(0:20:55) Another thing that I believe…is in firearms training. I don’t care whether somebody is going to carry a firearm or they want to carry one or they don’t want to carry one, I’ve been on fire arms training two or three times and I had my guys on firearms training as often as I could get them on when I was at Pacific Rim. The thing about firearms training is not only do you learn how to handle a firearm and be safe and these kinds of things, but you learn how to think. In today’s world most of the people that are doing some kind of enforcement are dealing with things like domestic problems in campgrounds and the people that I dealt with that came out of the suburbs of Vancouver and out of Surrey…that were in our park were some very, very difficult people…When you take firearms training you learn to think about what might happen and do they do these assimilations. I had guys in Pacific Rim that were stealing out of the campground all the time…
(0:23:05) One particular time that I got called out there, they were stealing beer and stuff and one of the guys came out of his campsite and shot the back window out of this guys truck. It was a pretty excitable place when I went there. These are the things you learn to deal with…We also had a continuing problem with theft and vandalism and break and entry to our buildings and property.
(0:23:57) When I was at Jasper there was a warden that was on the Brazeau that got held up with a firearm. The guy took his saddle horse and pack horse and rode away. Made him take his boots off and…put him in the fire equipment shed and padlocked the door and left him in there…That was in the summer of 1975 and you see people look at that as the impossible thing, but it isn’t. I know of several of those kind of instances that I dealt with in my lifetime. The warden that lost his boots, they had a radio in there, but the guy… had cut all the phone lines, cut the wires off and destroyed the radio before he did the hold up. So the guy that was held up walked about seven or eight miles in his sock feet and got to a telephone crew that were pulling out the phones…he got a phone guy from a telephone crew and they went down to the highway. They got down to Poboktan Creek on the south highway and the warden that was there picked these two guys up…and they called me out of bed…I said, “What have you got, a bear accident?” He said “No…something different.” So I put on a pot of coffee and they showed up about 3:00/4:00 in the morning and told me what had happened. I got on the phone and phoned Valemount because that was the closest helicopter. I got a pilot to fly in there over the top and pick up a policeman and I off the highway there, at Mile 45. We flew down into there. The park warden that got held up is retired now, but I got a hold of Dave and we went down to where he got held up and started to piece this story together. Then we did a search. We worked on this thing for a few days. But the guy knew the country and he had maps of the Brazeau country…he planned this thing. He was an American and he stayed in our free campground and he understudied enough people and figured this all out and walked into the Brazeau and was around down in there. There were a couple of young seasonal wardens in there and he understudied them and picked their brains. He knew Dave was coming in there on such and such a day and they went out and when Dave came in that guy was sitting there on the doorstep of the cabin. When Dave got off his horses, he stuck a gun in his ribs and said, “Come on with me.” And he locked him up in the equipment shed. He said, “Take your boots off.” He took his two horses and rode away. That was in July of 1975. He went clear out to the Saskatchewan River…to Bighorn, down in that area turned the horses loose. He caught a ride to Calgary and then we never heard anything of him. We went to Hinton, we took Dave down there. We got a composite drawing and we did a bunch of stuff. The policeman and I went to Nordegg. I got a forest ranger from Nordegg whom I knew and we went up in there on the Black Stone the way he was going to come out. I saw his horse tracks. You can tell government horse tracks because they are different…I came into an outfitters camp one time and this was on the north end there. I was sitting having a cup of coffee with the cook and the outfitter rode in and he saw me and he said, “Well I knew those were Diefenbaker’s horse tracks!” I always laugh about that. Anyway I went to Pukaskwa that August and we had that search going, but we never found that guy or anything. They didn’t find the horses until September they were down there on the Bighorn. He had unsaddled them and threw the stuff under a tree and hitchhiked. I was back at Pacific Rim three years later and I got a telex from a policeman (in the U.S.) and he said, “We’ve got a report here that says the guy is in jail in Jackson Hole Wyoming. Do you people still want to press charges against him?” I said, “Well how much have you got on him?” He said, “We’ve got lots. He’s been to Hawaii, he’s been to Florida, he stole a few cars, and he’s done this and that…We should be able to put him away for five years at least.” I said, “If you are going to put him away for five years, I don’t think that we will bother with him, because I don’t think that it is worth our while.” He said, “That’s good.” In a day or two I got another telex and it was via Jackson Hole Wyoming and they said, “You can watch for that guy.” We called him the Brazeau bandit. I’ve still got that information somewhere. They said, “He broke jail, he’s gone. We don’t know where he is at.” I wasn’t surprised because he was a professional gangster. Anyway they were another two and a half, three years before they saw him again…I haven’t heard anything recently about him…When you’re dealing with those kind of people and I’ve dealt with more than one of them you need firearms training. Whether you carry a gun or not because you are dealing with some pretty crappy people, pretty experienced people.
