BANFF – This month marks the 20th anniversary of the fatal cougar attack on Frances Frost as she cross-country skied near Lake Minnewanka in Banff National Park.
To this day, the Jan. 2, 2001 death of the 30-year-old Canmore resident remains the only fatal cougar attack in Alberta’s history.
“It was so out of the blue. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Frances’ mother Laura Frost in a telephone interview from her home in Calgary this week.
“She would be 50 now. That’s unbelievable to me.”
A free-spirited nature lover, dancer, artist and outdoor enthusiast, Frances had set out on her own around noon to ski the Cascade fire road – a trail she often skied, including with her family.
Locals reported spotting Frances on the trail with a big smile on her face, but it was later learned the wild cat had stalked and attacked her about 90 minutes later as she returned from her ski – about 300 metres from her vehicle.
The cougar was scared off by the people who came across Frances. By the time Parks Canada wardens arrived at the scene, the wild cat had returned to its kill and was shot on site.
Laura said Frances had left that morning without carrying any formal identification, other than a card from The Banff Centre where she was a dancer-in-residence.
Though she and her late husband Ed Frost had their suspicions, Laura said they didn’t get confirmation that Frances was the one killed in the cougar attack until later that evening when a policeman came to their door.
She said she recalls they read a headline in a national newspaper about a 30-year-old woman being killed by a cougar in Banff earlier in the day.
“We looked at it, and Ed and I were just petrified because it sounded like it was Frances,” Laura said.
“We tried to get in touch with her all that day, but we didn’t get officially notified until quite late in the evening. It was such a shock.”
Frances had just recovered from a cold over the Christmas period, so that January day was the first chance she had to get out skiing again.
“Fran, I think, was pretty tired because she had been really sick with a cold all Christmas,” Laura said. “I’ve often wondered if the cougar didn’t sense that about her.”
In the 12 hours leading up to Frances’ death on Jan. 2, 2001 – which was an extremely rare event – there had been a flurry of cougar activity in and around the Banff townsite.
A cougar attacked an Alaskan husky belonging to the Peck family outside their home on Buffalo Street at 3 a.m., but a neighbour chased it off and the large dog survived the attack.
Then, in the pre-dawn darkness around 6:15 a.m., local Cheryl Hyde was out for her typical morning walk in the Middle Springs neighbourhood with her schnauzer when a cougar began to follow her.
Awakened by Hyde’s screams and calls for help, Gary Doyle raced out of his Glacier Drive home to find Hyde pinned up against his backyard fence, with the cougar crouched less than a metre away.
Doyle hauled Hyde to safety. He was later given an award from the Town of Banff, where Hyde worked at the time, for his bravery in rescuing her. “He saved my life,” Hyde said at the time.
It was later discovered the cougar had a kill site about 20 metres away.
The cougar was tracked and captured in a Cave Avenue backyard three days later on Jan. 5. It was relocated to the remote Clearwater area of Banff National Park.
At the time, Parks Canada officials theorized competition for a limited food supply among wolves and cougars may have been the reason behind elevated big cat activity.
In the previous 18 months, Parks had relocated about 150 habituated elk out of the area in an attempt to restore natural ecosystem processes and reduce the number of elk attacks and close encounters with people.
“The wolves and elk are competing for that elk base, that’s their food,” Ian Syme, a retired Parks Canada employee who was the chief park warden, said at the time.
“As a result, the elk are coming in quite a bit closer to town, and as a result, the cougars are feeding on those elk closer to town.”
After all of the cougar events of that day, Ed and Laura devoured all the information they could about cougars.
Ironically, Laura was associate chair for research at the University of Alberta’s department of biological sciences at the time, where she knew many wildlife ecologists and animal behaviourist specialists.
Despite what happened to their daughter, Laura has no ill feelings toward cougars and insists people can’t live their lives in fear of them.
“Cougars are part of nature; you know they are out there and you give them big respect,” she said.
“With everything I’ve read about them, they have a pretty hard life. It’s a constant battle to find enough to eat.”
Before Ed’s health started deteriorating prior to his death in 2019, he and Laura would ski the Cascade fire road together every year to honour Frances.
“There’s a sign there that says, ‘beware of cougars.’ That was put up because of Frannie,” she said.
Laura said a parent never gets over the loss of losing child, no matter how they die.
“There’s not a day I don’t miss her,” she said.
Cougar killed during capture and handling process
Fast forward 20 years. In recent weeks, Banff is seeing elevated cougar activity in and around the townsite. It is not an uncommon time of year to have a rash of cougar activity with its prey base in the valley bottoms.
More than 10 cougar sightings in and around the Banff townsite have been reported to Parks Canada over the past two weeks, including at the corner of Muskrat and Fox Street as well as at the top of the stairs at Bow Falls.
“On Jan. 19, there was a cougar in somebody’s backyard on Kluane,” said Dan Rafla, a human-wildlife management specialist. “It was seen from inside a house and was alerted because of barking dogs.”
Based on this ongoing elevated cougar activity, Parks Canada’s wildlife team made a decision to capture and collar one of the cougars often seen in daylight hours to better track and monitor where and what it was doing.
Unfortunately, the capture and handling process that took place on Friday (Jan. 22) went horribly wrong and an adult female cougar ended up dying from acute respiratory failure, as determined by a necropsy.
In addition, a young-of-the-year kitten believed to belong to this female cougar was found dead on Tunnel Mountain earlier that day while Parks was setting up the trap for the adult cat.
The six to eight-month-old cougar, weighing about 50 pounds, died of unknown causes, but it’s possible it was attacked by a male cougar. It’s been sent to a veterinary diagnostic laboratory for a necropsy to determine a cause of death.
