(1:02:39) No, not really (Colleen didn’t find it lonely). She didn’t like it at Wood Buffalo because we were 100 miles from town, on bad roads, just dirt roads… Before we had kids she used to come with me all the time on patrols, if the weather was good. In the fall, I used to be over at the Corners Cabin there on the Panther…until the first of December. She’d be out there in the good weather and then she’d go back to Stoney Creek. I’d work a week out here and come back, and a week out there checking…keeping hunters honest. Oh yeah, (she’d help with the trails and telephone maintenance). They all, the wardens wives, they were secondary wardens. They’d sell fishing licenses and everything else, answer phones…
(1:04:23) If you met one or two (wardens) coming in off the horse drive in the spring, well then there would be a party that night. They had Christmas parties. In later years in the 1960s and stuff when they started building these newer houses and stuff like that, they’d have a party…They’d throw a house warming. (The Christmas party) they mostly had it at the Voyager or something like that.
(1:05:35) Ernie Stenton, he was a good warden, an old timer. He helped me a lot. When I was away and we were living at Stoney Creek, he made sure he went up, at least every second day on patrol up to Stoney Creek to see that Colleen was okay…90% (of the warden service was like a family), until we got these new younger guys with these big educations. We were a close knit family. Even before I was married and I was living in town, I used to babysit for some of the wardens…I never went to any Christmas parties and stuff until after I was married, because I used to babysit.
(1:06:43) I miss the life a bit, but I don’t miss Parks Canada because they have gotten so haywire and bureaucratic. Like now, they don’t do nothing! They’ve lost the warden service, which is a shame. Years and years ago when we were still on districts and stuff, the wardens were proud of their jobs and they did a good job of it, 90% of them. There were a few of them that didn’t. They were just plain lazy.
(1:07:36) It was a good way of life that was all. I wouldn’t go back now for a million dollars a year, because it is not a park warden job anymore. It’s too bureaucratic and too computerized.
(1:08:00) Like after I retired, I was in charge of fire control and I knew what I was doing. The guy that got my position down there, he moved into fire control. Well, then they got computers and he was telling me, “Oh Yeah, now we got this computer and I can tell exactly what the fire is going to do. I just punch it in on the computer and it will tell me.” I said, “It’ll tell you nothing! It will tell you what you punch into it. I can tell you what a fire is going to do before it got really going.” “But it is not in black and white,” he said. No, I said “It is here” (pointing to his head). Well, you know that if a fire is burning here and the wind is coming from that direction it is going to go this way. You don’t need a computer to tell you that! But if it is hot and dry, it is going to be a hot fire. If it is raining, it will be slower; it’s not going to go that fast. But it is still going to go the direction the wind is blowing. But oh no, the computer is going to tell me all what I’ve got to have and how many men I got to have and everything. It don’t tell you nothing! You just punch it in, so you can get it out on paper. Well same with the forestry. These fire bosses that they send out on the fires, well this big Dogrid fire in 2001. If they’d listened to me it would never have gotten away. It would not have got that big. But I had never gone to that school in Hinton. I didn’t have the piece of paper that said I knew it all. But I had been fire boss on 265 fires that was just in the 3 years at Wood Buffalo. Some of these fire bosses have never been on a fire before, but they went to that school in Hinton so they know what to do…
(1:10:35) There is one thing that you should do. You should go back to living in the bush! Forget all this resource technology that you got to have. Use common sense! I’ve had seasonal wardens work for three or four seasons and you don’t dare turn them loose in the bush, because they don’t got the common sense. They’d just go by the book…
(1:11:23) After the U.S. Rangers go back to the bush. It will take Parks Canada 20 years to do it. They are 20 years behind U.S. parks and forestry.
(1:12:42) I worked at quite a few rodeos. I rode FCA (Foothills Cowboy Association) for four or five years. My first rodeo was in 1939 in Jasper, steer riding. I made a whole dollar! Every kid that came through on a calf got a dollar. Pinky Kramer from Jasper, he was about the same age as me. He come out and his calf broke a front leg, bucking and fell. He was laying there bawling, the calf was. Pinky he got up and was barreling across the arena and up through the fence to the grandstand. Well, it wasn’t a grandstand. It was on the hill there and they had planks set in there for seats…He thought that calf was after him!
