More information has emerged about the two campers killed by a grizzly in Banff National Park last Friday.
Doug Inglis, 62, and Jenny Gusse, 62, died on day 5 of a week-long backcountry trip in a remote area of the park northeast of Lake Louise, according to Doug Inglis’s uncle, Colin Inglis.
Colin Inglis told the CBC that he had been receiving daily reports from the couple’s Garmin InReach. That day, he received a message that the pair hadn’t reached their planned destination, but they were fine and were setting up camp.
But later that evening, he received a second, more dire message that said, “bear attack bad.”
Parks Canada officials told him that the two were attacked in their tent, along with their seven-year-old border collie, which also died in the attack.
“Their tent was crushed and their e-readers were open, they were both discovered in their stocking feet,” Colin Inglis told The National Post.
The couple had been together since university and went camping at least twice a year, often while canoeing. Doug Inglis was a scientist and his wife Jenny was head technician in the same lab. They lived in Lethbridge, Alberta, 200 kilometers south of Calgary.
Parks Canada said that one of the two cans of bear spray had been deployed. The other had not. With such experienced outdoor people, it was a case of the “wrong place at the wrong time,” Inglis said. “This bear was not to be deterred.”
Bear attacks are rare and even more rarely fatal. This was the first fatal grizzly attack in Banff National Park in decades, park officials said.
