MH: What about the Warden Service was important to you? 2736
MG: Well, it’s interesting, that question, the Warden Service has always been that barrier, or maybe not so much a barrier as the group of people that stood in the way of developing the park. They were the ones that protected the place from getting overrun by development. And it’s always been that way. There’s many Chief Wardens who put their careers on the line to hold the line in terms of development in parks. And that’s always been the case and a point of pride for the Warden Service in that we are kind of that last line of defense from wholesale development. I think that’s changed again, in more recent times, since I left but it certainly was the case during my career. The person on the pointy end was usually the Chief Park Warden. They had to be the one to go toe to toe with the superintendent or senior management about wanting to do this or that in the parks as opposed to just leave the place the way it was.
MH: Do you think that’ll change? 2850
MG: Well, I think it already has changed. Part of the way the Warden Service got somewhat dismantled in the 2000s was to ensure that there wasn’t this united front against development. The Warden Service had always been the protectors of the park, and I’m not sure that’s the case anymore.
MH: Are there any legendary characters or stories associated with the Warden Service that you can share? 2934
MG: There are tons of legendary characters and most of those legendary characters would probably get fired these days for doing whatever made them legendary. Sid Marty’s book captures most of those days when those legendary characters were still able to do those things. This day and age, you don’t get legendary characters, because most of them would get fired.
But there are a few guys that stood out in my career, and mostly because they helped me along. The guy that really set me up and really went to bat for me a couple of times with Bob Haney. Certainly, he was the guy back in 1990, that made the decision to allow me to go back to school originally. Of course, that’s what set my career up on a completely different path from most everybody else. And then he was also the guy that decided that he’d let me go again outside the Warden Service to go and pursue more schooling as part of a Ph.D. So, I really think that he showed leadership where he could have decided to just have me stay at home and do what everybody else was supposed to be doing. The other guy, that later in my career certainly gave me the latitude, was Ed Abbott. He was also the Chief Park Warden at the time in Lake Louise and was my direct supervisor. I had worked my way into a position of being somewhat of an authority on grizzly bears and he allowed me to take that all over the world. You know, where most people could have said no, you need to stay at home, he didn’t. I went to three different places in Russia, Japan, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Germany multiple times, Italy a couple times, numerous places in the United States, all doing something about bears. Certainly, Ed was the one that gave me all the opportunities to pursue those connections and travel to all those conferences where I presented research papers.
MH: They don’t have any bears in Italy anymore do they? 3222
MG: They certainly do. And that’s the reason I went there in the mid 2000s. They introduced bears to Northern Italy in the Dolomites and then started having troubles with them. The Italian government asked around who could help, and numerous people pointed to me. And so the Italians got a hold of me. I invited them here and they spent some time seeing what we were doing. Then I took two or three different trips over there to the Dolomites to see what they were doing. I have lasting friendships from that whole interaction. The bears are surviving very well, thriving actually. Now there’s probably more bears there than in all of Banff National Park.
MH: I’m gonna have to write to my Italian friends and tell them to carry their bear spray.
MG: Well, interestingly enough, in Italy bear spray is illegal so they don’t have the opportunity to carry bear spray. It’s still illegal.
MH: Well, and it was a good thing to have an expert in Banff National Park don’t you think?
MG: It depended on who you were, because I ended up contradicting a lot of people and that didn’t sit well with a lot of folks.
MH: Is there anything about the Warden Service, as you knew it, that you would like future generations to know?3450
MG: It probably will never go back to the way it was, which is too bad because the backcountry is still there, but there’s hardly anyone out there looking after it. Priorities have changed. And if there was one thing in the future that they could do, is to have more people out in the woods to look after the place. Because right now, that’s not happening. The pendulum swings so who knows?
MH: What made the Warden Service such a unique organization? 36:03
MG: Well, it was the diversity that was the real unique part. There were so many aspects to the job and so many different career paths. I ended up going down one kind of rabbit hole, but there was a whole bunch of different opportunities. Most people did a little bit of everything. I think that was probably the unique part of the Warden Service. When you think about most other jobs, they aren’t like that. The cornerstone to that diversity was the guy on a horse with a packhorse, staying in the cabins.
MH: Do you have any lasting memories as a Warden? 37:01
MG: There are always favorite parts of the park. The Cascade Valley has always been near and dear to my heart, certainly even before I did the bear research. It was kind of a special place for me. I think I was assigned to just about every single backcountry district in the park over the years and I know I’ve stayed in just about every single cabin there was in the park, but the Cascade Valley always was close to my heart. Cuthead cabin was always kind of a quaint little cabin that I used to like the most. There was a series of horses that were certainly memorable. Skoal was probably the most memorable horse that I had. John Nylund had asked me to take him as a colt. I was the first person other than the ranch guys to ride Skoal. I had him for several years. I ended up riding a number of colts over the years. John was always giving the guys that could ride a little better than others, some of the younger horses. So I had the privilege of riding a lot of horses that weren’t spoiled, which was nice. Yeah, that was a lot of fun.
