The bear raised its head and glared menacingly at Michael Sather.

Sather knew the grizzly sow would do one of two things: charge at him or amble off in the opposite direction with her two cubs.

Unfortunately for Sather, she opted for the former, her jaws snapping ferociously.

Fighting back or running were not options.

Sather decided, seconds before, that he would fall to the ground, his arms clasped around his head in a defensive posture.

Flat on the earth, Sather hoped, one way or the other, the mauling would end sooner than later.

A little more than 36 years have passed since the mauling.

On a sunny-but-chilly January day in 2012, at Maple Ridge Park, Sather sat at a picnic table and reminisced about his experience in the spring of 1975.

First elected as the MLA for Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows on May 17, 2005, Sather is likely the only Member of the Legislative Assembly who has been attacked by a bear.

Sather attained a teaching certificate from the University of Alberta and taught school in Alberta. He later attained his Bachelor of Science in Zoology at the University of Alberta.

He moved to B.C. in 1974 and pursued a career studying wildlife for the next 10 years.

In '75, the then 28-year-old Sather was working for B.C. Parks, doing wildlife inventory with another biologist, Jude Donaldson, in Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness Park, located about 130 kilometres south of the B.C./Yukon border.

The two were stationed at Cold Fish Lake, a picturesque location dwarfed by a large mountain.

The area was, and still is, grizzly country, Sather said. The specter of running into one or more of the large species of bears was a definite possibility, but the biologists were focused on counting animals, caribou in particular.

"It was a nice day, I remember that," Sather recalled.

They had stopped for lunch, basking in the spring sunshine while sitting on a plateau.

Jokingly, Sather asked Donaldson: "What would you do if a grizzly just walked over that hill?"

The two talked a while about staying in one place, not running, because if they turned tail, it would be a sure bet that a grizzly would instinctively assume the two as its prey.

After lunch, they descended down a slope, spotting a number of caribou along the way before taking a short catnap.

With their day coming to an end, the biologists mapped out their best route back to their cabin.

They traversed down the mountain and, just as they turned a corner, came face-to-face with a sow and her cubs. Neither Sather nor Donaldson were armed with bear spray and had made the cardinal mistake of trekking soundlessly through the bush.

The animals didn't see them initially; they had been grubbing through tree roots, searching for food.

The cubs, which Sather figures were between two and three years old, were quite large, about two-thirds the size of the sow.

One of them looked up and spotted the humans.

"Don't run," Sather quickly told Donaldson.

The sow threw her head up and wasted no time, charging full bore at Sather. Its huge jaws snapping together made "a horrific sound," Sather recalled.

Sather said it was "amazing what went through my mind" in the few seconds that followed; the best way for him to describe it was, he was in a movie and he was the director, and had to remain firm in his mind that this would work out the right way.

"I determined in my head that she was going to attack me briefly and then she was going to leave," he said.

The first thing Sather felt was "a tremendous jolt." The sow had viciously swatted the top of Sather's head, moving his body a couple of feet in the process.

After the initial strike, Sather could feel himself losing consciousness. His fading thoughts were, "this has got to stop, here, pretty soon or this is going to be all over."

The sow then dug its teeth into the top of Sather's back, breaking his shoulder.

"Fortunately she didn't bite my head at all, and didn't claw a lot, because she could have done a tremendous amount of damage with her claws," Sather said.

The mauling stopped abruptly, but Sather knew enough about grizzly behavior that it's not uncommon for a bear to guard its kill. So he remained face down.

Silenced reigned.

Not knowing if the sow was looming over him or not, Sather took a chance and peered up. The bear and her cubs were gone.

Blood was everywhere.

In his haze, Sather could see his partner's red jacket, standing out against the dull trees. His first thought was, "is she dead or is she alive?"

"Jude, are you all right?" he called out.

"Yeah, are you?" she answered.

"Yeah," he said. "Barely."

As the sow attacked Sather, her cubs continued on past Donaldson, their jaws snapping.

The sow followed her cubs, but along the way, attacked Donaldson briefly. They tumbled down the mountainside together.

Donaldson was lucky. The second attack took all but a couple of seconds before the sow decided to keep on after her cubs. She had been bitten, but luckily didn't suffer any broken bones.

The ordeal wasn't over. The biologists had an approximate four-kilometre walk back to their cabin ahead of them, not knowing if they were going to cross paths with the sow and her cubs again.

As Sather walked, shock wore off and pain began setting in.

Back then, Sather sported shoulder-length hair. He didn't know if his scalp was still intact.

"How does my head look?" Sather asked Donaldson.

"I can't tell from the hair," she responded.

Relief washed over him; the top of his head was still attached to his skull.

Once they arrived at the cabin, Sather collapsed onto a couch. In the days before cellphones and internet, a bulky radio/telephone was their only means of communication to the outside world.

Donaldson connected with a BC Tel operator working in a high-rise in downtown Vancouver. Through crackled reception, she tried to explain the situation. However, the operator couldn't connect with anyone who could be of assistance.

As luck would have it, there happened to be a plane, on floats, in the area. That night, the pilot flew Sather to the hospital in Smithers, where he was treated for his injuries.

Astoundingly, Sather returned to work at the park within a few weeks.

"It's amazing how fast you can recover at that age," he said.

The attack made Sather much more cognizant of bears, but it hasn't kept him out of the wilderness. In fact, he was backpacking in that same area a couple of summers ago.

"I'm more aware of them [bears], I make sure to make noise, I carry bear spray, but I love grizzly bears, I think they're fabulous animals," Sather said.

The year after the grizzly mauling, Sather was a passenger in a serious car crash, and suffered a broken neck.

That's when he started to reevaluate his life's direction.

"Those were, for me, wake-up signals that there were some things I needed to change in my life," Sather remarked. "I made some big changes; I got out of that career and I did other stuff. I loved being a biologist but I didn't like working for the government."