MH: What are the more memorable events from your Warden career? 1307
JW: Sometimes it’s just images or even sounds that come to your head, things that were kind of surreal at times. I did think of lots of lasting memories, some of the courses dealing with the wildlife and so many times where there would be a wounded animal looking at you with big eyes full of fear and pain and even sometimes, they would try their last kick at you for self-defense, that was hard.
We had a great scuba dive program in Banff with my buddies, Blair Fyten and Bill Hunt and those were really fun years. We trained and did a bit of traveling and exploring Lake Minnewanka which of course had cultural-historical resources under the lake. Bill worked really hard to set up the program and we had all kinds of qualifications we had to meet. We used it for fishery stuff, resource management, law enforcement and public safety Many divers came from around Alberta for courses and to explore the underwater townsite. We were doing lake trout surveys, Bow River clean up, and we did some body recovery because there were years where we had to wait for the Calgary fire department to come out into the Parks to do a water recovery. I recall spending a cold night beside the Trans-Canada Highway in Kicking Horse Pass watching the lights slowly fade on a car in the lake as we waited for Calgary Fire Department divers to arrive.
I had several winters of carnivore tracking in Kootenay. I really enjoyed being out by myself tracking. Sometimes I felt like I was being watched and I know that I was a few times by wolves and cougars. We had the cameras set up there too on a busy people and wildlife trail. Sometimes later in the winter, the tracks that I had documented earlier in the season would reappear. I never imagined that happened, but they would be imprinted in the snow and then as it melted, they would come back up, and retell the story of the hunt or travels.
I did lots of weather readings (Wapta Pass), snow courses and water sampling (chemistry and bio invertebrates) over the years. Again, I enjoyed it, because I was almost always by myself and it was a respite off the highway. I also did get to work with some of Canada’s top water experts at times. I also felt that I was contributing to long term monitoring programs, sometimes of value to other agencies like the BC River Forecast Centre and Environment Canada.
Sensitive Species Survey looking for cutthroat trout
Snow camp below Isolated Col with Diane Volkers
I think of a few years on Lake Minnewanka that was a great experience. Dave Norcross taught me the ropes with the boats and the big lake. I had lots of great days on the lake checking anglers and backcountry sites. Often times when I was checking people during potential infractions, dispatch would come back and ask, “are you 10-62?” which right away you knew that you didn’t want this person to hear what you were saying because they had criminal records. I had so many times out there by myself with people that had criminal records of assault, assault against peace officers’ robbery, domestic assault, a few outstanding warrants, and I think I was pretty good at the time, with the verbal judo and just dealing with it in a calm and collected manner. I had people thanking me when I gave them paperwork when they were starting out pretty agitated. I think that if you didn’t do it just so, you could have triggered these people. Anyway, I think I scraped through a lot of potentially scary scenarios out there. And I thought, boy, is it, “once a criminal always a criminal?” they’re always doing something wrong? These guys would go out fishing and not have a license or not have the right gear, just some little thing but it was probably 70% of the time out there when I ran a name, it was somebody who already had some kind of record which just blew me away.
SS Peechee on Lk Minnewanka
Lake trout creel survey Waterton Lakes National Park
Still on that line of lasting memories, I like to say that I’m proud of some of my contributions to protection, preservation and safety over the years. I really enjoyed working on bull trout in Waterton and set up a Creel study there. Big lake trout were getting pulled out constantly from those two main lakes, and bull trout from the Belly River and a few other waters. In Waterton I lobbied for bull trout and put together a management plan for the park when the species wasn’t on the horizon at that point except with a well-known local provincial fisheries biologist who helped me and supported it.
In the late 90s, I wrote the operational guidelines for Cougar Management in Banff National Park for Glenn Peers. A few years after I left Banff, a woman was killed on the Cascade trail, skiing. So, they pulled that plan out and used it after making some subsequent updates.
One fall in Banff I got kicked in the head by what we thought was a fully sedated elk. It knocked me out. Glen Peers was there, Dave Hunter and a couple other guys. We had followed our usual protocols for checking for responsiveness and all seemed okay but I remember seeing a hind leg bending and then coming straight at me, and I got that hoof across my eye. As a result of the incident Mark Cherewick, the barn boss at the time designed and sewed up a large gauge net stretcher for handling sedated elk so we didn’t have to do so much ‘man-handling’ of the animal and it was pretty much contained. Less potential for concussions and black eyes!
Moving elk with new stretcher
Glen Peers Joanne Williams observing cow elk
While I was in Waterton, we did the first ever heli-sling evacuation. A woman dislocated her hip on the Bertha Lake Trail. We had always trained for it but never had to use it, usually because it was too windy! It was so exciting to see Randal Schwanke coming in on the end of the line.
I am also proud of the culvert restoration projects in the six Mountain Parks, working for the Aquatics program under Shelley Humphries. I ran a huge budget at the time but it felt like we were getting action done on the ground improving and restoring fish passage.
MH: Can you tell me about any rescue/wildlife stories that stick out in your memory?
JW: It is largely the wildlife stories that would come to me really. I was on lots of searches and smaller rescues. I wasn’t the Public Safety Team, although we did lots of training. I did loads of highway stuff.
I will tell you a few wildlife related stories. In Waterton, there’s so much wildlife. I was on a backcountry patrol once on foot at Lone Lake cabin, standing on the lake shore, and there were two camping parties there on the site, a couple and a guy by himself. This guy was standing in my face and he was so exuberant and talking incessantly, asking me questions about the job and how to become a park warden and blah, blah, blah. He was right in my face, but he had these really thick glasses, like, you’d call coke bottle glasses. I started kind of squirming and like, jeez, can you stop talking now? I was facing across the lake and I’m looking over his shoulder and I spotted a grizzly sow with three tiny cubs padding along the lake shore less than 100 meters away was the couple who were fishing right in the path of these bears
There was a little tiny stream gurgling down between them that was making quite a bit of sound. And I thought this is not going to be good. None of them are going to see or hear each other. So, I just yelled, “Bears” and ran away and leaving the chatty guy standing there. I just ran round the shore close enough to call to the anglers. “There are bears coming your way, drop your stuff and don’t run. Start coming towards me NOW.” I got them sorted out and eventually, all 4 of us gatherer by the cabin. We watched the bears move through. Then this poor guy with the glasses said to me, “I couldn’t see a thing”, he didn’t know what was going on. He thought he was gonna die by bears when I just called out “bears” and ran away from him. I felt terrible because he had been seriously scared. When I got back to the office, there was a giant chocolate bar and a card there from the other two: To the Queen of the Bears,” you saved our lives!”
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There was another funny one in Waterton. I was lucky enough to work with Keith Brady in my first year or two there. He had been around there for years and was renowned for testing term wardens, which are stories in themselves. Red Rock Canyon would get super busy and there were a lot of habituated sheep and deer in the area. There had been a spell of intense heat and I was walking around when I spotted an older woman squatting and puking in the parking lot. As I moved toward her there was a big horn ram coming in one side and a deer on the other side, like we’re all moving in on her. Her eyes got really big. I whacked the animals, both of them across the nose with a clipboard I had in my hand, chased them away momentarily to help her. As I approached, I was thinking maybe heat related illness. Unbeknownst to me, she had her false teeth in her hand, and she just shoved them back in after I helped her up. I escorted her to shade and water and then the ram moved in and ate the vomitus. Which I’d seen them do there before. Back at the office, I just relished in telling the story over and over with detail. One of Keith’s only weaknesses was vomit. He was a tough guy but he got queasy and green talking about vomit. The term and seasonal wardens had a laugh.