MH: Do you ever miss being a Warden? 38:57
MG: I do in some respects. I still dabble in bear stuff but not for parks. I’ve left that to other folks now. I work mostly on ranch lands now. I work for a private land trust that puts conservation easements on working ranches, an organization called SALTS, Southern Alberta Land Trust. I spend a lot of time on ranch lands in southern Alberta and we spend time putting on courses on how ranch families can live with bears. There’s lots of bears out on the ranch lands now. Yeah. I’m still involved in the bear world in that respect, but not so much anymore in writing research papers and that kind of stuff. I have retired from that research stuff and publishing of papers. I still have a connection at the University of Calgary. I’m an Adjunct Professor there. I still have a few graduate students that I supervise now and again, but generally, I keep backing away from most of that stuff. So, I’m pretty much retired from the classic Ph.D. stuff.
MH: Do you have any photos of yourself as a warden that you would like to donate? Artifacts? 40:40
MG: I looked through a bunch, and I’ve got several photos that I can give you. They’re all digital. One of them hangs on the wall over there. It’s a photo that Bruno Engler took of me at Cuthead Cabin. That photo was published in the Crag ‘n Canyon in 1980. That horse I was riding was called Lola. She was another young horse that I had.
1981 Crag and Canyon photo
MH: What year did you retire?
MG: Spring 2011, two weeks after my 55th birthday.
MH: What do you enjoy doing in retirement? 41:55
MG: Well, I’m not retired. Of course, I was only 55 when I retired from parks so I took on another job. I worked for The Nature Conservancy for five years and I found that organization was outrageously bureaucratic, just as bureaucratic as the government was. I just wasn’t into bureaucratic organizations anymore. So, I quit the Nature Conservancy and now work for SALTS, Southern Alberta Land Trust. I still work for them, a couple of days a week, introducing ranchers to the whole concept of conservation easements, and how to protect their ranches and do conservation work on working ranches. So still dabbling away in that but it’s given me more time to do other stuff, though. I started carving birds. I’ve got a whole collection of wood carvings. I’ve also followed along with Bill Hunt’s passion, and I have a lathe now and I turn wood bowls. So yeah, there’s some hobbies I do when I a little more time which is nice. And then the garden too. I have a big garden. So I certainly keep myself busy.
MH: Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you think I should know about the Warden Service?
MG: Over the course of my career from when I started in 1976 until the time I retired in 2011, bear management shifted light years! We went from the “three strikes and you’re out” rule, with just picking up and moving bears to where we never ever relocated a bear. Part of that was because the bear population crashed after the dump closures. There were very few bears after the dumps closed. But the whole garbage management system changed. I wasn’t responsible for those changes; it was other people that initiated all of that. I was still a seasonal warden at that time. Bear management in National Parks made a huge shift, for the better, over the course of my career. Over 30 years, we got bears off relying on garbage, to living more like natural bears. The only thing that really was a bit of a downer, and still is a problem today, is that the railway started spilling grain on the tracks. Then that started attracting bears to the tracks. The research we did in the early 2000s showed there was 110 tons of grain split between the east end of Banff and the west end of Yoho. There was enough spilled grain there to feed an entire population of bears. That issue still hasn’t been fully rectified. But by and large, most of the bears now are feeding on natural foods, compared to the early 1980s, when many of them relied on the dump. That’s a big change for the better.
MH: Were there any highlights in your career that you want to share?
MG: Doing the bear research in and of itself was a highlight, and all the travel I got to do because of that was rewarding. Many of the highlights were not in Banff, they were in the other places I got to visit and spend time in. I was very fortunate to have been able to travel as much as I did.
Russian colleagues at the Kronotsky Nature Reserve in Kamchatka 2007.
The volcano is over 11,000 feet high and I’m standing at sea level.
MH: Anyone else to interview?
MG: Don’t know who you’ve already interviewed by I presume most people from my era have already been interviewed.
Monique Hunkeler first started working with Parks Canada in 1989 as Secretary to Banff National Park Finance Manager. She moved into a position as Dispatcher for the Banff Park Warden Service and later worked within Banff National Park and Town of Banff’s IT departments. She is experienced with the interviewing, transcription and archiving process the Park Warden Service Alumni Society.
