(1:14:37) Lilo – Yes, he retired. We met him in Banff at the 100 year (national park warden centennial celebration). I didn’t recognize him…It was nice to see him. You really pushed him…he didn’t want to go up to the summit.
(1:15:28) Hans – No, he wasn’t that eager.
(1:15:30) Lilo – You said, “You will be the first, you will make history, the first native.” He was proud afterwards. He did say that.
“From Kluane, did you come back to Jasper?”
(1:15:44) Lilo – No, to Kootenay. We wanted to go back to Jasper, but there was no opening, so we went to Kootenay. He worked for 20 years then in Kootenay.
(1:15:54) Hans – I worked for 20 years in Kootenay National Park. We were stationed at Kootenay Crossing.
(1:16:02) Lilo – And that (pointing to their son, Martin) is the product of Kootenay Crossing! (Hans and Lilo’s son Martin was present for most of the interview). That is where I got pregnant. I am an old mama, I was 40, almost 41 years old. First and only child!
Hans, Lilo and Martin. Photo courtesy of Hans & Lilo Fuhrer.
“Martin, what year were you born?”
(1:16:21) Martin – In 1978.
(1:16:24) Lilo – It was the greatest thing that ever happened!
“Martin, so you grew up as a warden’s child?”
(1:16:29) Martin – Right, Then a year later, you moved to Edgewater.
(1:16:33) Lilo – Yes, I got pregnant and then we bought this house and in 1978 we moved down here.
(1:16:45) Martin – So, I actually grew up here…
“Edgewater seems like an interesting little community.”
(1:16:58) Lilo – It is not at all outdoorsy, nobody goes walking… A lot of gun happy (live here)…we treasure wildlife. If there is a cougar or anything we (want) to leave it alone. We had a mama bear over there and the kids were harassing it. So I went over and said, “Leave that bear alone!” It didn’t do any harm and I phoned the conservation officer. It was all hysterical. But this is the way that they grew up afraid of wildlife.
(1:17:37) Hans – I don’t think I was very welcome in Edgewater…a park warden moving into town.
(1:17:46) Lilo – And he caught a poacher…
(1:17:59) Hans – I was actually the first warden to move out of the park in Kootenay to live in a house…And that was kind of a change over at that time. Ole Hermanrude was the Chief Park Warden and he was quite hesitant to let me out of the park…to live in my own house. He said, “For one thing, we’ve got to have radio communication.” Since we have the Kindersley repeater right here, which is just right above Edgewater we had good radio communication…better than to Invermere, there was no communication there whatsoever. So I figured this would probably be the place to live…Then we came to Edgewater and we saw this property and we kind of liked it because there was a nice big garden. I always liked gardening…So we moved here and then we had good radio communication. The chief (warden) was happy about that. But since then things have changed a lot. All the wardens moved out of the stations, they live now in Invermere. I was actually the only warden living here in Edgewater.
(1:19:39) Lilo – I felt very lonely…I loved Banff, I loved Jasper, there were outdoor people. I had girlfriends there…Here women gossip and when you are different…We swam, we windsurfed and had the baby along with us always. I just didn’t fit in and still we are very different. So we do our gardening and our outdoor things and we have really good friends in Invermere also… We homeschooled for five years because there were things going on in school that I just couldn’t believe. There was no discipline and many of his school buddies were pretty wild…I thought, “My God, I have one precious child, I cannot go along with that.” You have to go with your heart. I thank God everyday that we have done the right thing. After five years of homeschooling, he had the highest marks and the best thing was the Banff International College opened and they had an IP (Integrated) program and it was super…It was top notch, but after two years they closed it. They didn’t have enough students. He was doing so well in this IB (International Baccalaureate) program and I had a girlfriend in Calgary where he could stay. We had to go through a lawyer so that he could go to school (in Alberta) so he went to St.Mary’s, they had an IP program in Calgary and he finished at St.Mary’s. Right away he had high, high marks and he got scholarships to university. So he started and he has a Masters degree now in Computer Science and computer graphics and he has a good job in Calgary. I feel we have done the right thing…
Photo courtesy of Hans & Lilo Fuhrer
(1:22:49) Hans – This is actually a great area because we live between the Rocky Mountains and the Purcells…So we do a lot, a lot of hikes, mountain climbing…
(1:23:00) Lilo – And canoeing, it is just beautiful. And there are a lot of nice people in Invermere and outdoor people…
(1:23:11) Hans – You have to pick and choose…
(1:23:21) Lilo – I would have preferred Banff or Canmore or Jasper again. Anyways I love the gardening and you do your own thing you know. But I was very lonely as a (new) mom. It was just totally different.
