BW: Well at CMH we had got a computer. Hans had given us the first CMH lodge computer in the Gothics Lodge, so I had some early computer skills, but I think the first computer we had was … had a 105-kilobyte hard drive. You couldn’t take a picture with that now. Computers were something new. I remember in Jasper; in those days we had DOTS. In order to get your emails on DOTS you had to read them. There was no way you could delete something without reading it. That was the days of early spam and so I was on my way to Rogers Pass to teach an avalanche course up there for Parks, and I needed some information that was going to come through the email. I can’t remember … about accommodations or classroom. I’m trying to find it but I’m getting these emails that you have to open and read. One of them was about a corn roast in Hull. Please RSVP whether you are going to come to this corn roast. So, I read that and kind of snapped and wrote to all “Thank you for this invitation but I’ve got work to do and don’t need to be hearing about corn roasts in Ottawa. If you think about the amount of people across Canada who have work to get done and who are wasting time reading about your corn roasts. Please accept my regrets that I can’t make it to your corn roast, but please also take me off your junk email list.”
SH: I remember that.
BW: So off I went to Rogers Pass, and I remember I got called into the Chief’s office when I got back and he actually has a paper, not an email. It was actually a fax of my response that had been shipped from Ottawa saying you got to get control of this guy. He doesn’t embrace the new ways. But it wasn’t very long after that, that you could actually delete your emails without having to read them.
I lived in Sunshine as a kid, and we were on one of the warden phone lines, it was an extension of the warden phone line that went all the way up to Sunshine. I can’t remember, three longs and a short, but it didn’t matter. As soon as the phone would ring everybody would pick it up to hear what was going on regardless of whose ring it was. I do remember when we got the real phone up there, a dial phone, and I helped my dad carry those old phones, and I think we took them to the dump. Should have saved one. So, you think of that technology, basically a single phone wire that was the lifeline to the district wardens to where we are now. Just the thought that you would complain about some spam in your inbox. (Tape 18:39)
SH: So, we are still in Jasper.
BW: Yes, I worked with Gerry up there, he is a great guy to work with, another guy that just wanted the best for what you could do, but you still had the ultimate amount of freedom. You could decide what you were going to do on any given day. Jasper is a big park, and it was pretty quiet in the fall for Visitor Safety in those days, so I still got to do some fall horse trips there which was really great to see some of the Jasper backcountry. We were busy with rescues but not super busy. There’s lots of good climbing obviously. I got up Mount Robson for a second time and we climbed some other big peaks. It was a great crew to work with. I really enjoyed my time in Jasper. I just thought that Jasper was one of those really nice towns, a nice mix of size and various industries and far enough away from the bigger centres so you could get things done. It was very social; people would get together. The Warden Service was very social but also interacted well with the other people in town. I really enjoyed Jasper; it was a great place.
Part of the reason I had gone back to Parks was that we were starting to raise a family, so I had my first daughter Katy already, and Donna was pregnant with our second daughter Ginny at that time while I was in Jasper. It was tricky because she was off, she worked full time for CMH at the time, but she was off on leave, but she wasn’t ready to give up her career and follow me up to Jasper then either. We talked about it and she ended up going back to CMH for quite a few years so in the end I was up there a little bit by myself. But it was still better than when I recall, that I left CMH and I went in and asked them about a different schedule. In management I used to work 22 days on and 6 off, twelve months of the year. They offered me the job as manager of the Bugaboos which would have been a great job, but it basically came down to being married to Donna and raising a family, or being married to the Bugaboos.
SH: Wow 22 on 6 off, that’s a lot.
BW: You might be able to get a holiday in the shoulder seasons but anyway, I asked, and it was Mark Kingsbury at the time. He said, “No that’s the schedule, basically take it or leave it.” So, I said I had to leave CMH and go back to work for Parks. He said, “Why are you leaving here?” and I said, “You told me to take it or leave it”. He said, “Yes, I told you that, but I didn’t think you would leave.” At any rate I had a lot of good years in Jasper, so it was a really good stretch when I was up there. I just liked the way that if you had an issue you’d get together at the table and come up with what seemed to be a sensible decision and usually implement it fairly quickly, which is not the way things tended to go once I got to Banff. Politics got in the way more often when decisions were made there.
