Helen Jameson preferred her farm to be a wild place.
Fawns, bears and cougars could be found on the grounds, while inside her house might be goslings, squirrels and mice. Jameson's son Ed Breakwell remembers once discovering a young raccoon in the washroom.
“It would just love to play with a toilet. It would go to the bathroom, flush the toilet, and then sit there and watch and play with the water that was swirling around, and then do it again.”
For over half a century, Jameson cared for all manner of injured wildlife at her property in Blewett near Nelson. She accepted almost every species and returned them to the wild after they recovered, a unique job that was unofficial and unpaid but treasured by locals.
The work earned Jameson several honours including the Nelson Star's 2016 Citizen of the Year award. She was also the subject of the documentary Stay Wild, which was released online in 2022.
Jameson retired in 2022 due to Alzheimer's Disease and died July 12. She was 89.
Jameson and her first husband Beverly Breakwell moved to Blewett in 1965. In a 2017 profile of Jameson, she told the Nelson Star that she began caring for animals in 1966 after a disagreement with a conservation officer who had set up a bear trap on the property.
“I said I would do whatever I could, and [the officer] started bringing me birds and other small animals," she said. "I wasn’t keeping them as pets, though. You care for the animal properly, give it food and have as little contact with it as possible.”
Wildlife were kept outside — Jameson was adamant they not be tamed — but there were exceptions for cold weather and young animals.
She also didn't turn animals away, even predators. Bears were her favourite animals to take in, and she would make them porridge for breakfast.
Ed Breakwell's wife Carol says Jameson had scars from when a young cougar struck her. Jameson shrugged it off and kept caring for the cougar anyway.
“They were her friends. She didn’t think they were really going to hurt her."
Jameson wasn't always inclined to hear other's opinions about her work either. Breakwell recalled protesting his mother's plan to return ospreys back to their nest atop a power pole. She did it all the same.
That sometimes meant disagreements with conservation officers, who checked in on Jameson over the years and brought her animals to care for.
“She had a love-hate relationship [with conservations officers]," said Breakwell. "She’d love to see and talk to them, but she always said, ‘Oh no, he’s here again'.”
That of course didn't prevent her from marrying a conservation officer, her third husband Sydney Jameson, in 1992.
Jameson didn't make a living by caring for animals. She worked for a time as a prison guard for female inmates with the Nelson Police Department and relied on donations from Save-On-Foods as well as an annual fundraiser to feed her furry guests.
Jameson had lost most of her memory of the farm as she struggled with dementia, but still remembered the bears one last time shortly before her death.
“Her life was the animals," said Breakwell. "No matter what, she was always thinking about the animals all the time.”
