SH: Cool – the three legged stool. Do you have any lasting memories as a Warden? Favourite park, cabin, horse, trail, humorous stories, etc. You kept me laughing every day at work so let’s have some.

Ian: Favourite park ….I thought about that. You try to do the very political answer which is “They were all great”, and they were all great, but I liked Banff. I liked the people there, by the people I mean in the warden office in general was a pretty tight place, good people in there. I liked that people did stuff, in a lot of ways were required to do stuff, accountability was very close. Public consultation required actions, and those actions we had to report back on at a later meeting so there was an accountability there to deliver, that didn’t exist in a lot of places. I also really enjoyed Banff because of the management team in the late ‘90s to mid 2000s. to later 2000s. It was a good bunch of people who tried to move things forward. Working in Banff was a unique experience. Some people don’t like that level of public exposure in what it is you do, but others thrive on it. I certainly thrived on it and always felt my role in the civil service was actually to do some good as opposed to just maintain, and most of the senior staff in Banff felt the same way.

SH: Great answer. What’s your favourite cabin in Banff?

Ian: Some of them might seem a little odd. I always really enjoyed Sandhills. When I worked in Lake Louise, I always really enjoyed Clearwater Lakes cabin. They were the most remote places in Banff Park. Clearwater was unique in that it was a tiny cabin, and when you first walked in, it would be quite dark in there and you had to blink a number of times to remember that there was a fellow named Jim Rimmer who had the Indianhead District for a number of years in the 60’s. He’d chosen to paint the interior of Clearwater cabin, the old logs. The paints that he brought were probably government issue out of Stores, thinking that he had got two of the same colours, because I’d heard he was colour blind. So the walls were sort of pale hospital green and the roof was pink. You tried to impress upon new staff “Don’t mess with this. You may not like it but it is part of our history. Just leave it, it is unique.” Jim’s ashes were actually spread along the Clearwater River when I was Chief Warden by Moe Vroom, Larry Gilmar and Brad White.

Indianhead tent camp was absolutely a favourite place in the fall. I have many good memories there and at Indianhead cabin. Scotch Camp was probably the prettiest place. Its challenge was initially you could drive to it but over time as the Cascade fire road got closed it got its sense of wildness back again and it was a good place, you bet.

SH: You’re making me homesick. Do you want to tell another funny story? You didn’t tell many funny stories yesterday.
Ian: No, I need to think about funny stories. I’ll think about it while I’m away. The interesting thing was we all shared a lot of these funny stories whether it was on a Peter Fuhrmann sanction or some kind of big ski slog through Yoho National Park. The horse trips, we all kind of shared those and that’s what bonded the Warden Service … do you remember this particular ski school. There’d be 10 or 15 people on some of these courses, so we all shared that. The stories that you read in other people’s histories, that have vastly greater memory than I do. The fun thing is when you read them you go “Oh my gosh, yes, that happened to me.”
I’ll think about some good stories, but rest assured I have those great memories and great funny stories.

SH: I know you do. Do you ever miss being a Warden?
Ian: I did initially. I think part of the problem that we all face is that you kind of go from one hundred miles an hour in a particular direction, five days a week, four weeks a month, twelve months a year working for Parks. The reason you’re in Parks is because you love it generally and for me that took a couple of years of adjustment. I had lists when I retired, lists of things to do almost daily, like the old day-timer, but after a while you just kind of move along. Charlie Zinkan put it best to me when he retired, in that he was moving to the next phase of his life. He thought of his life in phases like going to university and different components of career was a phase, raising children might have been a phase and then retirement is a new phase. Sometimes it takes a little bit to get used to.
Do I think of Parks Canada now? I think of Parks Canada because right behind me where I live is a national park and you do run into Park staff and yes, I do think of Parks at those moments. I sometimes have to pinch myself about I did what I did, particularly in the backcountry or public safety in the 1980s. It’s a little bit hard to believe.

It’s a little bit hard explaining. You know, you are in Parks Canada you don’t have to explain a whole bunch of things to young staff because they already know what you’re talking about. But to explain to someone – who lived in Vancouver or Langley all their life and were a salesman for something – what you did, in a lot of cases you get quite a blank stare, and you realize that you can know Parks Canada, and the old Warden Service was fairly recognized in Canada, but nobody really knew what you did or what you were involved with, or very few people did. In a lot of these big urban centers the folks just don’t know.

SH: Yes I find when you meet people and start talking about a story of a rescue or a fire or something you were involved in, their eyes just glaze over because they can’t believe some of those events.
Ian: Yes, or that you had that sorts of skills.

SH: Do you have any photos of yourself as a Warden that you would like to donate to the Project, or that we may copy? Do you have any artifacts/memorabilia that you would like to donate to the Project (Whyte Museum?
Yes of course, some of us did collect some of that stuff, signs that were no longer standard. I have my first ice axe. When Rick and Jean retired at the Ya Ha Tinda, I decided some of those things needed to be repatriated, and put some signs up in the bunkhouse there, and put some things in the museum there, because I think that was where they belonged. We’ll see where Parks Canada is in the future and decide where the rest of this stuff goes. I would like to repatriate it.

SH: What year did you retire? What do you enjoy doing in retirement?
Ian: I retired in 2010, late fall. I didn’t necessarily have a huge plan at that point in time. I knew that if I didn’t do something to break my daily thoughts about Parks Canada or particular issues in Parks Canada, I needed to do some completely different for a sustained amount of time to break that habit. I know if I stayed in Banff or Canmore, that constantly you just would think about the backcountry or the Warden Service or something else. So, I actually ended up buying a motorcycle in New Zealand and went in mid January after retirement, mid January 2011, and toured for two and a half months on a motorcycle in a country that proved to be absolutely spectacular.
Then I came back to Banff and my mother passed away very shortly after I arrived back to Banff, within a few weeks. I started a new life on the west coast. I figured that I grew up in the prairie, lived in the mountains for 35 years, and it was time to try something coastal. I live on Pender Island, in the Gulf Islands for eleven years now, twelve years.
Ian Syme

SH: I know you are a major sailor and have some lovely boats.
Ian: Yes, to me part of the attraction of being on or near the water was you actually go out on it. So I bought a boat fairly quickly in 2012. The kind of boat I wanted. Then in 2017 I started crewing on sailboats that race every Saturday. When I talk about racing, it’s not like the things you see on TV at all. This is people who have sailboats in our little marina, and they just like to get out on Saturdays to exercise their brain and their boat, so not super serious racing, but the season ran from mid October through mid March or April, all through the winter. It was the perfect Covid getaway … every Saturday. So this year I decided that maybe I’d like to try my own boat, so in addition to my motor boat I now have a 30 foot sailboat, which has been fun. We’ve had some nice adventures on it.
I have a partner, Jan who likes to explore on the boats like I do. We’ve been as far south as Olympia Washington and as far north as the Desolation Sound area and a little bit further north, and lots of places in between. People from around the world want to cruise in the Gulf Islands in Canada and it’s quite lovely.

SH: Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you think I should know about the Warden Service?

Let me think about that one.

Is there anyone else I should talk to?
I think there are other chiefs in the mountain park that were in that era of change, Steve Otway, Ed Abbott. They’d be appropriate to find out how things went in their respective parks. Lake Louise Yoho Kootenay was a fairly complex field unit to try and keep together with the townsites. There was a lot of driving, and big fires there too. Jasper had some big fires, and some hard evolution into the new Resource Conservation. I admire those folks for managing in tough times

Since the Warden Oral History seems to be expanding its role, I think as I’ve kind of eluded to there might be an opportunity to talk to Jillian Roulet or Charlie Zinkan about their views of an organization that they weren’t necessarily one hundred percent involved with but truly supported at a management level, and it might be interesting getting that perspective.

SH: Great suggestions. Thanks for doing this.

Susan Hairsine worked for Resource Conservation and Operations in Mt. Revelstoke/Glacier, Jasper and Banff National Parks, as well as for Public Safety in Western and Northern Region for over 30 years. She obtained funding for an oral history of Parks Canada’s avalanche personnel and oversaw the successful completion of the project. Her experience working with several the interviewees during their careers has been an asset to the current project. She was also the Executive Assistant to the Chief Park Wardens of Jasper and Banff National Parks