I've had a few run-ins with bears, all black bears, but they can rip you to shreds too
Once we were up riding dirt bikes in an area that had been logged off maybe 5 years earlier, so there was lots of small growth, but no real trees, we found a HUGE patch of black berries. We stopped to pick and eat some, they were sweet. I had a bag and had it about half full, and I was kneeling down picking berries, my two cousins were there too, I heard a shuffle and a grunt, I thought it was one of them, then, I could smell the bear, and believe me, that is a smell you only have to smell once. I stood up, and so did the bear, I thought he was about 2' from me, I yelled and threw my bag of berries at him, and then ran for my dirt bike, which I started and took off on in a heart beat. Down the road a bit, my two cousins (who also fled the scene) and I stopped, we had a rather nervous laugh about it, they also told me the bear was at least 20' away
One of my other uncles works as a mining assayer, and was way up in Norther BC working, they are far from anything, they use helicopters to move their camp each day. Him and his crew boss were the last two guys at a camp, they were waiting for the helicopter to return, and a black bear charged then, they went up a tree, the crew boss first, my uncle second. Black bears climb trees well, and this one was upset about something. For whatever reason, they made the grave error of loading all the gun onto the helicopter, and the only weapon they had was an axe, so while the bear was mauling my uncle the crew boss hit in in the head with the axe, finally killing it. My uncle had 150+ stitches and just about died. To this day, whenever in the bush, he carries a 44 magnum, and yes, he knows how to use it, he is one heck of a shot with it.
Bears are not something you take lightly.