I recall acting for the Chief there one week in Jasper, and I won’t say his name because he probably wouldn’t want this story told. He had this giant inbox of paper that must have been six inches high, of just memos. Put across somebody’s desk if they didn’t know where else they should go so they ended up in the warden Service Chief’s inbox. People wanted to put on a special weekend trip and do something, or wanted Park support for a cause or whatever. There was just all this stuff, and I went through it all and it looked like there was about 10 pieces of paper there that were important, so I kept them and just put the rest in the shredder. The chief came back and there were ten papers in his inbox rather than six inches. “I cleaned out your inbox for you”.
SH: So, from Jasper you came to Banff when?
BW: I think it was the spring of ‘93 when I ended up in Jasper and I think I worked three years up there. It was either ‘96 or ‘97 I came to Banff.
SH: So, at that point you were working for Tim Auger?
BW: Originally, I had requested a transfer, so I took any job, so they had me as …. I can’t remember what it was called. Mid country, so that was sort of like Egypt Lake, all the trails around Banff that were not really covered by districts.
BW: I had requested a transfer because the kids were old enough and Donna decided she was going to go back to work for CMH so then I requested a transfer. They first brought me down as Barn Boss because Johnny Nylund and Marie were going to the Ya-Ha-Tinda as he was the new the ranch boss, so they gave me the Barn Boss job in Banff in the summers and then mid country and avalanche work in winter. Johnny was still there the first year, and he was kind of showing me the ropes. We still had the buffalo paddock in Banff. So, one of the fresh calves had somehow managed to get out across the cattle guard or through a hole in the fence. I don’t know where, but anyway it got out. Bob Haney came by and said, “Maybe you can just open a little hole in the fence and that calf will come back and pair up with his mom.” So, I cut open what I thought was a very small hole, just a small triangle, just big enough to fit a buffalo calf I thought.
The next morning, I get a call from dispatch and Art Laurenson, the duty warden, was chasing a buffalo bull out the back of Bumpers there and it was heading into downtown Banff. So, he was out there chasing it with his truck. Instead of the calf going in, the entire herd had gone out. So, we got out there and now the whole herd was out on the airstrip. There was Haney and Johnny and me and we saddled up some horses, and we went and got around that herd at the far end, and the bull was back at that point. I guess Art had been successful at getting him out of town and it ran back under the underpass. Anyhow, I remember chasing this herd of buffalo and it was quite fun. We were going wide open and they were running down the airstrip. We chased them and it would have made a great scene, I’m sure. Just a full thundering herd of buffalo going down that airstrip. They went right back to that tiny hole in the fence, the bull and everyone, and they went right back into the paddock. So, I closed the hole in the fence. At any rate that was when I first showed up there.
That was fun and I got involved in the parades, the Stampede and local parades. We moved everything at that time too, so part of the job was to move all the barns and corrals and the Banff Light Horse Association from where the buffalo paddock was at the base of Cascade over to where they are now on the other side of the highway to try and clear out that wildlife corridor. That barn got moved, and the old Lake Louise Warden office that we started in got moved, the main office in Lake Louise. It ended up moving to Banff.
Percy Woods above Pangnirtung Fjord. J. Bradford White
Parade Glacier Photo by J. Bradford White.
SH: The Temple Research office?
BW: No, no it was in town. Just to the right where the Sampson Mall and gas station in Lake Louise is now, was originally where it was, but it got moved to the Banff barns and it then it was the barn office. So that and the barn got moved across the road to Mountain View so that was an interesting project to set it all up on the other side.
Then I got on with Visitor Safety and started working for Tim. We were a pretty small shop in those days. There was Tim and Marc (Ledwidge) and myself in the Banff Public Safety office.
SH: And about four in Lake Louise?
BW: Yes, that was just about the time we separated into two districts instead of three parks and there Banff and LLYK (Lake Louise, Yoho, Kootenay). When I had worked in Lake Louise prior I had worked in Banff Park, not for LLYK. Gord Irwin and Percy Woods were in LLYK along with Reg Bunyan and Terry Willis as I recall.
SH: Yes, I was working for Clair (Israelson) then and he was already working for Regional Office at that point. So, your duties there were ski areas and rescue?
BW: No, ski areas were over. ‘93 was kind of the end of the ski areas. So, when I was in Jasper, we still had an office at Marmot (Basin) and you’d go there every morning to do a weather observation. But Peter Amann was already in charge of avalanche control for Marmot up there, so it was kind of like both of us were taking weather observations in the same plot, side by side every morning in the transition. “ Mornin’ Pete, ‘Mornin’ Brad” By the time I got to Banff it had been fully given over to the ski areas.
But it was interesting times, there was quite a bit of development work at the time. The public avalanche bulletin stuff, literally going from a typewritten fax and a recorded phone forecast to developing avalanche forecasts for the internet. We were also starting to research and install remote control avalanche systems.
