(1:00:32) Ole – That was something cooking out in those back districts and back cabins. You had these stove pipe ovens.
(1:00:52) Alice – When we moved to Windy that day from Cuthead. There was Dusty Miller and his wife, they were going to Indian Head, and then there was Wilf Taylor who was at the head of the Red that day. But I had to make dinner for them. The thing is we had already been out there for two weeks, so I tell you, we didn’t have that much groceries and what not. We’d run out of bread. And my first deal with that little oven with the stove pipe was to make biscuits. It was like the old days. You cook one thing in the fire and took it off and then you put another one in! I got them all fed, but it took a while!
(1:01:42) Ole – But they never put cook stoves in the cabins, in the headquarters cabins. Just these stoves with two holes. You burnt your pant legs off pretty near, standing close to it.
(1:01:54) Alice – This picture here, it was taken up at the head of Healy Creek (a picture of Alice and her two children, Karen and Robert, one child in each pack box on the back of the pack horse). My cousin’s husband did that. He enlarged it and put it in a frame for us. They (Karen and Robert) rode all that way to Eygpt Lake from the Ford. We called it the Ford, what do they call it now? Bourgeau, right. That’s old Kootenay now. You’ve heard of old Kootenay? No? Even Jim Deegan dedicated his book to him. He was a real neat old horse…He was Walter Child’s saddle horse up the Spray. Then finally he was demoted to pack horse and he never did get over it, that old horse.. You’d put the pack box on him and his ears would go back and he’d look mad like he does there. But you put a saddle on him and man his head would come up and he thought he was something!
(1:03:43) Ole – At that time I had a real good saddle horse. Grace. She was so good they put her in the brood string at the ranch to breed colts off her.
(1:03:56) Alice – We were going down that big long hill where you go down into Egypt Lake you know and the kids thought this was a zig zag. And poor old Kootenay, because they were just about knocking him off balance. He got mad and he went underneath a tree and he almost took Robert’s ear off. That smartened them up!
(1:04:34) Ole – I think it was trail work (that Ole liked best about being a warden) really. I really went to work on the Healy Creek trails. But the one to Bourgeois Lake, I was getting shipped to Jasper when Art Cartlidge took it over. He pulled down back half a mile and went down to the creek. Lost all that altitude and what not. Then he got stuck down there. Never went all the way. That wasn’t my fault! Elmer Jamieson the packer, he used to be my packer on these trail crews. He was the chainsaw operator there. We were waiting for the van to move us to Jasper there and Elmer was almost crying, he said “That SOB, he just pulled back and went down into the creek with the trail.” I said, “I’ll see what I can do, but I don’t think we’ll be very successful.” I phoned Bob Hand and I talked to him. “No” he said, “Ole forget about it, you are in Jasper now. You’re not here anymore.” But it was Bob Hand that sent Art out to take over the crew. Art always said, “It should have been his job.” I said, “No, I am the district warden. It’s going where I say.” It was a good trail to start with.
(1:03:36) Alice – I think it was the outdoors (that Alice liked best about the warden life). I always like the outdoors and I liked fishing…Sometimes we’d just go down to the river on our day off…We’d take the kids to school in the morning and Ole and I would drive up to Sunshine and it would be his day off and we’d hike over to the little lakes and fish. Then get back in time to get the kids. We hiked into Shadow Lake many, many times. Not so many into Egypt because that was further.
(1:07:25 ) Ole – Yeah, we had to stay overnight in Egypt.
(1:07:34) Alice – Although we did have some good trips into there too. The first trip we took, right after we moved into Healy Creek, and he didn’t know where Egypt Lake was either. So we rode in that time. We went in on horseback. It was just the two of us. So that was fine. We finally found the cabin. I sat under a tree while he went to find it. We thought it was on the lake and it wasn’t. So anyway we finally found the cabin and so the next day I think it was we hiked up to Scarab. We walked up on the switchback and we walked down to the lake and I seen all this digging. So I said, “What did all that digging?” I was really getting tired. You just felt like you couldn’t go any further and he said “Grizzly!” I forgot about being tired. I tell you I come up out of there, I was just a prancing. There was no getting tired business! We were getting out of there.
(1:08:45) Ole – It was a situation where your wife is pregnant and you got an old dog who can’t handle grizzlies anyways. He’s stir them up and then come back to you and we were on foot. So that’s no place to be playing around with a grizzly!
(1:09:08) Alice – The old adrenaline sure kicked in!
(1:09:21) Alice – Not very much (experience with horses before she married Ole). We had horses on the farm but they were used for work. That was one thing about Dad, he wasn’t letting us kids run around the country on them. They had their jobs. The odd time we could ride them, but as far as horses went, I was not a very good horse person. It had to be a real quiet horse.
(1:09:54) Ole – You’ll never believe it…skiing (was what Ole liked least about being a warden). They sent four of us on a ski school in Glacier and Noel Gardner was the instructor. Noel Gardner and his wife kept us in a wide snowplough for nine days straight! Never ever after that… and all four of us can’t ski! Ed Carleton, he popped the cartilage out of his knee and we had to ship him back on the train the second day and Marty Allred was on it. He’s dead now. Jack Romanson was on it and he’s dead. Yeah, he was the guy who used to do the carving. And no one learned to ski. I break into a snowplough every dam time…But the last year I started to do parallels; otherwise it would always be a snowplough. I never did learn and I had all the chances in the world. I left Sunshine/Banff to go to Jasper and I got a pair of skis issued to me. I put them on and I can’t mention the guy’s name because I definitely don’t like him. Anyways I am sure it was him that readjusted my bindings. The first time I put any pressure on them, I just went right on my head on top of Marmot Basin and I know it was that dirty little monster. He was a guy that would cut your throat. He wouldn’t do his work either and I don’t know what he did to keep his job there. He was a dirty little guy.
