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You would never think that a landlocked university in southern Ontario would create a marine biology department on campus, much less house a living polar bear for five years. But that’s exactly what the University of Guelph did during the1960’s and 1970’s.
Within the zoology department, under what would eventually become the College of Biological Sciences (CBS), professor Keith Ronald started with installing a tank for one seal and one otter in an area known as the seal ponds in 1966.
The seal ponds and another building behind the OVC housed up to 26 seals during its 30 years of operations from 1966-1997 (At Guelph, 1983.
The seals became the focus of international attention when the university hosted the first International Symposium on the Biology of the Seal in August 1972. The work that professor and then dean Keith Ronald published, as well as numerous other researchers from their work with the seals, has been invaluable to the international research community. Guelph’s seal research program resulted in about 200 academic papers and drew some 40 graduate students to study at Guelph.
When College Royal was in its 55th year the seals were on display to the general public.
One article in the Guelph University News Bulletin from March 8, 1979 highlighted a rare event.
One of the three captive harbor seals on campus was expecting. This was the first of its kind in a scientific laboratory facility. The program went on to have many more seals born in these facilities before the program folded.
While the seals are a remarkable story in their own right and the program “made Guelph the leading centre for marine mammal research in the world” according to dean Ronald, it may not be common knowledge to those outside the CBS community.
While the foundation of this story lies in the history of seals, the real story is about Huxley.
While taking an environmental sciences class, I first heard the rumour that a polar bear named Huxley had once lived in the seal ponds among the trees in a caged area. After some investigation, those rumours seem true.
Canadian Wildlife Services numbered him CWS007, but despite a number that would lead you to believe he was a secret spy, Huxley as he came to be, was anything but that. He was named after Julian Huxley, who was the godfather of researcher Robin Best, who tragically passed away in his 30’s. To keep Huxley from being euthanized by the Toronto Zoo, Robin worked with him when he was brought to Guelph.
Huxley’s remarkable story began in the polar bear capital of the world in Churchill, Manitoba, back in the early 1970’s. I had the pleasure of speaking with James Raffan, author of Ice Walker, published in 2020. He worked with Huxley during his time in CBS alongside Robin Best and dean Keith Ronald among many others.
He told me that Huxley was a nuisance bear who had spent some time in bear jail in Churchill. This is common practice in a community where people can be hurt or killed by a polar bear that is no longer deterred by the humans that live in these areas. The bear jail is a humane way of conditioning a bear to fear being captured and then releasing them further away to hunt and hopefully not return to the town. Unfortunately, the reason the bears come into town in the first place is the source of food that they find in the town dump, so it still attracts them despite this deterrent.
A New York Times article written by Jay Walz in October 1971 mentioned that 24 polar bears had become a nuisance in the town and were airlifted to remote locations over 200 kms away. This was done by the International Fund for Animal Welfare to keep the bears from being euthanized by the government of Manitoba.
Surprisingly, within 15 days, two of the bears had made their way back to town. Polar bears travel at a typical rate of 8 km per day, but these two had averaged 16 km per day to return to their feeding ground, the town dump. Jack Howard, acting chief of the wildlife operations for the Manitoba government at that time was astonished by the “speed and stamina displayed by the returning animals”.
While I cannot confirm that Huxley was one of the two returning bears, he was considered one of the nuisance bears during that reporting, and would have been euthanized had the University of Guelph not stepped in.
In February 1973 the U of G News Bulletin reported that Huxley had made international headlines the year before, possibly alluding to the fact that he and another bear in this story were in fact the two who had returned. It went on to state that he was now “working for the University of Guelph”.
The four year old male weighing almost half a ton became a research project along with another bear. He underwent a series of tests in a Churchill test facility to measure his physiological responses during various activities. Some of these on a 4,000 pound custom built treadmill that could produce speeds up to 20 miles per
hour that was made in Cambridge and shipped to Churchill (Acton, 1975).
The research was to determine variations in response to temperature change and stress in a changing arctic environment. The project was jointly financed by the Canadian Wildlife Service, government of Manitoba, World Wildlife Fund Canada and the Canadian National Sportsmen’s Show. It was reported that once the tests were performed he would be released back into the sub-Artic or retired to the newly established Toronto Zoo.
On June 7, 1973, the Toronto Zoo received Huxley, along with the other polar bear named Mr. Pooh. His new home was going to be opening its doors in 1974, but poor Huxley didn’t get along with the other bears that had been donated to the zoo.
On Oct. 26, 1974, Huxley was shipped in a wooden crate westbound across the 401 and dropped at the U of G’s doors. His polar bear partner, Mr. Pooh was later shipped to the San Antonio Zoo in April of 1978, where he lived out his days until he passed in April 1999.
In an article printed in the Acton Free Press newspaper on Feb. 19, 1975 there was a plea made for donations to build a cage for Huxley. If the money could not be raised the Toronto Zoo would euthanize him . Another article in the Waterloo Region Record asked for the same thing. This article also mentioned that Huxley had been living in his crate for some time (Waterloo Region Record, 1975).
An anonymous former employee told me that Huxley resided within the seal ponds in a secured enclosure, but that his roaring was attracting too much attention and it became a safety concern. Another person confirmed Huxley lived there for a short time as well.
Eventually Huxley had a cage made for him and he was moved once again to a secured building behind the OVC called the Zoology Annex III building. When James Raffan began his studies in marine biology it was around the time Huxley was saved from being euthanized and brought to Guelph. James conducted light tests with the bear and the bear was taught to nudge a yes or no paddle to acknowledge if he saw the light or not.
The building he was housed in was secured with a double door entry and Huxley was inside a metal cage.
James deeply regrets watching Huxley grow more and more agitated as the time went by, and eventually left the lab environment to research polar bears in the wild. To this day it is something that he deeply regrets and he dedicated his novel to Huxley.
Information from 1975-1979 has been harder to come by as most of the researchers who worked directly with Huxley have sadly all passed. Everything was done to spare Huxley from being euthanized, and any ethics board we would have had back in those days would have oversight into how Huxley was treated, and I’d like to believe that treatment was as humane as it could be.
I can confirm that Huxley was finally put to rest in 1979. I’m told his skin hangs within the walls of the vertebrate laboratory building on campus, although I have been unable to view it.
Huxley was a remarkable study subject, and his time with the university should be recognized formally along with the seals in the seal program. The seal ponds, where he resided for a short while still remains, but is in a dilapidated state.
It was recently discovered here that numerous animals are making the fenced off grounds their habitat, including a rare spatterdock darner dragonfly that “is likely to be listed as threatened or endangered in the future”. The dragonflies use the seal ponds for breeding, so covering them over would interfere with the survival of their offspring.
Past recommendations have been suggested for this site as mentioned in the 2004 Arbortetum Master Plan where it was stated that it be “decommissioned, undergo landscape restoration and revert to Arboretum use”.
The site should be reviewed for further conservation efforts to protect the biodiversity present, including the rare dragonfly, and also to fund an educational program to honor Huxley and the seal progam, including plaques and information signs. Conversations at present time are pointing to a process to do just this at a later date, but nothing formally has been put into plan.
It will be an honor for me and others to see the area represented as an educational site that provides homage to a bear who gave his freedoms for the pursuit of science.
Sarah Evelyn is a graduate of the University of Guelph
