Taylor Mitchell

As is standard practice when an animal remains at large after killing a human, wardens searched for the attacker animal in the vicinity, where five or six coyotes were believed to live. Mitchell's mother issued a statement saying that her daughter would not have wanted her death to result in the extermination of the coyotes: “We take a calculated risk when spending time in nature’s fold — it’s the wildlife’s terrain,” she wrote. “When the decision had been made to kill the pack of coyotes, I clearly heard Taylor’s voice say, ‘Please don’t, this is their space.’ She wouldn’t have wanted their demise, especially as a result of her own."

Mitchell was born with the given name Taylor Josephine Stephanie Luciow. Her parents were Emily and Ray Luciow. She grew up in the Roncesvalles neighbourhood of Toronto. Taylor became interested in performing by her mid teens, and after graduating from the Etobicoke School of the Arts with a major in musical theatre, decided on a career as a singer and songwriter, taking the surname "Mitchell" as her stage name. She had released a four track EP in 2007, she independently released an album titled For Your Consideration in March 2009. In June 2009, she was invited to perform in the Winnipeg Folk Festival. Reaction from the roots music community and radio stations was positive, and she began working on new material. A contributor to the album, Justin Rutledge, later described Mitchell as having written beyond her years: "She didn’t provide answers, as so many of her age try to do. There was no preciousness [sic] about her. Instead she asked questions." To promote the album she went on a solo concert tour of the Maritime provinces, beginning on October 23, 2009. A few days before her death, Taylor was nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award as Young Performer of the Year. Her last performance was in Lucasville, near Halifax; there were two days before her scheduled concert in Sydney.

Mitchell's only album, For Your Consideration, was released in March 2009. Guest musicians on the album included Justin Rutledge, Lynn Miles, Suzie Vinnick, John Dinsmore, and Michael Johnston. The album received a positive review from Exclaim!, with Eric Thom describing her as "definitively old school, if not world-weary", while Now Toronto described it as sounding "like it comes from someone of a completely different generation".

In mid November 2009, a coyote came up behind a couple walking in the park approaching so closely that the man hit it on the head with a walking stick. Park conservation managers and scientists opposed a general cull on the grounds that coyotes have the ability to reproduce quickly, and culling would be likely to have no impact, or the opposite of the desired effect. This reasoning assumes that animals removed from the local Gene Pool by a cull would have the same propensity to fear humans as those coyotes that avoided being caught and killed. In April 2010, Nova Scotia declared a $20 bounty on coyotes, but this did not apply within the park. Visitors were asked to report encounters with coyotes. Ten months after Mitchell's death a sixteen-year-old girl who went camping with her parents at Broad Cove in Ingonish was bitten twice on the head by a coyote. A scientific study found that though usually unseen, coyotes were often in proximity to humans. Individual coyotes that are not conditioned by nonlethal aversion measures and fail to avoid humans are killed.

Taylor Josephine Stephanie Luciow, known by her stage name Taylor Mitchell (August 27, 1990 – October 28, 2009) was a Canadian country folk singer and songwriter from Toronto. Her debut and only album, For Your Consideration, received encouraging reviews and airplay. Following a busy summer performance schedule, which included an appearance as a young performer at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, Taylor embarked on a tour of Eastern Canada with a newly acquired license and car.