First Person: Growing up with coyotes

Just four years ago, three Ottawa residents were attacked by coyotes in Riverside South. “It was definitely the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me,” said one woman, who had to fight off a coyote that lunged at her on the ground, and only escaped by fleeing in a car.

And the sightings have not stopped in the region. Almost every year, there’s calls for a cull or other action.

It’s something I’m familiar with from my own youth, growing up in Barrie. And yet living here in Ottawa attending Algonquin College, when I learned of this story, I realize how much worse it could’ve been.

Today, when I think of the “forest,” I think of a place that’s nice to visit, but also a spot that houses creatures who hate human lives in a primeval way.

I recall being six years old, and seeing a “Lost Cat” sign while on a walk. I pointed it out to my mom, and said, “We need to look out for her!”

Mom seemed concerned. “Yes, keep an eye out.”

As I got older, the signs kept appearing — ” Lost Cat,” “Lost Dog” — five or more times a year just in the neighbourhood. And I kept pointing them out. My parents, however, grew more and more noncommittal, often not even promising to keep an eye out unless I, in my childishness focus, kept badgering them.

When I was about ten, they finally explained it.

“There are coyotes in the woods. If the dog isn’t found quickly, he’s probably gone.”

I remember being sad, but also thinking that coyotes are cool. So I wasn’t too sad.

I asked Dad, “Have you ever seen a coyote?”

“No. Hopefully we never do.”

Around that time, a classmate at school also had her cat go missing. We were all sad for her, but, being kids, quickly went back to talking about NHL.

By the time I was 14, I’d affected a cynicism at the whole thing. I thought it was people’s own faults for letting their cats go outside, or their dogs wander off. Don’t they see the signs? Don’t they know what happened to the last outdoor cat?

And yet, when I walked our own dog some quiet evenings, I feared a howling pack would emerge from the woods and devour us both. Once, after a rainy night, I found paw-prints near the playground.

In 2022, during one coyote-caused hubbub in Ottawa, CBC quoted a resident who said he was “depressed for a week” after his cat was killed and that “it’s impossible to keep a pet home who is used to going outside.”

I had always felt smug for first not owning a family pet, and then when we got one, keeping a very close eye on him. Were these feelings merely a way to avoid acknowledging the reality of coyote danger? A smugness to ward off sadness, and blame the victims of the attack?

And in recent years, the aggression seems to have grown. This January, a coyote grabbed a dog that was right next its owner in Barrie. In Ottawa in 2022, there was a season which saw a dog killed, a cat killed, a coyote in a public park and one in a school yard. I never heard of anything like that growing up. Was I just lucky to live in a more peaceful time?

I’m not sure what the true effects of living near the coyotes was for me as a young person. I was grateful to walk in the woods, but there were many nights when I feared what lived there.

Today, I’m still quick to judge pet owners, yet I also grumble about those in urban areas without greenspace. Perhaps those who actually lost a pet to coyotes, or were attacked, feel this even more strongly. Or perhaps I’m just a grump and a paranoiac.

I do wish, honestly, that our school team here at Algonquin wasn’t called “Wolves.”