(0:31:23) Those people that come out of the suburbs of Vancouver are like the people that run around Calgary now at night breaking into houses and knifing people…That’s the kind of people that were in Pacific Rim campground when I was there. They are not nice people. Having firearms training may save your life because it teaches you to think.
(0:32:21) I was going to tell you this…I had just got out of the office and it was just about 5:00 and somebody called me and said that there was somebody in the water on Long Beach…The corporal said he was with something right now, but just keep him posted. (After they recovered the body at Long Beach, Mac went down to the police station and serial killer Clifford Olson was in the cell) Pacific Rim and Vancouver Island was part of his territory. Ucluelet was where Clifford Olsen was arrested for the last time.
(0:33:41) There are 21 reserves inside of the park lands (In response to the question, how many reserves were in Pacific Rim) inside and seven more that we share a common boundary with, it amounts to seven bands and two tribal councils.
(0:34:08) I was in Port Alberni and we were into a discussion over land negotiations and land claims and…one of the guys from the reserve in Barkley Sound, there are three or four in there, he told me that I was a displaced, nomadic European, coming here and taking his land! I thought that was fun. This talk is mostly a game that they play.
(0:34:45) Another funny time there was one guy who’s father was an airman there during the war. His name was Larry Baird. I had an oil spill there one time…We had about 60 miles of shoreline fouled up. We were at a big meeting there and I was there for Parks and a bunch of coast guard people were there because the coast guard was responsible for the marine component. Of course, none of us had any money. There were three chiefs there…The bird people from the Canadian Wildlife Service out of Vancouver were there. Those bird people are really scared of Indians and they are environmentalist and the world was coming to an end…they are city people. They really didn’t understand that crisis management that we were doing there. Some of these guys, the chiefs…started walking around the table and start talking and giving us hell, “These crazy white men that stole their land…” (Larry) said, “We don’t need you guys! The only reason you guys are here anyways is because of that bad immigration policy we had 200 years ago! We don’t need you experts here to deal with this!” I said, “Larry, you know you are lucky that those guys from that bad immigration policy came along because if it hadn’t been for them there wouldn’t be any Larry’s here!”…He was a friend of mine forever that guy…But… (he) scared two or three of the people that were there real bad…The gal that was with us that was a naturalist she was horrified. She was scared. Then when they get it done (the meeting) they turn around and feed you! And you are all friends…When I retired they offered me a job with the BC government to negotiate land claims because I had experience you see. I said, “Well, I could never retire if I took that job because it will never be over!” The land claims in British Columbia are bigger than the province…
(0:41:09) I wanted to tell you about the experience of these new parks because they are different… you start with nothing. When Mike Schintz went there, he didn’t even have a house to live in! They had to buy him a house. At least I had a house to live in and we had an office. We had a place to start. Like at Pacific Rim, I used to tell the guys “You know someday we will build a park. Right now we put it up one brick at a time. I hope in my time that I get enough bricks that you guys have a place to stand behind. When we get the land and we get control of the land and we get that brick wall built to stand behind, some of the next generation will come along and build a park out of it.” That’s the way you have to think. Just imagine 31 years to get an act and regulations! You work with a busy campground, an overflow campground and 100 people a day going north on the trail and 100 people a day going south on the trail and you got no act and regulations! You’ve got no control, it’s just a mess, but you do the best you can. It was quite an experience and sometimes a lot of frustration, but in the end a lot of great experiences and I would do it all again.
Walter Perren, Ed Carleton and Mac Elder on Mount Victoria – Early 1960s
