Bears is a play by Matthew MacKenzie where he is exploring his family’s Cree, Ojibwe and Métis heritage. In Bears a Métis oil sands worker Floyd is making his way westwards along the Trans Mountain pipeline route beginning in Alberta and travelling west to the Pacific watched by the spirit of his mother and others. Little Cub Floyd who has a love for fresh berries, an aversion to authority and a fascination with bears, is outrunning the RCMP after a workplace accident where he is the prime suspect. The power of transformation is a focal point of this play in the heightening and tuning of Floyd’s senses. He can smell the mountains before he can see them; he can feel the presence of salmon in the river but there is more in the haunting descriptions of environmental loss in this play.
