(4.01) Ole – I am sure you heard of Bruce Mitchell. He was the Chief Warden…To start with he was a clerk, or an Assistant Superintendent I guess. Then he got Chief Warden job. Then he moved on up and Frank Bryant came up in 1950, as the Chief Warden. By this time he had sent me out to Indian Head, in the Clearwater district.
(5:08) Alice – I hadn’t even met him yet!
(5:28) Ole – Then they gave me an Assistant. I think it was an election year. Everybody had lots of money! They had hired Bill Johnson as my Assistant. He was a lot older than I was, but a good horseman. I learned to pack from him. [But] he made a mistake right off the bat. Bruce Mitchell asked him how tough of a horse he could pack. He said he could pack anything and we got everything! We got some (horses) that weren’t that nice.
(6:14) Ole – We went to the Calgary Stampede it seemed like every day! There was stuff scattered all over the place…Because there were two us then we got four (pack horses). So we had the six horses and us going out there. It was crazy when you hadn’t done it before.
(6:44) Ole – But we used to do our own phone lines and maintain our trails and cabin maintenance, patrolling all the time. Just clearing trails you know…A lot of work, yah.
(7:11) Alice – I was working at the Art School, the School of Fine Arts in Banff. We happened to meet because we liked to dance. Actually we both did. It was at a dance at the Cascade Hall where we met. It was in 1950. I was the Pastry Cook.
(7:47) Ole – And I liked cookies!
(7:55) Alice – The wages were a whole lot better out there (in Banff) I’ll tell you than they were up in Bonnyville and around that country. It was a great place because we had quite a staff. We used to go out. We had a bus driver. He used to pick the students up, but he would pick us up in between. We’d go on wiener roasts and things. We had a real thing with the staff. We all got along really well. It really was a fun time. At that time Ole was back in Banff.
(8:38) Ole – They put me out at Indian Head. But the guy in Banff, the warden named Walter Child broke his leg. So they pulled me in. They asked me how I was doing out there. I said “Fine, leave me out there for five years.” But they brought me in anyways. So I ended up a Town Warden. Walter Child, he was one of the old ones. When Cliff Murphy quit, I got his badge. I didn’t have a badge to start with. But I got Cliff Murphy’s badge, number 20. He had it for 21 years or so. They took Cliff out of the ranch (the Ya-Ha Tinda) and he just quit. Or transferred to Kootenay as a foreman? He spent 20 years at the ranch.
(10:01) Ole – I was holding down the fort for old Walter and kept complaining that I wanted to get back into the bush! Get your own district you know. Town warden was kind of a chore boy. We got married and I yelled loud enough and then they sent us into Windy. That was in June.
(10:49) Alice – The only thing is it was a late spring. Dorothy and Ed Carleton were at Stoney Creek at that time. We went out, but we couldn’t get to Windy. Wilf Taylor was at Windy but he couldn’t get to the head of the Red (there was too much snow). So we had to stay for I think it was ten days at Cuthead cabin.
(11:25) Ole – Taylor just got over the pass. He had a family a four. He lives in Whitehorse now…He quit (the Warden Service) and he went to the Hinton school and then he had that behind him so they sent him up to Whitehorse, up in there… no just a minute. He transferred from Banff to Yoho and then he quit. Then went farming down in Brisko, starved down there. Got back on the Warden Service at Kootenay. Then he quit there and took that course. Then he went up there (to Whitehorse).
(12:55) Alice – Ten days to get to Windy and that was in the old cabin. There was no house there, just the old cabin that they moved into town there (now on the grounds of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies)
(13:01) Ole – The logs weren’t even peeled on the inside. I peeled them on the inside.
(13:07) Alice – And the floor…I don’t think it had ever been scrubbed. The thing is they walked in with hob nailed boots and the floor was kind of chewed up. I remember because I scrubbed it!
