Ole the Bear
By: Hannah Busch, Hallah-Donovan Johnson, Melinda Brown
“Ole the Bear” is the nickname for a legendary outdoorsman, mail carrier, and local legend whose birth name Andrew Weterberg marks a road name south of town near the airport. As many of our pioneers exemplify, this was a tough town that required hardy people to survive here.
Andrew Westerberg began his career as mail carrier in 1914 and ended it 35 years later, when he was 70 years old. A one way trip to French Creek was 70 miles. He made 15 trips per year at $45 per trip (and, after the Big Bend Highway was constructed, only $25), doing 2 per month in the 3 months of summer and 1 trip each month in the remaining 9 months. In the winter, mail had to leave the morning of the 15th each month. Needles to say, in winter, he skied the mail route.
“Ole the Bear” earned his nickname due to several encounters with bears.
One of the stories was at the Oriental Hotel when Albert Stone asked him for a bear hide. The trap was set up around nine kilometres south of Revelstoke and quickly caught a bear. Ole didn’t have a rifle with him at the time, so he had to use a hand axe to kill the bear. He skinned it and brought the bear back into the hotel that same night.
Ole the Bear was also attacked by a bear one day on his route.
He'd been hauling a load of mail up the Big Bend when he turned a corner and saw the outline of a grizzly bear. He barely had time to react before being pushed back by the giant animal. After tearing holes in his jacket, the bear pushed him down a hill, where they rolled together down the slope. After they landed, Ole got to his feet before the bear, grabbed his rifle which he'd lost in the fall, and shot the grizzly. The bear still attacked him, and he fell on his back with the bear on top of him. He could feel the blood from the bear's wound and the bear went limp. Almost immobile under the weight of the dead bear, Ole eventually shimmied his way out and continued on his route. This is the kind of frontier bravado the marks many of the pioneers in Revelstoke - tough, practical, and skilled in survival.
Ole the bear was once known as Andrew Rupert Westerlund. He came to Canada from Sweden in 1900." Ole" was a common nickname given to Scandinavians and when he arrived to Canada he decided to change his last name to "Westerberg". Andrew first settled in Alberta, but one day, when he was on his way to Vancouver, he ran into two men who were miners on their way to the Big Bend who offered him work and Andrew couldn’t say no. Andrew spent the next few years hunting, trapping and prospecting. In 1909 He married Annie Kate from Norway. They lived 6km south of Revelstoke and had 7 children. In 1914 Andrew got a mail contract up the Big Bend to French Creek.