“You spent 20 years in Kootenay, what year did you retire then?”
(1:23:57) Hans – I retired in 1995.)
(1:24:02) Lilo – At age 60.
(1:24:04) Hans – After 30 years. I bought back some years because I had only six month positions…so cumulatively it came up to 30 years. Then it was time to move on…Of course things have always changed. They changed during our times. Everything is relative to the time, but the warden service has changed a lot since then. I personally think that the years that we had in the warden service were by far the best years…Then of course the young people who get on to the warden service today, if they can call it the warden service anymore, they move into a different system and for them it is also good because they don’t know what happened before. Again, it is relative. They do the job as we had to do our job, but in a completely different way. It is more science and protection today and when we were in we had the traditional times, we did virtually everything…we had to be pretty professional at that time (in public safety) because you couldn’t make any mistakes…In other areas we weren’t that professional, in law enforcement and all that, but now they have changed that system. But I personally think that the traditional warden service was way better and that they should have kept it that way.
Hans’ retirement party. Photo courtesy of Hans & Lilo Fuhrer.
(1:26:21) Lilo – On the other hand the traffic it is so overwhelming now and there is more crime…
“In Kootenay did you always do public safety?”
(1:26:36) Hans – I always did public safety yeah. I had the chance actually to write the Climber’s Guide for Kootenay National Park. So I’ve climbed virtually every peak in Kootenay during that time and documented everything and took photographs. I came up with the Climbers Guide for the park. The Guide was never published; but one book is in Banff. I wrote ten books, they were photographic books and then also the climbing information for all the peaks in the park. It is quite a nice document.
(1:27:23) Lilo – It is at the (Kootenay) information bureau also. It is still there.
(1:27:25) Hans – It is at the Information Bureau in Kootenay…in Radium right. There is one at the regional office also in Calgary.
(1:27:45) Hans – We had a good time here in Kootenay National Park too, but everything became more routine than it was in the earlier years of the warden service. This is why those episodes from before like I told you, to me they were so unique to that time. I don’t think that those things will ever come back anymore because it is just a different era right now. All the people I worked with were just great. It was great fun. Of course I knew your dad quite well. (Keith Everts was a Banff park warden from the early 1970s until 1995. He died suddenly of a heart attack March 4, 1999.)
“What did you like best about the warden life?
(1:29:58) Lilo – We loved living at Mile 45.) A lot of young warden wives almost turned crazy, I remember one warden’s wife; she couldn’t handle it. She was just afraid of wildlife. But we were happy when a grizzly walked around or a cougar. It was wonderful. They (some warden’s wives) felt totally isolated and alone. Ron Chambers was at 45 then and he had two husky dogs and I loved those huskies…I took them a lot, a lot of times up to Waterfowl cabin and back. At that time I was still a fitness nut really! I had the dogs with me and I just loved every bit of it, of the backcountry.
(1:31:08) Hans – A lot of things looking from the outside it always looks wonderful, but you do have to adjust to that kind of life…It is not for everybody. You have to know that ahead of time that you are going to be living out in a station somewhere. Again this has changed. But it wasn’t for everybody. I know during the time that I was on the warden service a lot of people couldn’t take it. They quit and some other guys came in and there was quite a change over. You had to be suitable for the job that was for one thing.
(1:31:54) Lilo – We loved it!
(1:31:58) Hans – As I say, it looked beautiful from the outside, but then when you were in it doing the job you were an independent player all together. It definitely was different…but you had to like what you were doing…To me it was the most suitable job in my whole life, so I have no regrets. There were good and bad times, there were both sides, but when you weigh things out, the good times, they always come out to the top and the bad times, you just kind of talk over it and you laugh about it and say, “Well, it was still a good time. It was still good teamwork.”
(1:32:47) Lilo – A lot of good camaraderie, a lot of really super wardens. They were really good, Bob Haney was one of them, a really nice guy and also really good…
“What you said about loving wildlife, made me think of Pat Haney (Bob Haney’s wife) because she said the same thing.”
(1:33:04) Lilo – Absolutely! (We were good friends. Bob and Pat were stationed at Athabasca Falls. Pat and I, we would meet halfway. We were at Poboktan and they were at Athabasca Falls (and we would meet halfway) with our bicycles. I remember on the Athabasca River, the river was low and there was this island. She and I in our bikinis would sunbathe! We had fun there and Pat had a sunburn. She was just red like a lobster! It was cool because the water is cool and there is always a wind and we didn’t realize how sunburned we got! I was not as bad because I am dark skinned, but she could hardly get on the bicycle…She was a wonderful, really nice person! We had fun, yes! It was great, absolutely wonderful!
