A bear cub rescued in Northern Ontario and dubbed "Windsor" after an unusual journey to the city — including a Taco Bell pit stop — has settled into hibernation at a sanctuary.
The cub, estimated to be eight or nine months old when it was rescued, was found injured on Highway 11 south of Cochrane.
Windsor’s story gained attention in August. Rescuers transported the bear to Windsor, where the Ministry of Natural Resources and police directed them to transfer the animal to Chatham-Kent’s Pet and Wildlife Rescue Centre. From there, Bear With Us founder and president Mike McIntosh took Windsor into his care.
“Windsor is hibernating and has been for over a month,” McIntosh told TimminsToday.
SEE: 'Poor decisions were made': Injured bear cub taken on 10-hour road trip, fed Taco Bell
The unusual rescue included a Taco Bell meal for the cub and captured widespread media attention. While McIntosh appreciates the awareness the story brought to bear rehabilitation, he noted the importance of focusing on facts over sensationalism.
A challenging year for bears
Windsor is one of 51 orphaned or injured bears currently being cared for at Bear With Us in Sprucedale. It’s been a busy year for the sanctuary, with the number of bears in their care skyrocketing from 18 in September to nearly three times that now.
The increase in orphaned cubs is linked to a lack of natural food sources in parts of Ontario, which led to more human-bear interactions.
“Bears are more inclined to walk into a bait site where a hunter is hunting a bear and get shot, and unfortunately, this year, a lot of those bears were mother bears,” McIntosh said.
Next year, the bears will be released back into the district they came from.
McIntosh shared some of the success stories from 2024, including the rehabilitation and release of several injured adult bears.
One case involved an adult male shot in the head by an arrow near Thunder Bay, who recovered and was released.
“We also had a young male from Timmins who was shot through the elbow and he went back to the wild… and a female bear that came in with her two cubs, she was also shot and had a severe infection in her forearm. They were all returned to the wild in mid-November,” McIntosh said.
McIntosh said legislative changes are needed to protect bear families, particularly mother bears with cubs.
“We’d like to see mother bears and their families protected from hunting for the whole year,” he said.
Research done by the Ministry of Natural Resources indicates that the bear population in Ontario is suffering, McIntosh said.
Bear With Us, a sanctuary and rehabilitation centre for bears located in Sprucedale, Ontario, takes in bears from across Ontario and was established by McIntosh in 1992. It became a registered Canadian charity in 2000 and survives solely on the public’s donations.
McIntosh said the centre leverages its large social media following — over 118,000 followers on Facebook — to promote education about bears and coexistence with wildlife.
“The vast majority of orphaned cubs we get are due to human activity, whether it be hunting, conflict problems, or vehicle collisions. It’s all about what people are doing,” McIntosh said.
McIntosh is encouraging individuals to reduce human-bear conflicts by securing garbage, removing bird feeders in the summer and respecting bears’ natural behaviours.
As Windsor and the other bears at Bear With Us settle in for winter, McIntosh said they’re already preparing for a busy 2025, when the sanctuary will focus on releasing the animals back into the wild.
Find Bear With Us on Facebook here.