(1:12:54) I can remember going out on a boundary trip when I was Assistant Chief Warden and Jimmy Rimmer was a warden in the Clearwater district which was in the north end of the park. Jimmy had been trained as a horseman in the British cavalry. He spent a lot of time in Egypt in the Middle East when he was in the army. Jim used to treat his horses just like they were in the army too. He’d shout orders at them! I can remember one awful wreck that Jimmy and I had. We had a couple of pack horses and one of the packs started to slip. I guess it wasn’t balanced that well. It started to slip over sideways, and the horse was running loose. Before we could get a hold on it, the pack tipped over to the point it spooked the horse. We had a great wreck! It ended up we were picking stuff up for a half mile. Fortunately, the eggs were on the other horse! We gradually got things back together and got the horses settled down, we got him packed again and we paid a little more attention after that!
(0:14:45) Jimmy had a dog that was very famous. His name was Spook and he was a bull terrier. Spook and Jimmy were made for each other. They both had same cussed, stubborn British type personality. Whereby Jimmy was the kind of guy that if you told him he couldn’t do something, or he shouldn’t do it, why he’d kill himself doing it one way or another! He was a good man, don’t get me wrong. That was the kind of guy he was and Spook kind of had the same disposition! Spook used to run away on Jimmy occasionally. He’d be gone for about three days and Jim would be looking all over for him. “Here Spook!” you know in his English accent. He’d ride back over the trail that he’d been on when Spook disappeared. Finally he’d give up and go home and a day or two, or three later Spook would come panting in all covered in scratches and scars looking just about half dead. Whatever he’d been up to, he’d had some adventures. Probably tangled with a wolverine or some such thing. Jim never married. He was a funny character. I guess it was his military training, but when he showed up at the office to turn his diary in or report or whatever, he was immaculate! His uniform was pressed, his hat was blocked beautifully. He’d have his Sunday best uniform on. You’d look at Jim and think “God, I wish all the other wardens could look that good!” But again, it was a reflection on his military background.
(1:17:25) You might get this from Pete Tasker, who was really the fellow with the story first hand. You wanted a humorous anecdote…Jimmy Sime was Assistant Chief Warden at that time. He was Assistant Chief Warden before me in Banff. They’d gone out to the Ya-Ha Tinda, some of them, to hunt elk. I don’t know if it was their days off or the weekend, whatever it was. They shot a couple of elk. In those days, you were allowed to shoot cows or bulls. They were dressing these elk. This one cow elk had three legs. Somewhere or another in the past, whether it had been shot off, or broken off, or whatever happened, she lost the lower part of one leg. Of course they noticed it right away. But she had survived and it healed up and when they were dressing these elk, one of the men noticed that the elk was pregnant and was carrying a fetus about so big. So I forget, say it was the right front foot that was missing on the elk. Jimmy was doing the dressing and when he wasn’t looking Pete pinched the right front foot off this fetus. He didn’t say anything. Jimmy got through gutting the elk and straightened up and was kind of looking at things. “My, God! “ He says, “Look at that fetus! It’s missing a front foot just like the mother!” Jimmy got excited as heck about that. He was going to write a scientific paper on it and everything else! I think it was Pete who was the perpetrator of this thing. Finally, before Jimmy went too far he thought they’d better tell him. But Jimmy was going through all kinds of (scenarios) “I wonder what it is? Those dam atom bombs, they’re dropping all over…” The neat part of it is, when you pinch a fetus, it is such a rubbery undeveloped thing, this fetus was probably only three months. As I say they are almost rubbery and you can pinch something like that and it almost closes the wound itself. You sever the leg, but it almost seals up and it doesn’t bleed. Anyways that’s kind of a neat anecdote…
