The Spirit Bear Doesn’t Ask For Permission. Neither Should You.

Kermode Overland exists for one reason: to build gear worthy of the terrain we’ve been exploring our entire lives — and to make sure you’re never under-equipped for it.

Why the Spirit Bear?

Deep in the coastal rainforests of British Columbia lives one of the rarest animals on earth. The Kermode bear — known to the Indigenous peoples of the coast as the Spirit Bear — is a black bear born with a recessive gene that turns its coat white. Not albino. Not a separate species. Just an extraordinary, once-in-a-generation expression of something that was already wild.

It exists almost exclusively in the Great Bear Rainforest, one of the most remote and untouched wilderness regions on the planet. You don’t find it easily. You have to go deep, go prepared, and earn it.

We chose the Kermode bear as our symbol because of what it represents. Self-sufficiency. Quiet strength. A creature perfectly adapted to its environment, carrying everything it needs, beholden to nothing. It doesn’t need a campsite. It doesn’t need a reservation. It moves through wild terrain on its own terms — and that’s exactly the spirit we build into every product we put our name on.

There’s a direct parallel between the Spirit Bear and the overland mindset. The best rigs, like the best bears, are completely self-sufficient. Shelter, power, water, food — everything on board, everything within reach. The road is yours.

The Kermode bear is also a deeply BC symbol. It belongs to this coast, to these forests, to the kind of terrain our gear was designed to handle. We’re not a brand that was built in a boardroom. We’re a brand that was built on the logging roads, beaches, and backcountry of Vancouver Island — and the Spirit Bear felt like the only honest mascot for that.

Where Kermode Overland Came From

The roots of Kermode Overland go back further than the brand name. They go back to a family on Vancouver Island, a fleet of campervans, and years of learning what gear actually holds up in Canadian backcountry conditions.

It started with Van Ventures Rentals Ltd. — a campervan rental business built on the idea that Vancouver Island deserved to be experienced properly, from the inside out. The vans went everywhere. Tofino’s wild Pacific coast. Hornby Island’s hidden bays. The long gravel road to San Joseph Bay. Side Bay on the remote north end of the Island, where the logging roads thin out and it’s just you, the old-growth, and the sound of the ocean somewhere in the trees.

Years of watching travellers explore BC from the back of a campervan taught us two things: people were hungry for that kind of freedom, and the right gear made all the difference between an adventure and an ordeal.

The Van Ventures campervans were fitted with rooftop tents from the start — and every single renter wanted to know where to buy one. That demand became Roof Top Tents, our retail brand at rooftoptents.ca. We started with tents, added racks and awnings, then canopies, tonneau covers, recovery gear, and more. It grew into one of Canada’s most complete overlanding stores, shipping coast to coast.

But as the product line expanded, something became clear: the best gear we were selling deserved a brand built around the life it was made for. A name with roots in the terrain. An identity that meant something to the people buying it.

Kermode Overland was the answer.

The Kermode Overland Line

Every product under the Kermode Overland name is designed, selected, and tested for real Canadian conditions. Not warehouse conditions. Not spec-sheet conditions. The kind of conditions you actually encounter when you’re two hours down a forest service road with no cell signal and weather rolling in off the Pacific.