What's Maligne?

Today is Canada Day. A national holiday so the roads would be busy.
We had read that the Maligne River and Maligne Lake were worth a visit and being only 40 miles away it would be a good day out. The morning had started slightly over cast with occasional burst of sunlight.
There was a small problem. I did something to my right ankle the night before just before bed and it really hurt. It was still painful in the morning and I was hobbling.
We decided to miss out breakfast so we could get away early. At the start of the road going to the lake there were warnings about the wildlife that we may encounter. We hadn’t gone too far when we saw break lights going on future up the road. There was a caribou eating the dandelions on the roadside. We got out and took a few photos.
Our first main stop was Medicine Lake. This is an unusual lake. During the spring the melting snow fills the lake and then as summer starts the lake level drops until it is nearly empty. The problem was that there was no visible outlet. It was only discovered recently that the water drains through dozens of sinkholes in the lake bed. I managed to hobble around and take a few photos.
We drove to Maligne Lake without seeing anymore wildlife. Not long after parking we bumped into an English couple who showed us a photo of a small black bear walking across the road that we had driven down less than 5 minutes earlier. Damn!
The scenery around the lake is beautiful. Unfortunately the sun was still behind complete cloud cover so everything looked washed out. While having some sandwiches we were entertained by a chipmunk that was running around the picnic area and under people’s feet, picking up bits of dropped food.
We booked a tour of the lake. The lake tour was enjoyable but we saw no wildlife except for two mountain sheep a long way away on the mountain side.
Not long after leaving the lake Rita suddenly shouted “It’s a bear, stop, stop!” I pulled over but I was unable to see the bear. Rita grabbed the camera and walked back about 50 feet and took a few photos. I got out and hobbled along. Just I got to her I saw the bear. It was black and looked small, but then it was about 50 yards away. By this time other cars had arrived and stopped. The bear did not seem to notice us but carried on eating. I got a few good photos are the bear appeared between the bushes. A few miles on we came across a family of goats.
We drove into Jasper. We wanted to get some supplies for breakfast. We also, rashly, booked seats on a white-water raft trip. OK it’s not the really serious raft trip. We are not that stupid. We found a very good restaurant, Fiddle River, where I had a Bison rib-eye steak and Rita had Muskox. The Bison steak was like a normal steak but much leaner and with a slight gamey flavour. The Muskox was like beef but sweeter.