Full Curl by Dave Butler

Author:Dave Butler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2017-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

June 3

Jenny Willson placed copies of her investigation report on the massive table that dominated the main boardroom of the Parks Canada administration building in Banff. The late-morning sun streamed in the window to her left, illuminating one of her reports in a perfect square of light.

Black-and-white portraits of past park superintendents stared at her from the wood-panel walls. Willson felt them judging her, so she stared back, fascinated to see how many wore handlebar moustaches. She wondered what the expectation would have been if a woman superintendent had been hired during the park’s early days. It was a time when there’d been few women around the park, so it was unlikely. But it was also a time when the park struggled with the same questions it now faced, like how to find a balance between allowing people to use and appreciate the park while protecting its unique resources. She struggled with that dilemma every day.

In preparation for the meeting, she’d spent a half-hour down the hall with her supervisor, Chief Park Warden Frank Speer. Stocky with a buzz-cut of pure white hair, Speer was a wise, thirty-two-year Parks Canada veteran who had the unenviable task of sitting, day after challenging day, on the pointy fence between the big bosses in Calgary and wardens like Willson.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen today, Jenny,” he’d said. “They asked for a briefing and that’s all I was told. I know you’ll do a great job of filling them in on your investigation. We’ll see what happens from there.”

“Well,” she said, “I gotta tell you that my expectations aren’t high. These pencil-necked paper-pushers always find a way to avoid doing anything useful.”

The chief park warden smiled. “Try not to let that opinion show, won’t you?” He gave Willson one last piece of advice that made her laugh, just what she needed to calm her nerves. “The higher I get up the ladder in this place,” he said, “the view is not great. I look up to see fewer assholes on the ladder rungs above me, but they are much, much bigger. So remember that. Do your job, and keep your cool.”

Now she stood in the corner of the empty boardroom, waiting, her thoughts shifting to her father. An engineer for the national railway when he died, he’d been a zealous union member, never trusting the company bosses or shareholders to care about his interests. She remembered him telling her to look after herself, to assume that “the man” would never give her a moment’s thought in the quest for bigger profits. Over her short career, Willson had come to understand what he meant, although in government, people on the ladder above her weren’t driven by profit but by power — holding on to what they had, or grabbing more. Politicians wanted re-election, their horizon of time often only four years into the future. Senior bureaucrats, the ones who really ran the show — and who allowed the politicians the delusion that

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