Michael Hackenberger watches as his two sons stand face to face with the full-grown, male tiger.

The father is smiling, beaming, on the warm summer day as he instructs his younger son on how and when to slip the tiger rewards — small morsels of meat — for good behaviour.

With Bowmanville Zoo acting as one of the largest North American suppliers of trained animals for entertainment productions, including the upcoming Hollywood movie Life of Pi, Hackenberger has become one of the last great exotic animal trainers practicing in Toronto’s backyard.

And he’s raising two more trainers just like himself.

PHOTOS: Inside the Bowmanville Zoo

“The demand has never been higher,” Hackenberger said in the first behind-the-scenes look at his world in nearly a decade. “The attraction of animals is universal. I think it’s in our DNA. . . .It is, quite frankly, my raison d’être.”

As cities experience what Hackenberger calls “animal apartheid” — urban sprawl pushing humans and animals further apart — the trainer said that desire has grown even stronger.

On a sunny afternoon as the last few stragglers leave the park, Hackenberger and his two teenaged sons make their rounds down a dirt path to access the back entrances to the animal enclosures.

“How’s my boo-boo?” Hackenberger coos at an aging Arctic wolf, Arthur, who rubs against his legs. “Who’s my guy?”

Like many animals at the zoo, the snow-white wolf was seized by the OSPCA. Arthur came from a so-called sanctuary in London, Ont.

Hackenberger and his son, Dirk, 15, put leashes on two of the wolves, and then, as though out on a casual evening stroll, walk them down the back laneway to indoor, individual locked pens where they will spend the night.

This is routine and part of the daily interaction with each animal that Hackenberger said is pivotal to maintaining the bond between animal and trainer.

But it’s also an attempt to avoid unwanted meetings.

Hackenberger knows neighbouring teenagers get curious, daring each other to jump the fence. For their protection, the animals stay locked away in the evenings.

Hackenberger used to be one of those curious teenagers.

“I started off as a guy who just really loved animals and just wanted to take them out of their enclosures,” he said.

As a boy growing up in The Beaches, he only kept gerbils and rats as pets. But his interest in the wild was insatiable, his Toronto Zoological Society card, proudly marking him as the 34th member, proof.

“I used to ride my bike up to Toronto Zoo to watch them build it,” Hackenberger said.

After receiving his bachelor of science in zoology at the University of Guelph and his masters in elephant nutrition, Hackenberger landed his first job with the Toronto Zoo preparing food for the animals.

But it wasn’t the hands-on job he’d been dreaming about.

In 1977, he moved out to Alberta to work at the now-closed Alberta Game Farm, where he finally got his wish. The reserve was a menagerie of animals teetering on the edge of extinction, from mountain gorillas to gayals.

“And we had herds of them,” he said. “At the time, it was the greatest animal collection in the world.”

Hackenberger instantly took to a Siberian tiger named Hector, who had been raised by a black mongrel dog at the game park.

“He was the first tiger I took out of his cage,” he said. “And I made so many mistakes.”

One winter day, animal and trainer, took a routine stroll side by side through the woods at the back of the park.

“I still remember a moose . . . male . . . he came crashing through the woods bent on creating mayhem on my body,” Hackenberger said. “And Hector just turned around and jumped on him and there was a tussle and the moose ran off.”

Beast had become protector, trainer had become friend.

“We just lay there in the snow and he was licking me, and it was just one of the magical, wonderful moments,” he said. “He was just a profoundly sweet animal.”

But despite his close bond with the tiger, Hackenberg said his specialty has always been elephants.

Buke, a male elephant, was close to being put down when Hackenberger met him.

The elephant had hit a normal period of aggression, a sort of puberty when blood testosterone levels are extremely high.

Having injured several people, he had been locked in a train car for a long period when Hackenberger was introduced to him.

“He was a very, very dangerous animal. . . He caught a bunch of people unawares,” Hackenberger said. “I heard about it and I was able to convince the owner to not euthanize him.”

For Hackenberger, there was still room to make a meaningful connection.

The elephant was saved and ended up staying at African Lion Safari. Buke was eventually returned to his private owner, who shot and killed him.

While making their rounds, Kurt, 17, enters a cage housing two adult baboons.

The baboons, Alf and Sammy, dance in excitement, fur bristling, before he asks them to sit at attention using a steady voice.

Before they get the ears of corn he’s brought as treats, the baboons oblige the teen with hugs, wrapping their long furry arms around him in turn.

Once their collars and leashes are on, Dirk and Kurt lead the baboons out to the neighbouring corn field.

The pair perform effortless somersaults on command, listening to the teens attentively.

“That’s easy to train because it’s a trick,” Hackenberger said, meaning a simple action that can be taught for a reward.

What’s harder is teaching a naturally aggressive baboon to play nice, he said, before directing attention to his eldest son.

Kurt asks gently for Alf to give him back the corn.

After a few tries, the male baboon reluctantly hands it over, looking at it longingly. Kurt asks for a hug. The animal does so half-heartedly. Kurt asks again, this time getting the real thing from Alf before returning the baboon’s corn.

“I’m addicted to this,” Hackenberger said, grinning from ear to ear at his son’s and the monkey’s accomplishment.

Hackenberger, who believes he’s been “taught by animals,” knows he’s been lucky to train so many stars.

“If you can count on one hand the number of great animals you’ve had in your career, you’re doing well,” he said.

