A Canadian mom and daughter were killed in a suspected grizzly bear attack while on a “casual walk” on a popular trail close to home.
Art therapist Jennifer Balcarras, 48, and her 20-year-old daughter Selah Reed, a teaching assistant, disappeared Saturday on the Snooka West Trail, just a five-minute drive from their home in Bella Coola, British Columbia.
The alarm was raised when Balcarras, a grandmother and a mom of four, didn’t show up for a scheduled online catch-up, her brother Matt Balcarras told the Vancouver Sun.
The mom’s mauled body was found Monday, and her daughter’s a day later.
“There was evidence to suggest a [grizzly] bear may have been involved,” Jeff Tyre, a British Columbia Conservation Officer Service official, said.
Officials did not detail exactly why they think it was a bear attack, but said they’re “working to locate and capture any bears involved” — making clear it may have been more than one.
“It is not yet clear whether more than one bear was involved. Any captured bear will be assessed. If it is determined to have been involved in the attack, it will be dispatched in accordance with provincial human-wildlife conflict response guidelines to protect public safety,” conservation officials said.
The deadly attack was particularly shocking because it was “very close to their house,” Balcarras’ brother said.
“It’s very close to town and it’s not remote,” he said of the trail. “They were not naive city folks. They were strong women living the life.”
“It’s surreal,” her other brother, Josh, said of what started as “just a casual walk.”
“It doesn’t seem real. It feels like a dream.”
Balcarras had recently moved to Bella Coola, an unincorporated community of around 2,00 people some 268 miles from Vancouver, to “pursue a new career and begin a new chapter in her life,” her friends wrote on a GoFundMe set up to help her three surviving adult kids.
“She was working toward building a future and had not yet had the opportunity to establish savings or put aside funds to help her family with unexpected expenses such as these.
“Tragically, no one could have anticipated that her family would be faced with such an unimaginable loss.”
Her daughter, meanwhile, “was just 20 years old, with her whole life ahead of her,” the fundraiser said.
She was only beginning her journey into adulthood, making this loss even more heartbreaking.”
Reed was Balcarras’ youngest child — with Josh Balcarras describing the pair as “two peas in a pod.”
“[Reed] liked a lot of the same things Jenny liked. I think they got along really, really well. When Jenny hiked, Selah was right there beside her,” he told CBC.
The mom and daughter were killed less than a year after 11 people were attacked by a bear near Bella Coola.
Three kids were left critical after being mauled by the bear in November 2025, who was believed to have been with its two cubs.
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