Dad hears bear kill his daughter as they talk by phone from family cabin in Canada

Stephanie Blais, a 44-year-old teacher, had called her father by satellite phone Thursday evening to report fixing a broken waterline at the family’s cabin at McKie Lake in Canada.

Blais told her 9-year-old son to retrieve an antenna from inside the cabin for better reception, said Hubert Esquirol of Saskatchewan, CBC News reported.

Then Esquirol heard a strange gurgling noise over the phone.

“I waited, and I stayed on the line (for) two minutes, and I called her name and I said, ‘Hello,’ and I got no response,” Esquirol said, according to CTV News. He called back a few minutes later but no one picked up.

Blais, a mother of two, had been attacked and killed by a black bear while on the satellite phone outside the cabin, Global News reported.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police said it’s the first fatal bear attack in the Buffalo Narrows area of Saskatchewan in central Canada since 1983, according to the publication.

The bear probably came up behind Blais as she talked on the phone, CBC News reported.

“We speculate that he would have probably jumped up and grabbed her by the neck,” Esquirol said, according to the network.

Curtis, her husband, rushed out from the cabin’s kitchen and pepper-sprayed the bear, then shot it twice when it didn’t flee, CTV News reported. He tried to perform CPR on Blais before calling Esquirol to tell him his daughter had died.

Esquirol said the family had never had problems with bears at the cabin before, 650 CKOM reported. He’d been at the cabin himself just a week earlier.

“We never leave any food around, we have never given them a reason to stay,” he said, according to the station. “There has never been any provoked bears or any that seemed angry. They would always run off.”

Conservation officials said the attack appeared to be unprovoked, CBC News reported.

“We’re very surprised by this. I mean, bears don’t usually do this,” said Greg Johnson, an inspector with the Ministry of Environment conservation officer services, according to the network. “You know, to have an unprovoked attack like this is very, very rare in most cases.”

Esquirol praised Curtis Blais, saying he reacted properly to the attack, CTV News reported.

“It could have been so much worse,” Esquirol said, 650 CKOM reported. “The children could have been near her at the time of the attack.”

This story was originally published August 25, 2020 at 12:38 PM with the headline "Dad hears bear kill his daughter as they talk by phone from family cabin in Canada."