(1:24:23) I’m sure you’ve already heard – and this was before my time – I think it was a Banff warden, Bill Neish that shot a couple of Dukabours…A Mountie was murdered or killed…and there were two men on the loose, running away. I can’t even remember where the murder happened, but these two men were thought to be heading west. The police, I guess all along the way were alerted to keep a lookout for these men and approach with caution because they were armed and dangerous. They showed up down around the east gate of Banff. This was in the wintertime and the police had some wardens involved. They were trying to apprehend these men. I’m sure the police were there and were involved too. These men took off on foot. Bill Neish, I guess these men fired on him – and so, when Bill Neish got a chance, he shot them, both of them. Killed them. Anyway the comical part of a grim situation was that the wardens had to hand in a daily diary. Everyday there was a sheet and you had to fill it out, so Bill’s diary for that day went something like, “a routine patrol to east gate, shot two Dukabours.” These diaries used to be forwarded; there was no regional office in those days, so they were forwarded to the head office in Ottawa. Apparently this diary ended up on somebody’s desk in Ottawa and they just about had a fit when they read Bill Neish’s brief account of apprehending these two Dukabours. You probably shouldn’t use Dukabour because that would be politically incorrect today. I think they were Dukabours, but they were not part of a group, religion didn’t enter into it. Everything went by mail then, there was no fax. The diary was sent back to Banff and they said, “We want more detail on this.” So they went back to Bill Neish and said, “Come on, we need more detail on this.” The next time it was sent to Ottawa, the amended diary came back from Bill Neish, “Routine patrol of east gate, shot two Dukabours, snowing heavily.” I don’t know whether I’ve got that story 100% correct and you will probably hear it again from someone else, but I always thought that had to be epitome of the old time park warden of those days. They were men of action and very, very, few words!
(1:28:34) A man by the name of Monte Rose was on the warden service in Banff for a while. Monte was a fellow who had a tremendous sense of humour, but it was very subtle. We were trying to encourage the wardens to do more wildlife observations because there was more and more pressure on us to be managers of the wildlife. I was Assistant Chief Warden then and I would get after the men. “Don’t you ever make any sightings of wildlife? Don’t just say, “saw ten elk”. How did they look? What was their condition? What were they doing? Is it breeding season?” Is it whatever?” So Monte sends in a wildlife report sheet in his diary, I’ve forgotten where he’d gone that day. “Saw two elk, bugling. Saw ten females listening.” That was Monte, that was typical of his sense of humour!.
(1:30:15) Most of the warden diaries didn’t make very interesting reading. You talk about the bad part of the job is the paper work. Back in the early days, the wardens for the most part had simple backgrounds. They were not well educated and they did not like filling out diaries. I’ve known some of them that would leave their diary until the end of the month and then they’d fill out the whole month all in one sitting. Dah, dah, dah…Whether they could remember the detail or not, they put something down. Generally speaking, I used to get their diaries across my desk and I tried to read them all and see what was pertinent in them, but an awful lot of it was pretty short…They just weren’t the kind of people who were good at recording conditions and trends and so on. Ottawa may well have burnt all the diaries, I don’t know. It would have been an awful stack of paper. So probably someone thought, “What are we going to do with these?” By that time, I guess, dairies had become obsolete.
(1:31:57) Well, my favourite park will always be Waterton. But I never worked there. My dad did. I grew up there and I rode every trail in the park. I knew every corner of it, but I wasn’t employed there. Next to that, I liked the mountain parks. I really liked Kootenay when I was there, primarily because being a district warden was a good job. You were king of your district. And I was lucky enough when I was in Kootenay, that I worked under Tom Ross, who was the Chief Warden at that time and Bruce Mitchell was the Superintendent. I had high regard for both men. They were the kind of men that thought if you knew what you were doing in your job, then they pretty well left you alone. They might come by, stop in, and have coffee with you, and discuss a few things. I got along with both Bruce and Tommy famously. I had high regard for both of them and I think they valued me a little bit as a warden. I guess that is part of the reason I liked it so much there. I’d have liked to have stayed longer, but as I mentioned earlier, schooling was a concern.
(1:33:47) When I was in Kootenay, a warden’s wife at Marble Canyon drove her children into Banff everyday for school. Her name was Greta Meiser, Bill Meiser was the warden at Marble Canyon. She was a little dynamo of a woman. I don’t think her health was very good and she was very slight and thin. But God, she’d jump in the car and drive those kids to school and then she’d drive back in and pick them up! Some of the weather over Storm Mountain pass was horrible.
