Special Places

It has been my privilege to have lived, worked in or visited almost all of Canada. My job as an interpreter of natural and man-made landscapes allowed me to get an often intimate and personal knowledge of the people and stories of these places. Between work and holiday travel, I’ve been from Iqaluit to Rondeau Provincial Park, from Cape St. Mary’s to Tofino. Of all the eye-catching, breathtakingly beautiful places I’ve seen, three remain deeply embedded in my memory.

The prairies are a landscape of sweeping vistas, gentle hills, huge skies and endless horizons. But every once in a while a river cuts through this landscape and creates what I’ve called “inverted landscapes”. These river valleys are more ‘bounded’ landscapes and often oases of green amid the browns and yellows of the prairies. Three of these inverted landscapes call to me: Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park, Dinosaur Provincial Park World Heritage Site, and Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park.

.

Dry Island is southeast of Red Deer, on the Red Deer River, near Three Hills. (Yes, there are three rather prominent hills.) Even knowing you’re close to the place, it is always a bit of a surprise as you top a little rise and the valley opens up in front of you. You literally go from the photo above to the one below.

Dry Island. That’s the Red Deer River.


Shortly after 9/11 the Red Deer and District Museum opened a traveling exhibit about Grenfell Hooked Rugs. The curator, Paula Laverty, who lived across the river from the Twin Towers, flew out the following week for the exhibit installation and opening. These were tumultuous and scary times so Wendy and I took Paula to Dry Island to give her a feeling for the Great Plains, a part of the world she was visiting for the first time. It was a beautiful fall day and as I recall it, we had a great day. I remember being embarrassed at the thirty “Watchable Wildlife” signs the park had erected - I had written every one.

-o-O-o-

Wendy and I worked for Alberta Recreation and Parks in the early eighties. In the fall of 1980 the Visitor Services Planning group took a field trip to southern Alberta. We visited Dinosaur Provincial Park World Heritage Site on that trip. Like Dry Island, you reach the park almost by surprise. Suddenly there is a whole landscape, mysterious and almost mystical, spread out at your feet. Perhaps it’s the badlands with their hoodoos or the way the landscape changes with every rainfall. Perhaps it’s the strip of green along the river. It’s called Dinosaur because a phenomenal number and variety of late Cretaceous fossils have been discovered here. It was declared a World Heritage Site because of this and has attracted paleontologists from all over the world since the nineteenth century.

Wendy and I were there just after a thundershower. That’s the best time to go fossil hunting. The torrential rains wash away the soft bentonite clays exposing the much harder fossilized materials. We found a small hoodoo capped by a fossilized turtle shell.

At the time I was envious of the planners working on the park. It was and still is a challenging place to interpret to visitors. I’ve been lucky enough to work on two interpretive plans for Dinosaur as a consultant, first with Reid Crowther in 1985 and again in 2002 with Robertson Weir. One evening Anna Roberson and I walked the road in the closed area and experienced the badlands at dusk. As the sun went down behind us, the badlands glowed pink, a deer ran up a hill, and a coyote howled. Truly, Dinosaur is “Like no other place on earth”.

-o-O-o-

On the same trip in 1980 we went to Writing-on-Stone. Leaving Lethbridge, there is a tiny pyramid shape on the horizon. That shape is the Sweetgrass Hills of Montana. These massive granite intrusions were exposed by millions of years of erosion. On the Canadian side of this border is Writing-on-Stone. The park is located on the Milk River, part of the Mississippi River system. You could put a canoe in the River here and not need to pull out till you reach the Gulf of Mexico. Most Canadian rivers drain into the Pacific, the Arctic or Atlantic Oceans. It is the Milk River valley that allowed American Whisky traders to sneak into Canada and ply their illicit business. There was a NWMP post in here for years.

Aside from the stunning beauty of this spot, there are petroglyphs and paintings on the rock faces that are estimated to be over three thousand years old. The top of the cliff on the opposite bank of the river is a known vision quest site. It is a place of immense spiritual power.

We had lunch in the hoodoos that day. It was the middle of November, but the sun was warm and out of the wind it was very pleasant. Will Pearce, our boss and leader, took a great photo of me standing on a hoodoo. It was a perfect day. It was at this place on that day in 1980 that Susan Sawyer, our historian and a great friend at the time, looked at me and said “You’re sweet on her, aren’t you?” I was. I still am.

Writing-On-Stone is another place I got to know well as I worked with Robertson Weir in 2002 to write an interpretive plan for the park.

There are many places I love, but not many that make me wistful like these three.

Happy Easter to all.

Harvey