【明報專訊】In Scottish English, bannock is a type of bread made from oats (燕麥). In Canadian English, it is a type of bread cooked over a camp fire. This story takes place in Canada.

Many years ago, deep in the Canadian wilderness, a bear walked into a campsite looking for something to eat. There was a man and some bannock. Which would be best to eat? The bear had been eating lots of berries and had not had meat for days. However that bannock smelled nice. The man looked tough and difficult to chew. The bannock had raisins in it. The man was strong and had a sharp knife. The bannock smelled of cinnamon. The man had been writing about a transversal algorithm (演算法) for regular square incidence matrices (tough maths). The bannock had no bones. The man was hairy and was wearing a University of Waterloo shirt. The bear ate the bannock and left the man alone.

That is the story of our favourite family bread. The bannock that saved my father's life.

Do not feed bears or other wild animals. They will come back for more food and you look tastier than your sandwich. If you are gone they might eat someone else. Wild animals that have never got food from a human do not ever come into a campsite and steal food. Other wild animals also become more of a problem to humans if they are fed by humans. This problem is why feeding monkeys in Hong Kong is illegal.

text: John Larrysson