SH: GazEx
BW: I guess I should talk a little bit about the whole 106 program because that happened while I was still in Jasper. That was crazy times in the whole avalanche forecasting world, basically for Parks who were not going to be actively involved in the avalanche mitigation work at ski hills anymore. It was Clair’s dream that he would take over the avalanche control program in Rogers Pass and that would become the centre of excellence for avalanche control. Wardens would do the avalanche control work and snowpack avalanche forecasting because we no longer did work in the ski hills. So, you were involved in that too.
SH: Yes, with Chris Stethem and the Five Mountain Park Plan.
BW: Yes, well it turned out it wasn’t some people’s dream. But at any rate we were kind of beginning to implement the plan as I recall. All the towers were put in place in Rogers Pass and Wardens and the Avalanche team at Roger’s Pass were training and learning how to shoot the guns. We got a bunch of 106 mm recoilless rifles from the states. I had a picture of myself at one time, I had one of those 50 calibre machine guns that came on top of the rifles with a big bandolier of tracer rounds over my shoulder. I should try and find that photo. Because the rifles they came with 50 cals mounted on the top for sighting with tracer rounds but of course we never fired the 50’s with the guns.
SH: I remember trying to get the 106 guns across the border and they got stuck there for a few days as we attempted to get them through the border. Finally, the brokerage guy put on the waybill, “Rifles, sporting,” for these giant canons. I thought that was hilarious.
BW: Yes, there were I think 14 106’s. At any rate they all showed up in Banff and were there in stores for quite a few years. That’s where I think I got the picture but one of the things that put that project off was the unfortunate accident down at Alpine Meadows in California. Some of that ammunition and some of the guns that we got as well were surplus from the Vietnam war, and they were substandard rounds or something. One jammed in the barrel down at Alpine Meadows and detonated and killed some ski patrollers down there.
Then we had to fire them under precaution as you recall which meant building a screen at some distance and putting a string on the trigger so you could pull the trigger from behind the screen. They were doing some registration targets in Rogers Pass. In order to put one of those big shells in you have to shove the shell in the barrel. You can’t do it when the barrel is elevated because the shell is quite heavy, and you need to be able to close the breach. So, you put the shell in when it’s horizontal and then you elevate the gun to where you are going to shoot that round. So, they were doing this registration shoot and they had the string on the trigger to fire under precaution and nobody noticed that the string had caught on the wire mesh of the tower base.
Dave Skjonsberg was walking right behind the rifle, and somebody was cranking it up to the target elevation and nobody noticed that the string was getting tighter as it was being elevated. The string tightened enough to pull the trigger just a second or two after Dave walked behind it. Not even like a second or two and he could have been obliterated. The bullet went straight across the valley, it blew up only couple of hundred meters across the valley. The avalanche center of professionalism project never came to be as you know in the end.
The final result was Clair didn’t end up even working anymore as the Public Safety Manager. They axed his job and shifted him to Front Country in Banff. I happened to be in the office when he was moved to his new job which was going to be in charge of frontcountry in Banff, so I helped him move. He showed up fully dressed in a warden outfit including a Stetson hat which I had never seen him wear one before, and the green jacket.
And one of the things that he moved was this 106 round that was painted gold. It was a practice round that had “dummy” written on the side in big black letters. I said, “What are you going to do with this?” He said, “I don’t know, maybe we should create an award for the person that’s done the dumbest thing in the year, and they can keep it for the year.” So, I said “So this should go on your shelf I guess.” His nose twitched, but anyways he didn’t stay there very long. That was not going to be his career.
SH: Yes, he became Mr. Avalanche (Executive Director of the Canadian Avalanche Association) But there were some good things that did come out of that project. The computer world I thought was good, the weather stations were good. There was money in that.
BW: The weather stations were great but the problem with weather stations was you could get capital money for weather stations, but we didn’t have any maintenance money for operations.
SH: And they were really technical.
BW: Yes, and I ended up being kind of the go-to guy to fix them. That wasn’t always a good thing to know, because every time they broke, and they’d break quite often…there’s always some issue, and then “Brad can fix that.”
SH: Wasn’t Dave Gilbride helping then?
BW: Gilbride was involved when we put them in and he was still involved from Invermere for a while so he was really helpful while he was there, but then he retired. There was a great guy, Paul, in Environment Canada that helped sometimes. Then they were told that they couldn’t climb towers anymore so he couldn’t help. On and on it went.
SH: BC Highways had a person totally dedicated to that, and Parks didn’t.
