Set in 1960s Calgary and Alberta‘s backcountry, this reissue of In the Bear’s House tells the story of a creative young mother, Clare Dunlop, raising her deaf son against the insurmountable odds of poverty, mental illness and hardship.
The novel opens as seventeen-year-old Clare gives birth to her son, while her husband serves a penitentiary sentence for a serious crime. After contracting pneumonia, her infant son loses his hearing.
Later, the young boy, nicknamed Trout, struggles to find his way until his 99-year-old auntie gives him a conch shell. For Trout, the conch becomes a literal and metaphorical hearing aid. He cannot hear the sea in the shell. Instead, he hears the mad swirl of the adult world around him full of contradictions and deceptions. Out of chaos, he finds clarity.
At the death of his beloved auntie, Trout spirals out of control, getting into serious trouble at school and at home. His mother, challenged with chronic depression and the impending birth of her fifth child, sends 12 year old Trout to live with her deaf uncle, Jack, in the wilderness of historic Kootenay Plains. There, Trout thrives, finding adventure, connection, and belonging, with his forest ranger great-uncle and his musician wife. Trout learns the wisdom of survival, listening and observing, from the elders of his own Scottish clan and those of the nearby Îyârhe Nakoda. He bears witness to land theft from First Nations to build the controversial and environmentally ruinous Bighorn Dam.
Despite its devastating sociological and ecological impact, the dam becomes Alberta’s largest reservoir and hydroelectric plant. Trout sees what others may not. Both the rugged beauty of the land, and especially its people, the destruction of their sacred places, homes and livelihoods. Disability becomes an unexpected gift of insight. In the Bear’s House is ultimately about listening to the wild and the wilderness, and what we lose when it’s gone.
MEET THE AUTHOR
Photo Credit: Lisa Stein
Born in Calgary, Alberta, on Treaty Seven lands, Bruce was deafened as an infant and afflicted with low vision much of his adult life. After high school, he worked as a labourer, equipment operator, Zamboni driver, and completed his technical education as a gardener and arborist. In his late twenties, his poetry earned him a scholarship to the Banff School of Fine Arts to study with novelist W.O. Mitchell and poet Irving Layton. He went on to York University to study the humanities and taught in the creative writing department before landing a position at Seneca College. He is an active writer, editor, speaker and mentor.
BOOKS IN PRINT
COMING EVENTS
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RECENT HIGHLIGHTS
SARA BINI READS C'È UNA STRADA - THERE IS A ROAD (by Bruce Hunter)
Bruce read with Sara Bini April 3, 2025 in Florence. Bruce was absolutely honoured by her marvellous Italian/English reading of his poem "There is a Rose" from Galestro. Grazie Mille, amica cara, poetessa. A presto, Sara.
Sandro Pecchiari and Giovanni Fierro interview Bruce Hunter for Fare Voci
In January, 2025 Bruce was interviewed for Fare Voci magazine about his presence in Italy. “I fell in love with her in sixth grade and my mind and heart were captured forever after my first visit in 2012, one week after I retired. It opened a whole new phase in my life as I say here. Grazie, caro amici.”
RECENT REVIEWS
ARTICOLO DI SARA CABITTA
NELLA CASA DELL'ORSO
William Dunlop nasce alle 5:29, a metà della terza settimana di maggio del 1952 presso il Policlinico di Calgary. Sua madre Clare è rimasta incinta a diciassette anni e aspettava Will da due mesi quando lei e Lowell si sono sposati, il novembre dell’anno prima. Ora è sola con il bambino, suo marito deve scontare due anni in carcere per aggressione. C’è stato un momento in cui ha pensato al divorzio, un’idea subito abbandonata, che potrebbe fare da sola con un bimbo piccolo? Ha conosciuto Lowell a quattordici anni, quando i suoi voti a scuola le permettevano di fare progetti per una borsa di studio e l’università. Non immaginava che quell’incontro al Caffè Lido a Sunnyside portasse a questo. Lowell era spavaldo, aveva due anni più di lei, indossava un completo Zoot e guidava una macchina truccata.
"Galestro"
- Giovanni Fierro, Fare Voci (Italy)
The poetry of Bruce Hunter, a Canadian author who in his book "Galestro" explores nature and childhood, pays homage to jazz, finds closeness and belonging to his native Canada and also to his beloved Tuscany, moves with a broad and deep breath. But not only that, his writing builds a spirituality where bonds, of love and friendship but not only, permeate his every word, every poem.
“Sleepless and dreamers, all of us, / afloat in the fresh blue bubbles of his hot jazz / which illuminated the black silk sky / where I courted my young love, / and I mentioned a couple of dance steps under the lamps, / all the possibilities of the road and of faith”, and it is already a sound that welcomes the reader, a listening that becomes dance, movement of soul and body, possibility of discovery and self-definition.
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