Kathy Calvert - Ya Ha Tinda: A Home Place - Celebrating 100 Years of the Canadian Governments Only Working Horse Ranch

KATHY CALVERT

YA HA TINDA

A Home Place

Celebrating 100 Years of the Canadian Governments Only Working Horse Ranch

To the men and women of the National Park Service who helped make the Ya Ha Tinda a successful working horse ranch for over a century,
and
To those who lived and worked on the Ya Ha Tinda providing years of devoted stewardship to the land and the horses.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

It was my great privilege in the 60s and 70s, and for half of 1988, to work as a national park warden in the Rocky Mountains, just about the best job in the world on most days. The warden service was, in part, a cavalry outfit, so it was my good fortune, as a lifelong student of western history, to be required to work on horseback, learning the skills under the tutelage of some old-timers for patrolling with saddle and pack horses in the backcountry of Yoho, Banff and Jasper national parks.

In those days, always short-handed it seems, wardens often travelled alone from 18 to 24 days at a stretch. The main form of communication in Jasper was a No. 9 telephone wire strung from pole to pole and from tree to tree throughout the district. This was our line to the outer world in case of emergencies such as wildfires, bear incidents, lost backpackers or climbing accidents. Woe betide the warden whose phone line was not in service when Chief Park Warden Mickey McGuire called. Hauling all the equipment required to maintain hiking trails and that telephone line, which everything in nature from wandering moose to spring avalanches conspired against, required us to travel with anywhere from one to five pack horses. It took one horse just to haul the wire, insulators and pole-climbing harness, another to haul the chainsaw, fuel and hand tools, another to haul the grub and camping supplies, and perhaps two others laden with everything from oats to hay bales to asphalt shingles and paint for the line cabins. To add to the challenges, one of the horses might be a colt, sometimes a hotblooded thoroughbred that had been trained for riding and packing on the Ya Ha Tinda, the government horse ranch, and was now finishing its schooling out in the bush.

This experience put us directly in the tradition of lives lived in these mountains by the equestrian tribes of pre-contact times, notably the Ktunaxa (Kootenay), Nakoda (Stoney) and the Piikani (Peigan) people and the old-time surveyors, outfitters, rangers and park wardens who followed in their hoofprints. Though a warden might travel solo, the horses certainly kept him company, alternately amusing and exasperating with their antics as they jockeyed for the lead position on narrow mountain trails. At night, the distant sound of a battered Swiss bell, hung around an older mares neck as she grazed in the meadow near the line cabin or tent, was a reassuring lullaby to the ear. These were working horses, not pets, and they worked with me, not for me, showing me around the districts they had worked in during the years before I had arrived on the scene.

As backcountry wardens, the backcountry district was the focus of our work and our concern, but the heart and soul of the operation (and the subject of this book) was the Ya Ha Tinda ranch located west of Sundre, Alberta, on the east boundary of Banff National Park. This was the wintering range for most of the park cavvy. Since I was stationed for a time at Scotch Camp, on the Red Deer River, I often circled out onto provincial land down the Red or Panther rivers to try and catch a poacher or two sneaking over the Banff park boundary line to score a trophy ram. These autumn patrols might take me by the ranch, where ranch staff would invite a guy to fall off and stay awhile for a hot coffee, or a warm bunk if the hour was late. It was a pleasure to spend a night in front of the wood stove listening to foreman Slim Haugen and the other cowboys spin yarns of wild days in the saddle. Mostly the talk was of horses, horses long dead and gone or tributes to likely colts that would be up for bids in the spring. The talk might turn to famous bronc riders, or the doings of visiting biologists and their fascination with elk poop, or the comings and goings of the local pack of grey wolves. If the western branch of the park warden service had a spiritual nexus, then its guardian angels were at play around that stove while snowflakes piled up on the windowpanes.

The warden service has not fared well in recent years, as you will learn in this book. In fact, it was effectively gutted in 2008, after a hundred years of devotion to the cause of national parks, and reduced to a ghost of itself. But thats another story. As you will learn here, the Ya Ha Tinda weathered that storm. It has survived many political attempts on its life, thanks to an informed and attentive public and some dedicated civil servants, and it has evolved to serve both provincial and federal governments, as well as a rich habitat for wildlife, as an equestrian training centre, a centre for biological, environmental and archaeological research and as a great natural resource for the thousands of people who come to camp, hike and ride its trails, or to access the backcountry of Banff National Park. The Ya Ha Tinda is a vibrant part of the ranching history of Alberta, a heritage that is in dwindling supply these days. Its always been a home on the range, and now it has also become a home where the buffalo roam.

I for one look forward to seeing the ranch continue in its western heritage traditions on into the next century. May it always be there, to be discovered by many new generations of Canadians who need a place where they can slow their lives down for a little while, and step or ride back into the past on ancient trails that will lead them back again, renewed, into the future.

Sid Marty, May 2017