15 August

Leaving the north now and kind of sad knowing we’re leaving the wilder parts of this country. Has been beautiful and amazing. I know life can be tough up here but I also see why so many of the doctors I’ve interviewed for this report love it so much and are drawn to it- just like I am to the remote community I’ve been working in.

As we drove back across two states we drove past lots of old barns and farms and fields of wheat like before but much greener in this area than the route we took heading out here.

As we got closer to Alberta the smoke got worse and worse til we could hardly see down the end of the road. The radio said that BC had declared a state of emergency with over 550 fires burning across the state.

Elk Island National Park was our destination tonight. It is Canada’s largest enclosed National Park. They keep it enclosed for several reasons – firstly it’s a little too close to populated areas and I suspect that in Canada if you don’t fence them in its not only roads that threaten them but trigger happy hunters too?

Secondly they are a sanctuary for two types of bison: plains bison and woods bison that they are trying to conserve and want to keep separate so they don’t interbreed.

Back in pre-settlement times millions of these beasts roamed North America. First nations people made good use of them using pretty much every part of their bodies. They were an important part of their existence. When settlers started coming in to farm they wanted to get rid of the bison so they could graze cattle ( bison are too hard to tame and farm commercially). The other disturbing rumour is that the government also wanted them all slaughtered to ensure the extinction of the First Nations who relied on them. Disgusting if that’s true. One legend of a guy managed to persuade the government to allow him to keep a herd at Elk Island park and so a species was saved from extinction and has been bred back up and released back into the wild in places.

We were hoping to see bison at this park on the way through back to Calgary.

Heading to our campsite we pulled into Beaver pond as it was late afternoon. We figured we could do a reconnaissance and if it looked promising we’d come back later.

Not far into the track there were terraces of beaver dams so we figured we’d have a bit of a look. Didn’t take long to spot a baby beaver swimming around! Was very exciting! Our long search for the beaver was finally over!

After waiting a while we didn’t see anything else so thought we’d do the rest of the hike quickly. Most of it quickly moves away from the water so whilst it was good to stretch our legs it wasn’t much use for sighting beavers.

As we headed back and came closer to the ponds we heard an almighty splash! It sounded like something fairly big had jumped into the water and all we could see were ripples. IT was followed shortly by another two similar sounds. Was we rounded the corner back to near the beginning of the trail we saw a beaver slap it’s tail making the same noise and disappearing. The sound we’d heard was the sound beavers make by slapping their tail as a warning signal of danger.

Coming back to the beaver dams it was getting much later and it was now a hive of beaver activity. We ended up sitting and watching for ages as beavers of all sizes swam around, moved from dam to dam, climbed over dams, went up banks and cut down trees, chewed on trees, and crawled under the little bridge we were sitting on after warily checking us out. It was amazing! Like sitting in the middle of a David Attenborough doco on beavers!

Muskrats were also swimming around and sitting on the banks.

Eventually we left after being eaten alive by mozzies – we hadn’t planned to stay so late so weren’t prepared for dusk bugsville and I was determined to film the little blighters even when the mozzies were biting my face off.

We drove on and then realised we’d stayed out so late we may as well keep going with our dusk wildlife spotting. Further down we saw a herd of woods bison. Very imposing creatures and impressive even in a small group so can only wonder what it would have been like to see the millions roaming North America when Indians roamed the lands.

Just when we thought it couldn’t get any better Ron spotted a gorgeous Coyote sitting up on a crest, looking around as if surveying his kingdom.

Then driving to our campsite we saw. Bison coming down the road toward us. What a crazy place!

16 aug

After another lovely night of car camping in the forest and a little campfire we headed out and saw another Bison sitting in the fields. We also saw the plains bison on the other side of the park.

We were talking about our beaver experience last night and Ron came to the conclusion that maybe beavers are actually filthy little animals and not so cute. Because they build dams that make the water stagnate and then poop their Giardia laden poop in the water they lived in. Eww..

On the way back to Calgary to drop off our hire car we dropped into the Ukrainian heritage village. This is a reconstructed village that recounts the settlement of large swathes of Canada back in the 18-1900’s by Western Ukrainians. This had a huge impact on the history of Canada as the tough Ukrainians opened up most of the country that became farming land. I was particularly interested because of my own Ukrainian heritage. This history still is evident today in Canada with Borscht and Pierogi as likely to be on the menu as ribs and fries. Many people’s names are Ukrainian and there are still Ukrainian accents in the farmers markets.

Mostly it was Western Ukrainians under the Austro-Hungarian empire who had suffered under serfdom and now extreme poverty and loss of land. The offer of going to Canada where they could receive 160 acres of free land was obviously tempting and millions took it up. In some cases entire villages moved to Canada to start afresh. The only catch was that they had to clear minimum amounts of the gnarly forests each year which most of them had to by hand. Every member of the family including kids had to take part . Acres and acres of forest had to be cleared each year by hand. They were given no tools or animals and couldn’t even get a horse to pull a plough until they had earned some money to get one. They were tough times and in the first winters they faced starvation and had to deal with bears and fires and all sorts of challenges. They were the most successful in settling the land though and became the most permanent immigrants because of their culture to work together and help each other – lending each other equipment as it became available and helping their neighbours. They were also much more self-sufficient than other settlers ( maybe that’s where I get it from!) and were able to settle extremely remote areas with no access to towns because they could do and make everything themselves.