Don't Run's protagonist encounters a realistic spectrum of regional attitudes toward wolves

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In April, 1996, newly-graduated biologist Patricia Wyman was mauled to death at her “dream job,” tending captive wolves at the Haliburton Forest Wolf Centre Sanctuary. Commenting on the fact that she had entered the wolf enclosure alone, a wolf biologist rather delicately commented, “Her love of wolves perhaps made her a little more bold than she should have been.”

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Was Wyman’s “boldness” linked to a common belief that (rabies-free) wolves don’t attack or kill people? The image of the harmless-to-humans wolf was promoted by Canadian conservationist Farley Mowat in his internationally popular 1963 best-seller, Never Cry Wolf, a fictional account of the author’s experiences spending a solitary Arctic summer bonding with “mouse-eating” wolves.

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Mowat’s “myth of the benign wolf” was comprehensively unpacked in a 2008 article for the conservation site Boone and Crockett Club by the late wildlife behaviour expert Valerius Geist. Biologists knew Mowat’s romantic homage was bunk, Geist........

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