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Brian Nation Nancy Crowther, Cougar Lady of the BC CoastCrowther was born in England and came to Canada as a child with her family. They left the English countryside for the extremely isolated country around Okeover Inlet, north of Powell River, where they established a homestead. Grant Lawrence describes the family's migration as an extraordinary journey from rural England into the coastal wilderness of British Columbia. Apple Podcasts They settled around Penrose Bay on Okeover Inlet, in what is now the Desolation Sound region. This was genuine subsistence country: relatively little road access, dense forest, boats as an essential means of transportation, and livestock and gardens important to survival. Cabana Desolation Eco Resort How she became “Cougar Nancy” The defining event occurred in 1939, when Crowther was still a teenager. A cougar had been killing the family's goats — an economically serious matter during the Depression. Nancy went after it with dogs and a single-shot rifle that apparently didn't shoot particularly straight. She wounded the animal and ultimately killed it. That episode brought her considerable local attention. Winnipeg Free Press It wasn't a one-off. Over her life Crowther is reported to have killed 23 cougars, principally because they threatened livestock. A Desolation Sound history describes her as having shot more than twenty over roughly five decades. Cabana Desolation Eco Resort That's the origin of the name “Cougar Nancy.” The war years — Powell River mill World War II changed her life significantly. Crowther left the isolation of the family homestead to work at the Powell River pulp-and-paper mill, as women increasingly filled industrial positions vacated by men serving in the armed forces. And there's unusually good contemporary evidence for this. A 1943 Powell River Company publication actually pictures Nancy Crowther at work. The caption identifies:
The accompanying article discusses women taking jobs previously performed by men, including work as cappers, machine operators, screen tenders and other industrial positions. Qathet Museum So this portion of the story isn't simply later folklore — Nancy turns up in the documentary record during the war. The fire While Nancy was working at the Powell River mill, disaster struck the Crowther homestead. According to Lawrence's reconstruction, Nancy returned from work to find the family cabin burning. The fire became one of the major episodes in the family's history and forms an entire chapter of The Cougar Lady Chronicles. Apple Podcasts Oyster farming This is another particularly interesting part of her life. In 1949 Nancy Crowther established an oyster-growing lease in Okeover Inlet. The lease survived long after her and became part of a later commercial oyster operation. One account from the subsequent operator specifically traces the farm back to her:
That places her among the relatively early oyster farmers in the area. By the mid-1950s, she was working on the oyster floats at Okeover. Lawrence uncovered at least one eyewitness to an extraordinary incident in which Nancy got into a physical fight with several women from town. The surviving participant helped him reconstruct the episode many decades later. Listen Notes Marriage and divorce This is an aspect of her life that apparently wasn't well documented until comparatively recently. Historian Heather Harbord notes that when she originally researched the Crowther family, the old Powell River News microfilm was badly organized. After retired mill workers reorganized and rephotographed the newspaper chronologically, Grant Lawrence was able to uncover details of Nancy's marriage, divorce and subsequent life that had previously been difficult to trace. Lawrence devoted about 41 pages to the expanded Crowther story in his later book Return to Solitude. The B.C. Review That's potentially very useful if you're researching her seriously. The Nancy that Grant Lawrence knew By the 1970s Nancy had become something of a local legend. Grant Lawrence's father bought 180 acres in Desolation Sound in 1976 and eventually subdivided it into waterfront lots. Grant was a small child at the time. The Crowther property was important because the Lawrences wanted permission to launch their boat from Nancy's land. Lawrence remembers his first encounter with her vividly: an elderly wilderness woman confronting the family with a rifle and a pack of barking or snarling dogs. His father somehow managed to establish friendly relations with her, and Nancy eventually allowed the Lawrences access. The B.C. Review A photograph preserved by the Powell River Museum shows Nancy Crowther in the mid-1970s, around the period when Lawrence knew her. The B.C. Review Her later reputation She seems gradually to have become increasingly eccentric and suspicious of outsiders. Lawrence's account includes her fear or suspicion of a mysterious group she called “them.” By then she represented a disappearing kind of coastal existence: largely self-sufficient, armed, accustomed to animals and wilderness, and living on property her family had occupied since the early part of the century. Lawrence's description is affectionate but doesn't completely romanticize her. His story encompasses cougars, dogs, guns, fights, isolation, draft dodgers and Nancy's increasingly unusual behaviour as the modern world closed in around Okeover Inlet. Apple Podcasts The best source on her The most extensive readily accessible treatment appears to be Grant Lawrence's The Cougar Lady Chronicles. It originated as a series on CBC Radio One's North by Northwest and was subsequently released as a podcast. Listen to The Cougar Lady Chronicles It's essentially an oral biography told in chapters. The episodes cover her family's arrival from England, the Depression, her first cougar, wartime work, the cabin fire, oyster farming, her marriage and later life. Lawrence subsequently expanded the story substantially in his 2022 book Return to Solitude: More Desolation Sound Adventures with the Cougar Lady, Russell the Hermit, and the Spaghetti Bandit. The B.C. Review |
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