Justin Brisbane, a communications officer for Banff National Park, said wildlife staff captured, immobilized and fitted the adult female cougar with a radio collar shortly before dusk on Friday – and the animal appeared to be in good condition.
“Parks Canada personnel, including an on-staff wildlife veterinarian, monitored its vital signs throughout the procedure, which appeared strong,” he wrote in the statement.
“Unfortunately, as the cougar was in the late stages of recovering from the anesthesia, it suddenly stopped breathing and, despite immediate rescue efforts by Parks Canada staff, the cougar died.”
Brisbane said the wildlife team has an extremely high level of expertise and experience in handling wildlife, and are certified by the Canadian Association of Zoo and Wildlife Veterinarians, a certification they must re-certify regularly.
“The death of a cougar in this event is rare and unusual,” Brisbane said. “Parks Canada continues to investigate the situation.”
John Marriott, a local wildlife photographer who has been tracking cougars in Banff and Canmore for a cougar conservation project, said he has been keeping tabs on this female cougar for three years now.
Having had some of the most remarkable wildlife experiences of his career photographing her, Marriott said he went through the gamut of emotions from anger and frustration to utter sadness when he heard she had died.
“I would say at this point I am devastated, but I understand it was just a terrible accident,” Marriott said, noting no blame should be put on Parks Canada staff who were wanting to keep close tabs on the animal.
“They were trying to do something very beneficial, and that is to find out where this cougar and where other cougars are living in this interface zone, which is literally in backyards that melds straight into forest.”
Located in national park, Banff is probably the only community in Canada that would tolerate cougars hunting and killing deer not far from people’s backyards, Marriott said.
“That deserves a tremendous amount of kudos … Parks Canada could have very easily taken the road everyone else takes and kills them,” he said.
The death of the female cougar will likely change the dynamics of the cougar population around Banff, with perhaps a new cougar or two moving in to take over her territory.
“That female on Tunnel, in particular, knew exactly how to coexist with us and I suspect she saw us all the time and we usually didn’t have a clue she was there,” Marriott said.
As for the overall population in the Bow Valley, Marriott said the untimely death of the cougar is a temporary hit, particularly because she was a breeding female, but cougars are remarkably resilient.
“I’m pretty sure there’s already another young cat up there, so maybe it will stick around now and become the female that takes over her core range,” he said.
“And if the male sticks around, then by next winter or the winter after, we’ll have some new kittens on the scene.”
Before she died last Friday, this female cougar had killed a mule deer about 10 metres off Tunnel Mountain Road in a forested gully towards the campground on Tuesday (Jan. 19).
“When we showed up the cat was still on the kill,” Rafla said.
“It fled uphill, into cover in more of the forested area towards Tunnel Mountain proper.”
Because the cougar’s kill wasn’t in the heart of town or a highly busy area, Rafla said a decision was made to relocate the deer carcass to a safer area not too far away.
“Hopefully with the intention that the cougar that killed the animal would find it again,” he said, adding a spot closure was put in place for public safety and to give the animal security as she fed.
“We do realize it’s quite a challenge for wildlife to be successful in predation, so when we can try and leave it on the landscape, we do.”
At the initial kill site, only the one adult cougar was spotted, but remote cameras set up at the new location of the carcass revealed there were two wild cats.
“The photos aren’t great, but it does appear it is likely a mother with an offspring,” Rafla said.
The previous week, a sick eight-year-old female cougar that had successfully hunted and killed two deer in the same area of town on the north side of the Bow River, was euthanized Jan. 13.
On Jan. 10, the cougar followed a long-term Banff resident who was walking his dog on leash by the pedestrian bridge, coming to within two metres before fleeing.
The big cat was likely back in town that night for a mule deer it had killed and stashed in a nearby vacant lot on Muskrat Street under the cover of darkness earlier that day.
Then about 3:50 a.m., on Jan. 13, wildlife officials responded to a report of a cougar near Muskrat Street and Wolf Street, and they tracked the cat to backyard of a home on Buffalo Street near the pedestrian bridge.
“Literally, it was in the backyard on its kill,” Rafla said. “We had an opportunity to tranquilize it, which we did do.”
Upon closer examination, the cougar appeared to be in general poor health: emaciated and dehydrated with various injuries, including a broken upper canine tooth.
The condition of the cougar, the confrontation with the man walking his on-leash dog and the two kill sites in a residential neighbourhood close to downtown all played into the decision euthanize the animal.
“Weighing all the evidence and the risk going forward, we felt this was the necessary decision to make,” Rafla said, noting it was a quorum decision of wildlife experts, wildlife veterinarian, and resource conservation manager.
With other cougars believed to be active and hunting on the periphery of Banff, a widespread cougar warning remains in effect for the townsite and surrounding areas.
In addition, a closure has been put in place on Tunnel Mountain and east of Tunnel Mountain to the Hoodoo trailhead.
“This is intended to secure habitat for cougars hunting in the area, and give the animals the space they need to successfully hunt,” Brisbane said.
Parks Canada reminds residents and visitors to report all cougar sightings within the Town of Banff to Banff Dispatch at 403-762-1470.
“Important to us is reporting any evidence, whether it’s fresh tracks or a kill, or cougar sighting, to call that in in real time,” Rafla said.
In addition, Parks Canada asks people to follow all the safety precautions: be cautious at dusk and dawn, make noise, carry bear spray and know how to use it, keep pets on a leash, and consider walking your dog in daylight hours if possible.
Another key message is to never travel alone and to keep everyone together in the group.
To that end, Laura Frost wonders if the outcome would have been different had Frances not skied alone that January day 20 years ago.
“She was a free spirit,” she said, adding the free-spirited nature of her daughter was one of the things she loved most. “In retrospect, I wish she’d had a buddy.”
