There are plenty of black widows in Canada.. you just have to be unfortunate enough to find one. I grew up in Kamloops (a.k.a 'Canada's desert') where "widows" and "wolfies" were common. We would find the large black widow females usually outdoors, hiding in a cool dark place near the foundation/cement of the house. (We were never really looking, usually just doing yard work.) It was the wolf spiders that seemed to be at home when tucked into bed. Quite literally, I remember being a kid, pulling back the sheets and finding a 2" spider staring at me with clear legs and.... haha. They were all too large and quick to catch. So SQUISH. Gross, huh?

But really, I'm sure that the spiders are just as pleased with human encounters as we are of finding them. Perhaps they are more dormant and tame in a cooler climate. Their purpose in life is not to bite afterall.... just to eat their husbands!

Cheers.

I live in Calgary...have all my life, never ever have I laid eyes on a black widow... Until last Thursday. It crawled out of my grapes! The ones I had bought 4 days previous from CO-OP. It was almost a scene from arachnophobia, I was planning on taking the grapes to bed to watch Desperate Housewives, luckily I noticed her first. I actually held her in my hand when I washed the grapes...but she was too docile from the cold to do anything about it..thank god! I knew right away what she was, I'm not sure what was more shocking, the fact she was there or the fact that she had been in a corner grocery store for who knows how long and then in the crisper in my fridge for 4 days... You know what really pisses me off... Some family with small children could have bought those and given them to their kids, they could have put the grapes on the counter, like so many people do. It only took the spider a couple minutes out of the fridge to start moving again...5 min max in the warm temp and she would have been hard to catch. The store was rather calm about the whole thing, this has been a common problem, the produce people have seen them in the store? Are these people getting danger pay?? I was told to throw her out...throw her out where? In the back yard...great idea! Rest assured though, CO-OP has graciously offered me a $20.00 gift certificate, problem solved.

More children and pets suffer not from spider bites but from the ills of humanity. Ask your peditrician and veterinaring how many children or pets died from motor vehicial accidents secondary to human negelecence. Then compare this with all spider bites for that matter throw in all spider and snake bites or any other creepy crawlies (except to those human creepy crawlies). Now just relax and go back to your B-B-Q and leave the spiders alone.

I used to live in North Van on West 4th.. Back in oh, the summer of '94 or '95 I was lying on my bed and talking on the phone. I looked up and saw a huge black widow on the ceiling. I ended up catching it - that was a freaky experience ! - and called the S.P.C.A. or Poison Control or something thinking this was a rare emergency. To my surprise they said to let it go in my garden....they said it could even have been someone's pet that got away. I'll never forget it and how quickly it moved too. I've been to Australia a few times and saw some big ones there, too. Cheers!

Hi: I have lived in two locaions in Vancouver for extended time. I have noticed what appears to be black orbit spiders. I have asked pest control people and they say that they look like black widows but are not. They do not have the "red" hour glass and they only seem to grow about 1 inch in diameter including legs. In other words the body is about 1/4 inch. The classical dangerous ones you read about, I think are much bigger. 2 inches or more diamter inluding legs. I saw one of these in the Okanagan. The ones that I have seen in Vancouver usually have a sloppy nest from dead debris. From all that I can tell they are totally defensive in demeanor. By comparison, bees and wasps and mosquitos can be totally offensive. I think the wolf spiders can be much larger and uglier. But I understand wolfe spiders are harmless.