Bears at the Frontline

Of all the watering holes I have graced in my life, the Frontline Club in west London has always been the closest to my heart.

It was more than two decades ago that Vaughan Smith, a guards officer-turned-war-cameraman, first took me into the shell of a building not far from Paddington Station and laid out his vision.

Vaughan and I had both worked in Kosovo and sealed our friendship in a Serbian police station after we were detained as undesirable aliens when Nato began bombing that country in 1999.

The Frontline Club, Vaughan said, was going to be a place for war reporters, freelance journalists and foreign news aficionados: somewhere they could eat, drink, discuss new conflicts and lean against the bar.

A year or two later the club opened its doors. On the ground floor there was a restaurant.

But the soul of the Frontline was the clubroom on the floor above with its sturdily-built drinks bar showing off a world of exotic liquor hauled back to London in the hand luggage of roving correspondents.

The club had all the accoutrements of its core clientele. Along one wall glass cabinets chock full of memorabilia give a whiff of far-flung uprisings, revolutions and violent political take-downs.

In one there was Vaughan’s early-model mobile phone. It still had a bullet embedded in it that had been fired by a pissed-off Serb militiaman in Kosovo.

Incredibly the bullet had pierced Vaughan’s money belt, passed through a bundle of cash and a packet of cigarettes, hit the innards of the phone, and stayed there. He was left with a large belly bruise but was otherwise unharmed.

In other cabinets there were matryoshka dolls of Osama bin Laden – someone had added a note saying I had donated them (though I hadn’t).

There was also the prosthetic arm of the famous cameraman Mo Amin who filmed the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s before being killed when the plane he was in was hijacked and came down in the sea.

And on the walls were the pictures of journalists who hadn’t come back. One of them, James Miller, was at school with me. James was a respected frontline cameraman until he was singled out and shot dead by an Israeli sniper while working in Gaza.  

The Frontline Club was an instant success and soon the bar was buzzing with tales of derring-do and salacious journalist gossip. I never missed a chance when passing through London to spend an evening catching up with mates there.

A few years later, after 15 years in the field, I gave up my job as wandering newspaper correspondent. I had been posted to Sarajevo, Pristina, Kabul, Baghdad and a dozen other of the world’s most benighted cities and it was time for a change.

I moved to the wilderness of western Canada and, in time, became a bear guide taking guests into the wild to show them mountain grizzlies.

Naturally I had my leaving do – an all-night affair – at Frontline. When I turned 50 a few years ago I returned from Canada to dance on the tables with my old mates until the lights swayed.

And when my wonderful wife Kristin died it was at Frontline that our close friends gathered to comfort me and remember her.

Frontline, of course, has had its ups and downs.

It has endured the tribulations of any small business in the 21^st century: the insipid but sapping scourge of health and safety regulations, staff eloping with a side of steak in the middle of the night, and the total collapse of custom during Covid.

Vaughan’s world really hit the skids when he was caught up in a painful and messy divorce which is only just resolving.

Several years have passed since I first perched at the end of the bar and tried, with a few mates, to drink its contents.

But when it came to giving my first proper bear talk in London (I did a quickie a few years ago at a travel agency in Fulham but this was to be a more fulsome event) of course it had to be at the Frontline Club.

And so, earlier this month, I sat on the podium on the top floor of the club and held forth on the nuances of grizzly bear behaviour.

Next to me was Gloria Dickie, a Canadian journalist who has just published a book about the bears of the world called Eight Bears: Mythic Past and Imperiled Future. Kim, my girlfriend, who is also a bear-lover, moderated the discussion.

We showed videos of bears walking, bears playing, bears fighting and even bears charging. The audience came from far and wide, some of them former guests at the lodge, others interested in learning more about this most intriguing of megafauna.

When it came to questions at the end the lurid won out over the scientific. “When a bear eats you do they make sure you are dead first?” was the first.

Reality, of course, is more humdrum. In nearly two decades of taking guests into the wilds, I am yet to have one eaten by a bear.

Bear-viewing with us is a rich and exciting experience, even perhaps unusual. (Most bear-viewing on offer in Canada is done from stands watching bears habituated to humans.) But it is hardly life-threatening.

As I write these lines I am once again at the Frontline, the espresso machine gurgling in the corner.

Next week I am off to Kosovo for a few days to visit a family whose tragic tale I was caught up in 25 years ago. Vaughan will come too. And then it’s two weeks teaching university students in Transylvania.

But come next spring I’ll be back in Canada opening up the lodge for it’s 18^th year. Frontline will be 21 next September. After an action-packed adolescence it seems that both are finally coming of age.

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NEWS & LINKS

Next time: During my first year in Canada Vaughan and I head into the wilderness with two quad bikes, a can of bear spray, and a shotgun. Inevitably things go wrong. A Grizzly Bear Ranch Vintage post.

With the grizzly bears now back in numbers, and the fish run predicted to be the best in a decade next year, our October grizzly-viewing spots are already beginning to fill. If you are interested in a holiday with us, please check out our website or drop me a line on julius@wildbearlodge.ca