RCanoe THE LAST OF THE angers
In the early 1980s the rangers were given enforce- ment powers—and ticket books—to write up those who broke park regulations, whose greed or ignorance made them break the game laws or whose sense of fun and a good time carried them away into what could be politely called a lack of public order. And so Kirk and his fellow trail cutters officially
became wardens. They were trained in the “use and limits of force,” and were now free to range through the interior of their park with the same authority as provincial police, enforcing the Crimi- nal Code and every act of law that affected the forest, waters and lands of their territory. Yet the wardens became not so much iron-fisted
enforcers, as a force to cajole and win over canoe trippers. It worked. “The ban on cans and bottles in the interior
sparked a major change,” he says. “That and the idea of packing out what you packed in meant we could finally stop working as garbage men for canoeists. After that the ethic changed and the canoeists themselves began to keep the interior clean.”
• • •
Wars, recessions and the fluff of popular culture have come and gone while Kirk has been quietly paddling to work in Algonquin. The tents have certainly improved since he first
pinned on his badge and there are radios and satel- lite telephones now to call home, ending that feel-
ing of being totally cut off from the outside world. The days of the 10-day canoe trips have more or less passed and a Turbo Beaver floatplane assigned to the park often moves the interior wardens to work these days. Canoes are used from base camps but the park’s 8,000 kilometres of logging roads make travel so much faster that now 16 wardens do the job that 76 rangers once did by canoe. Kirk is not the only warden left from the ca-
noe ranger era, he modestly points out again and again, but he is the longest serving. Three decades is time enough to become jaded with even the most pleasant of work. But sitting in his living room, surrounded by the carved tree burls that he creates in his winters without employ- ment, he searches for words to explain the pas- sions that have driven him. “Every year I’m reborn,” he says. “I’m always gain-
ing new eyes for the timeless wonder of this place.” It’s the European kids that have kept it so fresh,
kids the age he was when he first came over the trails to marvel at everything he met. For 12 years a park program has brought European forestry stu- dents from their teeming and near-treeless lives and planted them, with all their energy and enthusiasm, deep into his quiet green world of Algonquin. They labour beside him, falling into the rhythm
of the seasons, picking up his passion for this place. He says, with evident sympathy, that the students often become despondent when they have to leave for home.
Paddling troubadour.
Dawn-to-dusk labour.
The ancient forests of Algonquin were gone long before Kirk arrived, hacked down tenaciously by pioneer loggers in the mid-1800s. But even then the continental clearcutting of trees had spurred some clear thinking about protecting water basins. Kirk’s Algonquin Park was a prescient set-aside
of water and trees where in some ways the im- peratives of human need and greed have been held in check since 1893. When Kirk answered that help-wanted ad he joined yet another gen- eration of protectors and guardians of this eco- system of pines, granite and tannin lakes that has in many ways escaped the shortsighted priorities of human nature.
Hosting dignitaries (mostly they fished). And that is what Kirk lives on, a clear-sighted vi-
sion of his park that is renewed every spring, cou- pled with the enduring timelessness of the place where he plans to live and work for however long his own forever will be. “I’ve been asked how long I’ll continue doing
this,” he says, his hair now short and turned silver. “Better to ask me when I’ll stop breathing.” Tomorrow he will start a 10-day trip on the Nip-
pising River. His paddle and well-worn camping gear sit piled up by his back door. They are ready to grab quickly in case he is late leaving for work.
BRIAN SHIELDS wrote about Herb Pohl in our early spring issue and is a frequent contributor to Canoeroots.
C ANOE ROOT S n 29
PHOTO: ALGONQUIN ARCHIVES A0011
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