(1:34:31) Lilo – There was also at times very scary things, I remember when we worked at the Icefields there was an escapee from a prison near Red Deer…Anyways he was armed they said. The police on the radio they warned us that he is headed towards the Icefields. So we closed up and went back to the trailer. We were listening to the radio and then they lost track of him. He was armed and very dangerous. We locked the trailer up and went to bed and at two in the morning there was a knock! “Holy cow, there he is!” A knock, a knock. I said, “Hans!” Hans took the ice axe…”Don’t go, don’t go”…He went to the door and there was still knocking and all of a sudden we heard a child’s voice…It was John Gow, with Bob our nephew! At two in the morning! I don’t know where they came from, but anyways they needed to stay overnight. What an experience, I never forgot it! I thought, “Here, he is the murderer.” And the only weapon we had was the ice axe…
(1:36:45) Lilo – Another thing at the Icefields, I remember I made a big mistake. The fridge wasn’t running, so I put out some meat, some food that would go bad, I hung it up high, outside on the trailer. And of course a bear (came)…We learned from that. Anyways a bear was around and then…that lock (on the trailer) wasn’t going right, so you put the climbing rope around the latch there, and (the bear) was pulling, and bang! The latch came out, the handle, so we couldn’t lock the trailer. Then it took a while before Maintenance could come out, several days…but then early in the morning I woke up. He was sound asleep and I heard somebody come in. Right in front of our bed is a guy! “Where is the next gas station?” I thought, “Oh my god…” You didn’t hear knocking or anything and he was right in front of (the bed). We had a curtain there. At first when you come in there was a living room, then a kitchen and then the bedroom. It was all very small. And he (Hans) was sound asleep…And here was this guy. I was just so shocked, a guy right in front of our bed you know.
(1:38:44) Hans – It was an interesting point at the Icefields because the highway wasn’t that busy and many times hitchhikers they got stranded at the Columbia Icefields because usually the people came up from Jasper and then they turned back to go Jasper and vice versa from Lake Louise. A lot of those people got stranded up there and we were the only ones living there at the Icefields from 1964/65 to 1974 in the summer. Of course we ended up with quite a few stranded people and what are you going to do with them? They had nothing, they didn’t have a sleeping bag. They were just hitchhiking.
(1:39:35) Lilo – We fed them always from our own supplies.
(1:39:37) Hans – So many times what I did was I had my own prison at the Icefields, I called it the prison! It was the utility room. The utility room was also part of the rescue room…
(1:40:00) Lilo – We had no locking system. Like I was in charge of all the books and all the things and we couldn’t leave them at the Information Bureau because if anything was taken…These were strange people, some were really odd. I was responsible for it, so we had a utility room. He left them in there, it was humane. He gave them a sleeping bag and a mattress, but he had to lock it.
(1:40:28) Hans – But the windows were really high so they couldn’t look out the window…
(1:40:34) Lilo – And it was warm in there.
(1:40:35) Hans – Yeah it was warm…
(1:40:39) Lilo – We let them sleep and in the morning we gave them breakfast…
(1:40:41) Hans – At least they couldn’t escape. In the morning sometimes…you would see a head looking out of the utility room looking over to our trailer where we were. Then we usually gave them breakfast and then we let them go again. Then they went out hitchhiking either way to Banff or Jasper. We had a lot of people like that stranded up there and what do you do with them? Today it probably wouldn’t be legal anymore. But you used your own judgment and you didn’t tell anybody. It worked fine.
(1:41:23) Lilo – No we told everybody, they knew that we were humane, always good to people. But you were scared almost, and (some) were stinky. They hadn’t had a bath for several weeks or so. Tell her Hans about that guy you said was so smelly in the tent that you said that you almost threw up.
(1:41:55) Hans – He came out of the backcountry and I gave him a ride. This guy was just stinky…You can always wash even in the backcountry eh…There is always water. But this guy stank so much even the truck stunk for a long while after that. It was just like rotten meat, it was just terrible.
(1:42:24) Martin – Was he on a camping trip?
(1:42:26) Lilo – He was camping, wild I guess and naturally the bears go for that, for the smell and they tore his tent. You helped him also. You said, that was the reason why the bear ripped the tent because he just stank that guy!
