Saddling Up For Parks Patrol
PHOTOS: BRADLEY BISCHOFF; J. PAGE, PARKS CANADA
Top: Wardens assigned to patrol Banff National Park gather at Stoney Creek Warden Cabin. Below: Wardens on patrol in Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan.
“These are my last two babies,” says Rick Smith, foreman at Parks Canada’s Ya Ha Tinda Ranch, 75 kilometres west of Sundre, in Alberta’s foothills country. A biting December wind blows off Warden Mountain to the west as he strokes the muzzles of eight-month-old colts Quill and Quigley.
It’s no coincidence both their names begin with Q. Entered in a dusty horse register kept in a 1918 cabin near the corral are the names and statistics of every horse born here for the past 70 years. Colts born on the ranch each year were given nam...