, as there was evidence that she collapsed midway through preparing a meal.

December 14, 2002