Bergie Solberg: Cougar Lady of the Sunshine Coast
- story and photos by ken collins
To many local residents, Bergie Solberg was just a crazy old lady that lived out in the bush until a French television crew made her famous in France as the Cougar Lady of the Sunshine Coast.
Her and her sister were raised by their father who was a logger and a single parent whose lifestyle was that of the woods. So, all of her life, Bergie logged and trapped in the British Columbia rainforest just like her father had done. She never married and much of her time was spent alone..
I first met her in the mid nineteen-nineties. She was living up Sechelt Inlet and the only way to her place was by boat. There was a road on the other side of the inlet and she agreed to pick me up at a certain point on that road. She did so in a boat similar to that pictured above. It was powered by a fifty horespower outboard engine that had to be hand started and was tempermental to say the least. What amazed me was the way in which she repeatedly and rapidly pulled that starter cord with her large ham like hands with an abundance of breath and carrying on a running conversation all the while.
- to The Home of Bergie