Every town has its celebrities, but Sechelt’s own unique and larger-than-life personality is wholesome enough to satisfy all of North America’s appetite for eccentrics. Asta Bergliot Solberg, or “Bergie,” as her friends knew her, lived life on her own terms. She climbed wild mountain trails to hunt for goats, demanded car rides from unsuspecting locals, spent a night in the woods wrapped in the skin of a bear she’d shot and thought nothing of rowing twenty-five miles down a dark, windy inlet. With equal ferocity she wrangled cougars, conservation officers and the police, who arrested her for packing a rifle in town.

In this much-anticipated biography, Rosella Leslie pieces together Bergie’s life story through a collection of interviews, local stories and personal anecdotes. The Cougar Lady: Legendary Trapper of Sechelt Inlet follows Bergie’s life journey, one lived with ferocity and insurmountable fearlessness. Bergie Solberg is a true icon of the Sunshine Coast, embodying the irreplaceable and unmistakable vibrancy of Sechelt itself.

Rosella Leslie was born in Edmonton, Alberta, and grew up in small towns throughout Alberta and British Columbia. She worked in Merritt and Vancouver, before moving in 1980 to a floathouse at Clowhom Falls on Salmon Inlet to focus on her writing career. In 1991, Leslie moved with her husband and son to Sechelt. Leslie’s hobbies include gardening, pulling up crab traps, and early morning mountain walks.

She is also the author of The Sunshine Coast: A Place to Be, and has co-authored Bright Seas, Pioneer Spirits: The Sunshine Coast, and Sea Silver: Inside British Columbia’s Salmon-Farming Industry with Betty Keller. Leslie is also one of the authors of Stain Upon the Sea: West Coast Salmon Fishing, which won The Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize at the 2005 British Columbia Book Awards. Her first solo novel, The Goat Lady's Daughter, was published in the Fall of 2006, and her second novel, Drift Child, was released in September 2010, and her third novel, The Federov Legacy was published in April 2013. In 2014 she published The Cougar Lady: Legendary Trapper of Sechelt Inlet.

Rosella Leslie's profile page