Both his boys had a head start, growing up with young, big-pawed cats in their living room. Hackenberger rears the cats at home from a young age to socialize them to humans.

Dirk’s first cat was a young female Bengal tiger named Hannah.

“She was very mean,” Hackenberger said. But she wasn’t big enough to do much damage. “I just let him play with her.”

That bond is one of his fondest memories.

During Hackenberger’s final soliloquy about the responsibility to protect the planet, which came at the end of one of the zoo’s regular shows, Dirk, then 9 years old, was in the background, playing with the 5-month-old Bengal.

“All of a sudden, he walks in front of me with this little tiger doing a hind-leg walk,” he said, a trick that usually requires more than a year to learn.

“That sure warmed my heart.”

“I’m at the stage in my career I don’t compromise,” he said.

Though he’s willing to bend over backwards to get a desired shot, he said it can’t interfere with the safety or well-being of the animals, actors or crew involved.

Hackenberger said he was once approached to tend to elephants at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch, but refused when he learned the star wanted the elephants to promptly trumpet outside his window each day.

Nowadays, his animals are in demand, giving him flexibility to choose shoots.

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Because of a slew of serious incidents in the United States in the mid-2000s, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture placed new restrictions on the handling of big cats, knocking off competition from some Hollywood trainers, Hackenberger said.

He said the fact that there are fewer accidents in Canada can be attributed to a “higher competency level” working with the animals.

For Hackenberger, it’s decades of experience.

“Internationally, we’re getting more and more calls,” he said.

Bowmanville sent one of their tigers — Jonas (the same tiger who was temporarily and famously on the lam in 2010 when the trailer he was in was stolen) — to Thailand to star as Richard Parker, a Bengal tiger stuck on a lifeboat with main character Pi Patel in the upcoming Life of Pi, based on the best-selling book by Yann Martel.

And though keeping an independent animal park is no easy task, the money Hackenberger’s animals make in the entertainment industry keeps the zoo afloat for the thousands of visitors who come to see them every year.

“You have to make yourself vulnerable to the animal,” Hackenberger explained. “That develops trust.”

Face to face, there’s little else between boy and beast.

Kurt follows as back-up, following a strict, two-man protocol the zoo has in place to never go into the cage alone.

Dirk and Kurt are comfortable around the tiger as it pounces at a large rubber ball and stalks through the shady grass, its strong shoulder blades gliding beneath the orange and black fur.

For Hackenberger, the daily interaction with the animals allows trainers to constantly gauge their mood and needs.

But his career hasn’t been without critics.

Just as a Star investigation is shining a light on practices at Niagara Falls’ Marineland, causing a major backlash from animal activists, the same groups have been quick to demonize the work of Hackenberger and the zoo.

Agencies like Zoo Check Canada, a Toronto-based advocacy group, have lashed out at the Bowmanville Zoo for conditions they say are inadequate and animals who they claim appear to be agitated and bored.

“We are under attack from our detractors. They’re very well-organized,” Hackenberger said of the activists. “It tears at my heartstrings.”

The zoo hasn’t been completely without incident, something Hackenberger is honest about.

Dave Salmoni, a former trainer turned Animal Planet host, got his start at the Bowmanville Zoo, where he was attacked by a lion named Bongo during a show. Salmoni was relatively unharmed.

In 2008, a Star video captured Leo the lion pouncing on a woman during a photo shoot, breaking four of her ribs.

But Hackenberger said those are rare incidents that come with the territory. He said he has always placed trained professionals like Salmoni in charge of the animals, ensuring protocols are in place to respond and make sure both animal and trainer learn from the interaction.

“I spent my life in captive conservation and I really respect the wild,” Hackenberger said. “It’s a big commitment. This is our life.”

The reality is, Hackenberger believes, that most of the animals they rescue will never be able to return to the wild. His goal is to make sure the animals have the best life possible.

“It means that there can be a lot of work caring for them and making sure that they’re healthy,” he said. “We keep high levels of conditioning.”

They’ve voluntarily developed systems within the protocols of the Canadian Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the non-profit body that accredits wildlife centres. As a way to exercise their animals, their system includes lures that simulate the chase in the wild for food.

“These are young, happy, engaged little animals. They’re like children. You give them a childhood experience,” he said. “I always saw it as a refuge.”

As the remaining baboons are rounded up for the evening, Hackenberger points out one pale-skinned female who he said was rescued from a research facility, where she was very emotionally damaged.

Entering the cage, he indicates that what’s about to happen is perhaps his proudest moment as a trainer.

As he calls to the baboon, she looks up at him timidly from her perch where she has been munching corn. He offers her a hand, his palm lying flat.

Slowly, she reaches out and places her hand in his.

The large animal holds out her left leg to help Kurt climb up onto her back for a ride. With her passenger aboard, she lopes through the stalks of corn towering overhead, along a well-used path to the creek’s edge, where she gingerly descends a muddy slope.

Both Dirk and Kurt grew up around the elephant and she maintains a maternal bond with them, their mother, Wendy, says. Limba trumpets softly as they approach, reprimanding them as they tussle in the water, eyes always watching.

Once, when the boys were small, a trainer walking a wolf to its pen got a little too close, Wendy said.

And as Hector had done with the boys’ father before them, Limba stepped out in front, shielding them from harm.

In the river, Limba gently lowers herself into the water, so as not to abruptly toss the teen.

Then she flattens out in the setting sun as the boys splash water over her leathery back before the long walk home.

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