Canadian Travel Correspondent & Photographer
Food • Family • Land • Water • Travel • Canada
Bella Bear didn’t exactly take the conventional route into journalism.
While attending university, Bella spent her summers tree planting—long days, rough country, questionable camp meals and enough blackflies to last several lifetimes. The work took her into parts of Canada most people only ever see through a windshield, and somewhere between the logging roads, small towns and endless stretches of forest, she became fascinated with the country beyond its biggest cities.
She started carrying a camera.
What began as photographs of the places she worked became photographs of the people she met, the meals they shared, the landscapes around them and the little things that make one Canadian community completely different from the next.
Eventually, the tree-planting shovel was retired and the camera became permanent.
Today, Bella is North of Polite’s Canadian Travel Correspondent and Photographer, travelling the country looking for stories that aren’t necessarily found on Parliament Hill or at a press conference.
Because Canada isn’t only what happens in Ottawa.
It’s the fishing wharf before sunrise. The family recipe that’s been handed down for generations. The northern highway that disappears over the horizon. The river a community depends upon. The small-town diner everybody knows. The people who work the land. And sometimes, it’s simply sitting somewhere beautiful long enough to understand why the people who live there never wanted to leave.
Bella Across Canada
Bella’s major ongoing project is Bella Across Canada—a journey through all ten provinces and three territories, spending roughly a month exploring each one.
Each week, Bella will visit another community, city, landmark or locally treasured place. Along the way she’ll explore regional foods and recipes, local history, wildlife, landscapes and the people who call that part of Canada home.
And whenever possible, Bella will have a local guide.
Not necessarily a human one.
Across Canada there are individual wild animals that have become part of their communities’ stories. Bella will meet some of them along the way, beginning in Alberta with one of Canada’s best-known grizzlies—Banff’s Bear 122, better known as The Boss.
The adventures may be told with a little North of Polite imagination, but the places, wildlife, history and information behind them will be real and researched.
Bella’s Corner
Bella also has another side to her work: food, family, home, nature, traditions, recipes, photography, seasonal living, and the relationship Canadians have with the land and water around them.
Those stories have a home of their own in Bella’s Corner, Bella’s exclusive North of Polite Patreon membership.
For $10 CAD per month, members can follow Bella beyond the regular North of Polite newsroom through exclusive travel stories, photography, regional recipes, local discoveries, wildlife encounters and behind-the-scenes dispatches—including her ongoing Bella Across Canada journey.
Supporting Bella’s Corner also helps support the independent work of North of Polite. Our regular journalism remains free for everyone. You’re not paying to unlock the news—Bella’s Corner is something extra for readers who want to come along for the adventure while helping an independent Canadian publication continue its work.
Come hungry. Bring a camera. And pack for Canadian weather.
