Category: Portfolio

Grosbeak Lake – Guided Hikes

Moving into 2025 I’m excited to return to my position with Parks Canada. I hope to continue offering services like our Guided hikes to Grosbeak lake. Before the 2023 fire season this was one of our most popular sites within the park. A natural salt flat where the rocks have been eaten away and slowly dissolved over hundreds of years. In 2023 when the smoke was thick the area felt like another planet. I look forward to returning home and continuing our reopening of the Park after the devastating fires of 2023.

Salt Formations on Rocks
Salt Dissolved Rocks at Grosbeak Lake
Grosbeak Lake Red Chairs
Grosbeak Lake in Fire Season

Cluesolvers – The Lost Cassette

As apart of my work with the Town of Fort Smith Visitor Center I designed a interactive discovery style tour of the town through a series of riddles and tasks that take you around the best sites of Fort Smith. Styled like the Amazing Race, each of the clues leads you to a different site within walking distance of the center of town.

https://cluesolvers.com/outside-games/fort-smith-lost-cassette


In the Northwest Territories sits a small town surrounded by the tall pine trees of the boreal forest. The community recently celebrated its 55th anniversary when it was revealed that the famous lost Cassette of Cassette Rapids had actually been hidden somewhere in town! The Cassette, thought to be lost long ago, is a wooden box filled with the wages of the Fur-Trappers. Search parties have been working day and night, leaving no stone unturned, in hopes of being the first to find the fortune. People aren’t sharing information about the Cassettes’ whereabouts and are even misleading others to throw them off the scent. The only thing we know is where the first clue is located, somewhere on the grounds of the Northern Life Museum. Can you follow the clues and be the first to uncover the lost wages of the Fur Trappers?

2024 PRIDE – TOFS

While I don’t have a ton of footage or photos I was pleased to assist in the 2024 Fort Smith PRIDE Festival. In addition to setting up Town Of Fort Smith information booths at the Pancake Breakfast I also assisted in set-up/take-down and facilitation of the official event and Drag shows at the Fort Smith Arena.

2023 Summer Fire Season

In the summer of 2023 the NWT and WBNP faced devastating forest fires. Our local firefighting team worked endlessly to protect both Park and Town facilities. In July we faced a crisis of resources. WBNP Officers were burning themselves out working on this series of Fires. It was asked that if any other departments had staff to spare to send them on a deployment to work logistics on the WBNP Fire Complex. I then spent two weeks deployed to the Complex fire as the logistics team food lead. The days were all long 12+ hours shifts and moral was not super high. Below is an except from my interview with Haida Davies-McDermott and the Climate Disaster Project.

“I was just in charge of food. I was in charge of feeding the 200 firefighters and people who are working on behind the scenes. That was my job, is get them the food, get the chef the food, the chef will cook the food. All you have to do is go and buy the things and make sure that you’re accommodating for everybody’s allergies. Even when that was going, I was super stressed in that time because not only was I getting the updates, but I was physically, seeing the planes fly and seeing the people get off the choppers covered in soot, covered in ash. There were days where the sky was orange and sepia from all the ash in the air. “

The full interview can be read on CabinRadio.

Wilderness First Aid Training
Remnants of Previous Seasonal Fires
Visitor Center Fire Guild Board
Morning Round-Up on the Fire Command Site

Educational Programming with WBNP

In addition to the “Snake Program” that I delivered at JBT within my role as Interpretive Coordinator at Parks Canada I also facilitated a series of educational animal based programming to both public and private groups. The Visitor center team ran weekly programming both within Town and inside the Park at the Salt River Dëldël Kué building and Pine Lake day-use area. I worked in PWK Highschool at the job fair and was honored to present an award to a 2023 graduating student on behalf of Wood Buffalo National Park. Finally, we partnered with the Aurora College Science Fair to show off a homemade sinkhole model that my team and I constructed inside a fishtank.

2023 Visitor Center Staff
The new Dëldël Kué building at Salt River
2023Kids Group – Beaver Program
PWK High School Job Fair 2023

WBNP – Red Sided Garter Snakes Post Hibernation 2023

In March and April of 2023 I was tasked with recording and observing the Wood Buffalo National Park Garter Snakes emergence from hibernation. The snakes emerge from their underground caves and begin their mating and migrating process before the snow has even fully melted. In addition to observing and monitoring the number of snakes that emerged from their dens in 2023 I also facilitated an educational “Snake Program”. The program was delivered in classrooms at JBT elementary and taught children the important role Garter snakes play in the Wood Buffalo National Park ecosystem.

Snake-ProgramDownload
Red Sided Garter Snake Greeting
Red Sided Garter Snake on the move
2 Red Sided Garter Snakes in the bush

2023 Snowshoe Programming

Over the winter of 2023 I championed a free guided snowshoe hike through the Salt-River Meadows. We offered weekly hikes and a specialized event for the Wood Buffalo Frolics Festival, a community run festival that celebrates the coming of spring. I’ve attached the post-event report from the Frolics event!

2023-Frolics-Snowshoe-PlanDownload
Hiking next to Salt River Meadows
A WBNP set of Red Chairs

Visitor Center – Decoration

While working at the WBNP Visitor Center I had the privilege to work on decoration, both inside the Visitor Center and on our seasonal parade floats! We usually decorate the visitor center for Halloween, Christmas, and PRIDE month.

WBNP – Christmas Food Drive
WBNP – Christmas Sale Display
WBNP – Visitor Center Guest
WBNP – Christmas Parade Float
WBNP – Canada Day Parada Float

WBNP – Muskrat Catch & Release

On November 22, 2022 we had an unexpected guest at the WBNP Visitor Center. A lonely muskrat found himself cornered my the entrance to our offices. With the help of our resource conservation team we captured the specimen and released him into a nearby section of forest.

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