We carry three versions of Bear Smart playing cards. All are unique decks of 52 regular playing cards (plus 2 jokers) that you can use to play your favourite card games or create new variations on traditional card games.

Play your way through bear country as you learn to live with your ursine neighbours.

Get 52 Tips on Staying Safe in Bear Country while At Home, Hiking, Camping, and all about General Bear Etiquette. This deck contains 52 different photographs of black bears each with a different tip. View all the cards.

Bear~ology playing cards contain 52 different cartoons each one giving a different and  fascinating bear fact. They are not just educational, they are hilarious! Bear~ology playing cards are fun for kids, adults and the whole family. You can learn about safety around bears; and discover the truth about bears and bear behavior. View all the cards.

Get Bear Smart playing cards are a valuable educational tool and they make an ideal gift! The cards retail for $6.99 each. Shipping costs are extra. Wholesale prices are also available for stores and bear aware groups.

Bruin Dreams

Sometimes bears come to us in our dreams. They represent calm, stoic strength. Bears also indicate a time of introspection, reflection and self-observation. They symbolize the cycle of life and death and renewal. When we cross paths with the Bear in our dreams, we should set aside time to envelope ourselves in solitude and silence with a goal for rebirth and self-understanding.

Why Do Bears Play?

Few animals play more than bear cubs do, but why they play remains a mystery. They might play to practice fighting, mating, or hunting skills they will need as adults. Perhaps it's to help strengthen social bonds, reduce aggression, enhance alliances, increase tolerance, or improve group cohesion. Some bear cubs play long and hard. Others play much less. Each has its own personality. Unlike children, bears play without vocalizing. Cub play often looks like fighting, but fighting is noisy. Play is quiet and play-bites are gentle. Play often begins when a family reaches a puddle, an open field, or a soft pile of wood chips.

Aboriginal Connections

The bear held a special place in the cultures of North America's indigenous peoples. He has been revered as a healer and a teacher, a protector and a guardian, even a spirit helper. The bear has been celebrated in myths and legends and aided aboriginal peoples in their everyday lives, even appearing in their dreams and meditations. In essence, the bear has become a symbol of our intimate and inextricable relationship with nature-that we are as much animal as the bear is, depending on each other for our survival.

In Memory of Jeanie - 1990-2011

Jeanie was an extraordinary black bear who left a paw-print on the souls of all who encountered her. She will be forever remembered as an ambassador for her kind. In her willingness to accept the presence of humans, she allowed Whistlerites and international visitors a glimpse into her world. Thanks to Jeanie, we now have a richer understanding of bears, their strengths and weaknesses, their individuality and the depth of mother-love. She showed us that bears have unique emotions, quirks and personalities, and that perhaps we are more similar to bears than we imagined. Jeanie brought joy to all who were privileged to spend time in her company. She will be truly missed.

Conservation through Coexistence

The relationship between bears and humans is a complex one. We have been sharing the landscape since modern humans wandered out of Africa some 60,000 years ago. Although there were no doubt conflicts between bears and aboriginal peoples in Eurasia and North America, bears were treated with a great deal of respect.

Learn how to coexist with your wild neighbears at www.bearsmart.com.

"What is a man without the beasts?

If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to man. All things are connected. This we know. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."

-Chief Seattle, 1854

"Our task must be to free ourselves

- by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."

~ Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Bears keep me humble.

They help me to keep the world in perspective and to understand where I fit on the spectrum of life. We need to preserve the wilderness and its monarchs for ourselves, and for the dreams of children. We should fight for these things as if our life depended on it, because it does."

~ Wayne Lynch - from Bears: Monarchs of the Northern Wilderness

"With intelligence comparable to that of the great apes,

bears are highly evolved social animals-they show insight, planning, and intentional communication. Bears often share friendship, resources, and security. They form hierarchies and have structured kinship relationships. They're all individuals with unique personalities."

~ Ben Kilham, from Among the Bears

Walk in kindness to the Earth and every living being.

Without kindness and compassion for all of Mother Nature's creatures, there can be no true joy; no internal peace, no happiness. Happiness flows from caring for all sentient beings as if they were your own family, because in essence they are. We are all connected to each other and to the Earth.

~ Sylvia Dolson, Get Bear Smart Society

".. for many of us the world would be a poorer place without bears.

We keep bears because they are a part of nature and because of what they do for the human mind, body, and soul."

- Steve Herrero, a leading authority on bear ecology, behaviour, conservation and management, author of  Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance

"When a pine needle falls in the forest, the eagle sees it; the deer hears it, and the bear smells it." - Indian proverb

Bears live in a rich and complex scent-defined world. They depend on their acute sense of smell for information about the world around them. Their smelling ability is extremely sensitive; seven times greater than a bloodhound's. A complex system of social messages are communicated through trails of airborne scent; scent transferred to twigs, branches and grasses; and scents left on purpose by tree rubbing or biting, as well as scat or urine marks. In the ursine world, these messages combine to become the daily newspaper.

"Today more than ever before

life must be characterized by a sense of Universal Responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life. Life is as dear to the mute creature as it is to a man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not to die, so do other creatures." ~ His Holiness, the 14^th Dalai Lama

"It is man's sympathy with all creatures

that first makes him truly a man. Until he extends his circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace."  ~ Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Peace Prize recipient and French philosopher/physician (1875-1965)

"Bears are made of the same dust

as we, and breathe the same winds and drink of the same waters. A bear's days are warmed by the same sun, his dwellings are overdomed by the same blue sky, and his life turns and ebbs with heart-pulsings like ours and was poured from the same fountain..."  ~ John Muir (1838-1914)

"Treat the Earth well:

it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children.  We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children." ~ Indian proverb

"If we can learn to live with bears,

especially the grizzly, and if we can learn to accommodate the needs of bears in their natural environment, then maybe we can also find ways to use the finite resources of our continent and still maintain some of the diversity and natural beauty that were here when Columbus arrived." ~ Steve Herrero, a leading authority on bear ecology, behaviour, conservation and management, author of Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance

"If you see a grizzly

you instantly become one of the few who have shared moments with the species that cannot adapt to the domestication of North America, the species that defines one of the few types of wilderness we have left. Feelings of fear, inspiration, and awe may generate images of pristine North America when it was complete with bison and wolves and when humans were still pioneers treading on the edge of something big and rich beyond definition. ~ Steve Herrero, a leading authority on bear ecology, behaviour, conservation and management, author of Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance