(0:29:41) I graduated from the University of Calgary and I had no sooner graduated than I was offered the Superintendency of Prince Albert (Waskesiu National Park) by the Regional Director, Bill McKilm. I turned it down, which was probably really burning bridges, but the reason that I turned it down is that we would have had to ship the kids off to school. You had to live in Waskesiu, I guess it was. I have never been in PA (Prince Albert) so, I don’t know the ground there, but we made inquiries and it turned out that we had to ship the kids off and we just weren’t ready to kick them out of the nest yet. I realized at the time that by turning it down, I was probably not doing my career any good, but I really didn’t care. As I said earlier, the family came first and we didn’t want to send them out into the world until we had to. So I turned that down. I guess what I had really been aiming at when I came out of university was the Chief Warden’s job in Banff. But my timing was bad. Not long before I graduated Bert Pittaway was successful in getting the Chief Warden job. When I turned down the PA job, I had to kind of look around and see where I could fit in. There was nothing in the warden service that appealed to me at the time. The Chief Naturalist’s job in Banff was open so I thought, “Well, I can live with that!” I didn’t really want to go from the warden service but I applied for that and was in that position for a couple of years. The Chief Warden, and the Visitor Services Officer and myself had offices on the second floor at the Administration Building along with the Superintendent. I think the Engineers had an office in there too. I was in that job for, maybe two years…Then I was offered the Superintendency of Pacific Rim.
(0:33:07) By that time our oldest son was out of school and going to university so he was away from home. Our youngest son was still in school and we were going to be living in Ucluelet so I accepted the job and he was in school there. I was in (for) two or three years as Superintendent. Ole (Hermanrude) was there for part of my tenure, yes. I always liked Ole, he was a good guy. He was Chief Warden there. He did okay and after Ole, Mac Elder was there for a while. No, I guess I had three Chief Wardens there. Fred Bamber was Chief Warden to start with when I moved there. Then Fred left to go to the prairie region somewhere. I forget what job he was in, but he left and Ole came in. He was there for a year or two and then Mac Elder. Ole had been Chief Warden in Glacier…I’m sorry Christine! When you get to my age, you think you know everything and then you try to remember this and that and you’re not too sure!
(0:35:30) Once again after two or three years in Pacific Rim, we ran into the old bugaboo of schooling. Although we had a high school right there, we began to realize that our youngest son wasn’t getting much of an education. We had meetings with the school board and finally determined that they were completely negative in terms of university education. The accepted path for a kid out there was to stay in school as long as he legally had to which was 15 or something, then quit, and go to work for Macmillan Bloedel, (the logging company) or go fishing. At that time, in both of those areas, a young fellow, 17 or 18 could make huge money because fishing was good then and so was the logging business. Anybody that could walk, talk and do whatever could get a job. As a consequence, the attitude in school was that was adequate. They had a bunch of hippy teachers there. The kids all called them by their first names. But it took us a while to get on to this. Finally one day our youngest son was doing some math homework and I picked up his textbook. This was about March I think. I picked up his text book which he had opened about a third of the way in and I said, “How much of this text book do you have to finish in grade ten math?” He said, “All of it.” I said, “There’s no way if this is all you’ve done to date! There is no way!” That’s when we really got concerned. It is one thing if you want to go ahead with anything of consequence; you’ve got to have your math and your sciences. So we had some meetings with the school board and finally realized that I had to do something. I applied for a job at regional office and once again was Chief of Interpretation. I was in that for about a year and then Chief of Resource Conservation came open and I bid and crossed over to that. That’s where I ended my career. I was in regional office for about eight or nine years. The regional office in Calgary.
(0:39:22) Actually, Jim Sime, was in my group there and I mentioned Kurt Seal. George Rogers was my Forestry Officer. All the time I was there Patricia Benson was my Chief Factotum in that office, in terms of working on our inventories. Percy Wiebe was there for a while. Different ones came and went. Percy Wiebe was there when I left. Percy was primarily interested in fisheries, but his job was broader than that and Mike Schintz was my Warden Service Officer. Mike knew the history of the warden service…Mike had a pretty good career in the warden service. He was a very, very dedicated man.
(0:40:46 I retired in 1986. Actually, I left in 1985, but I had accumulated leave that took me over into 1986 and I left early. I was only 57 years old but my wife and I sort of inventoried where we were at and decided that we could live on our income…After 27 or 28 years, we were ready to make a change.
(0:42:00) I never worked closely with your dad, but I knew him for quite a long time. I liked him. He was, in my estimation, a good man. Although, as I say, we didn’t work together. He was always a cheerful, accommodating fellow. I was really saddened when he passed away.
(0:45:43) We had actually come out here to Vancouver Island a couple of times and we bought a place when I was still working, some years before I retired. We bought a lot up near Parksville with the thought that we might build there and retire. We got to kind of like Vancouver Island when we were in Pacific Rim. Although I’d never buy a lot at Pacific Rim, it’s too darn wet out there! However one thing led to another and we came down here to Sidney and there was a development called Dean Park that was just opening up and we really liked the location. So we bought another lot there and eventually sold the one at Parksville, or near Parksville. Then about 1980, costs were going up pretty fast in building and we thought, we better build a house now. This was when I was still working. So we built a house in Dean Park and we rented it for about five or six years, so that we would have it when we retired. That’s what we did. Subsequently, after that we did a little horse trading in real estate, and sold that house and bought another, sold that and bought another, that kind of thing. But that’s of neither here nor there. That was just dealing in real estate, made a little here, lost a little there, type of thing.
(0:47:57) I had a boat for quite a while out here and I used it to salmon fish. I finally decided that, although I enjoyed the salmon fishing, owning a boat is kind of like owning a hole down which you shovel money! We had a spell there when fishing wasn’t so good so I sold the boat. I’m not sorry that I did. I’d done enough fishing.
(0:48:33) I should go back a little. The theme has been manoeuvring back and forth in order to get the family educated. We did in fact accomplish that. Our oldest son first took a degree in agriculture and then he went to veterinary school and he has been practising for 20 some years as a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. I think he ended up with eight years of university. And our youngest son, went to the University of Calgary for three years and he took a pre-optometry in microbiology, then he studied optometry and he went for four years to the University of Waterloo in Ontario. He’s practised ever since he graduated as a Doctor of Optometry. It was worth it, but it meant moving around a lot, and it meant sort of swimming upstream in terms of your career at times because a lot of the senior management were not concerned about your family’s education. They were concerned that you go where they want you to go and we didn’t always do that. Our oldest son has a practice in Edson Alberta, west of Edmonton. He’s been there for a long time. It’s a big practice. He has three other vets with him; two of them are partners and another one is on salary. It covers a huge area…It’s been a big practice and a busy practice. Although I think he is starting to look forward to retiring himself. Our youngest son actually lives in Winnipeg, but his practice is in Carmen, Manitoba.
(0:52:24) It was a reflection of my background, my decision to join the warden service. My dad was a warden, and I liked the parks. I liked the kind of life. When you’re young you think, “Well, I’m going to do nothing but ride horses up and down trails, climb mountains and all that good stuff.” It appealed to me and it was something I thought I could be good at.
(0:52:58) Well, I liked the backcountry and the wildlife. I liked a lot about it. I was lucky enough to be in the organization back in the days of Walter Perren. I went to numerous schools with Walter being the head man; ski schools, climbing schools that sort of thing. I went quite a number of times to what we referred to as “Cuthead College”. Back in those days it was a pretty good organization. There was a lot of camaraderie among the wardens. I liked the horse work in particular, because I had grown up with horses. Again it was something that I was fairly good at.
