Cougarman Percy: Percy Dewar

© Copyright 2005 Liza Potvin.

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ISBN: 978-1-4120-5877-3 (sc)

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Cougarman Percy Dewar

THE SUN is just setting on the canyon and its long rays touch with a rosy luminescence the great upthrust tumbled rocks where ridge and spur meet, bringing to them the look of a large medieval castle in ruins, glowing from a fire that consumes it. Far in the distance to the east the high point of the ridge, beneath which the cougar’s ledge lies, is also touched by rosy light, but all else is in shadow. Nothing moves beneath his view but several nighthawks working the slope below, hopping erratically and momentarily catching the light and them vanishing below the shadow line. Beneath the spur’s slope below the cougar is a flat, parklike meadow, lined with trees. He yawns, rolls to his feet, and stretches with his hindquarters high and his forelegs extended before him; his curved claws, from which few prey animals ever pulled free, scrape on the rock and are retracted. He straightens with the grace that is inherent in all his movements, rubs his chin with pleasure on a protruding stone, and walks to the front of the canyon ledge on big, padded feet, surveying the canyon below. Sitting there, he resembles a great, strongly-muscled domestic cat but has a proportionately smaller head, smaller, rounded ears, white lips, and a pale belly. Then slowly he stretches again and begins moving along the ledge. In the gathering darkness, he moves toward the open meadow. As he approaches, he sets his course to make a swing around it and approach from the downhill side to get the descending breeze. The cougar’s broad head is thrust forward and swings a little with the steady gait of his walk. His yellow eyes are half-closed. His huge shoulders work smoothly, making his stride appear shorter than it actually is. The cougar’s body is supple and graceful, and the slight suggestion of clumsiness in the long hind legs is offset by the majestic flow of his long tail, held straight down nearly to the ground, where the tip of it is caught up and held in a sharp little curve. His colours blend almost perfectly with any degree of light or shade. A black line along his back, the mark that seems peculiar to the cougars of the northern part of Vancouver Island, shades through dark brown to tawny lion colour on his sides, shoulders, and haunches, while his belly and chest are lighter still. He is rugged, powerful, and sinister. Magnificent.

The cougar paces steadily and silently at the top of a ridge half way down the canyon, having scented the buck below. The smell is faint but intermittent. His pace slows, but he does not crouch low yet. With darkness for a cover, he can afford a high head. He stops and moves upwind to better catch the scent, then waits for sound, making no noise himself. There is a slight crackling of twigs below. The pupils of his eyes expand to a fierce glare, then contract. The tip of his tail twitches back and forth. That is all. There is no other warning, no sign of ferocity or eagerness, no indication of muscles keyed to the pitch of flawless action. With three great, smooth bounds, the cougar leaps on the deer’s back, and the deer’s head snaps around. Looking backwards. The cougar hooks one big front paw into the buck’s nose and opens its mouth to bite into the deer’s neck. Almost a kiss. The cougar’s near front leg is held down over the deer’s back, holding onto the shoulder. Making not a sound. Taking hardly any time. The deer makes no attempt to run nor does he struggle to get free. The cougar and the deer simply twist and writhe together in a slow dance, settling slowly toward the ground. The buck cries out once and then dies. Death is simple, fascinating. A mystery.

Here is another mystery: all the native totem poles on the West Coast honour many animals, but not all include the Cougar. The Nootka actively disliked the mountain lion and claimed not to have understood its nature. There are few extant myths or stories about the cougar. The only myth I’ve read involves the cougar’s disreputable performance as the malevolent animal that clawed the whale’s body from chin to breastbone, which is how the whale came to have slits alongside its body. Yet every Native culture except those in the Arctic encountered the cougar, attested to by the many names by which it became known to European settlers.

Has the cougar always inspired awe and reverence? Or just fear? Or is its existence so shadowy and invisible that it might be inviting a wrathful encounter with the spirit world to depict the Cougar at all? Some think the cougar so mysterious and sneaky that they wonder if it is real; only the morning evidence of its carnage confirms its existence. Only big eyes glowing in the dark. A half-glimpsed shadow seen between the trees. Possibly the source of evil. How to depict something never seen very clearly? And who would dare to take on the mask of the Cougar? How to search for his spirit when his presence is sensed out there but never verified by the light of day?

These and other mysteries have long haunted one man who has spent his whole life on Vancouver Island and knows it intimately: Percy Dewar. His life story is a fascinating one: he spent the first half of it hunting cougars, and the second half, attempting to preserve them. My life is remarkably different from his, but somehow we sense in one another a kindred spirit. Over the years, Percy has become part of my family. But I must back up, and mention how we met:

Once upon a time, my marriage fell apart. I did not know who I was. What corner of the world do we choose to search for answers? Or does it choose us? I went to Strathcona Park and got into a canoe on Buttle Lake for a solo canoe trip so that I could clear my mind. It was a time when I was seeking to build up my confidence again. At the lodge, I registered for a rope-climbing course, determined to overcome my fear of heights. One day on my canoe trip, I met a strange man who had Akbash hounds – a breed of dog I had never met before. I did not want to trespass on his property, as he clearly wished to be undisturbed. He was spry, under 5’10", with an iron grey crew-cut, unassuming in appearance.

He seemed bashful but somehow dangerous, aloof. Days later, eating lunch at the Strathcona Park Lodge, there was the man again, being fed by the lodge owner in return for chores he had completed. The owner, Merna Bolding, claims that Percy has lifetime dining privileges at the lodge, after all the work he has done from them. When I asked what his chores consisted of, Percy described his most recent job for the lodge. At sixty-nine years old, Percy was putting in sixty hydro poles around Strathcona Park. Here is what he told me of that project:

The Lodge decided to put in a hydro plant. This involved a pelting wheel at the lake and a pipeline a mile up the mountain and a damn in the creek that is three miles away from the lodge. So it’s taken sixty poles to carry the power to the lodge itself. There are some old logging roads already on the mountain, so I decided to work on them and repair them since there had been a lot of slides. It took a huge amount of work to make them driveable. I used my bulldozer on the roads, and also to drag the poles to where they had to go. The holes had to be dug, of course, so it’s taken me most of a year to get that much done. There were six young guys working on the job, and once the poles were in, they had to climb. I went up all the poles but two!

I asked him what else he did by way of maintenance around the lodge. He told me that he got the pipeline started up each spring time and maintained it throughout the winter. He once spent several weeks realigning the pipes to improve the flow. And he told me the story of how his dog Magee, observing Percy carrying the 330 ft. plastic pipes, began to carry them to aid his