‘Never seen anything like it’: Boaters rescue bear cub from middle of Okanagan Lake
Published 1:42 pm Wednesday, September 16, 2026
Christina Zamniuk could hardly believe what was happening when a small bear cub climbed exhausted and shivering onto her boat in the middle of Okanagan Lake over the weekend.
Zamniuk, who lives in Abbotsford but spends time in the summer with her husband at their Vernon lake house, said they were out on the water heading towards Adventure Bay Saturday afternoon, Sept. 12, when they noticed something black in the water.
“I think he thought it was a dog,” she said of her husband after they’d pulled the boat closer.
“We were just like, wait a minute, that’s a little bear.”
Zamniuk said the cub’s hind legs were out behind it and it was paddling with only its front paws, apparently exhausted.
“His little nose kept going under and then blowing bubbles,” she said.
Zamniuk talked amongst her husband and son in law on the boat and they decided the bear had to be saved. She said she felt a panicked sense of urgency to get the bear out of the water before it drowned.
“We took a rope and made a noose and we got close enough to him and we were able to put it around his neck and pull him around to the side of the boat to the back, and brought him onto the back platform,” Zamniuk said.
“He got right up there and he was absolutely shaking. He was freezing cold. So we just let him dry off, and then we gave him some Cheetos.”
Zamniuk captured video of the rescue on her phone, showing the bear climbing onto the boat’s rear platform.
Munching on Cheetos, the bear was clearly hungry, cold and scared, Zamniuk said.
They called the B.C. Conservation Officer Service who instructed the family not to touch the bear (advice they heeded) and to get it on the shore and let it go off.
Zamniuk felt conflicted.
“This is a really tiny little bear, he needs to be with his mom or somebody has to come get him. So we used a GPS and said, this is where we are,” she said. “The Conservation Officer was basically saying, just let it go and it’ll find its way. But other people say that they don’t survive when they don’t have their moms at that age.”
They backed the boat up as close to shore as they could, but the bear didn’t want to leave.
Zamniuk’s husband had to give the bear a “good old push” off the boat, and after a brief splash in the waters along the shoreline, the bear reached shore and took off through some properties towards the woods.
None of them could figure out how the bear ended up in the middle of the lake, but Zamniuk is sure that if they hadn’t been there, the bear would have drowned, or it could have been struck by a boat.
“He’d go a little bit and then he’d kind of go in circles and float, and he was just absolutely exhausted. I said, if we don’t get him out he’s going to die, 100 per cent,” she said.
The hour or so they spent with the bear is an hour they’ll never forget.
“It’s crazy. I grew up in Vernon. We’ve had a place out in Vernon for the past 15 years on the lake. I have never seen anything like it.”
Zamniuk hopes the cub will be able to find its mom. She knows the animals’ advanced sense of smell could help reunite them.
She said she’s grateful that their boat happened to be there at the right time to give the cub that chance of survival.
“That was the biggest reward for us,” she said.
“Maybe the Conservation Officers will go out there and just have a look around and see if they see him,” she added.
The Morning Star has reached out to the Conservation Officer Service for comment.