Best Job in the World
What is the best job in the world? I’m not sure, but being a Park Ranger at a Provincial Park in Labrador in the seventies has got to rank amongst the most fun. I should know. I was one. At the time I didn’t know how fortunate I was (or perhaps I did, but didn’t acknowledge it because I was young and foolish). Here’s how it happened.
When the spring finally comes to Labrador (if it comes at all) it is already summer in most of the northern hemisphere. The birds are chirping and the flies aren’t out yet. The young are trying to find a job. I was no different than the rest of us…we all pretty much were looking for something that paid obscene amounts of cash and required no responsibility or particular talents or skills. Now, you can imagine that the local paper ‘The Aurora’ was just jam packed with ads looking for likely candidates to fill the huge numbers of those positions.
Not.
In fact, I don’t recall the local paper having ANY job listings, certainly not for young people. Local paper fodder usually consisted of the men’s and women’s broomball leagues latest scores and standings. By the way, I have it on good authority that broomball is an activity that was developed resulting from a need to come up with a sport that could be played by people too inebriated to:
a.) Skate
b.) Exhibit the coordination required to hit a little black disc with a flattened curved stick.
c.) Don protective clothing…besides, if protective gear was a requirement that would mean less available cash for essentials such as ‘further inebriating beverages’ and pizza.
Besides broomball, the paper covered other essential local news such as missing dogs and cats, schedules for spraying toxins into the community oxygen reserves and safe bicycle riding courses (which in those days consisted of hand signals and how to check your brakes and spokes. Now days safe bicycling is a university credit course involving several levels of municipal and federal policy makers, fire departments, and health care professionals – not to mention “Who can afford a bicycle these days”?! Have you seen those things? Starting at $4000.00 and up made out of materials we can thank the Space Program for!).
We didn’t find our jobs in the paper.
We literally walked out of our homes, walked uptown, walked up the stairs to the Manpower Office, took the time to say Hello to Ruth on the front desk (who also was a close, personal, family friend – as was just about everyone in Labrador City), and read the little index cards that described various job listings throughout the nation. When one piqued interest we would ask for more information and an application.
After scouring the dozen or so index cards that actually represented jobs that had not yet been filled, I let my eyes settle on the position of ‘Provincial Park Attendant’. Yes, believe it or not, I passed over such gems as ‘Sewer Cleaner’ (although later I did end up as this…Job Description: Shovel The Materials Most Commonly Found in Sewers) and ‘Chicken Sexer’ for a large rural farm in northern Saskatchewan…Job Description: !!! I don’t want to think about this!
As it turns out, the duties of a Provincial Park Attendant were many, filling several volumes of provincial government memorandi but can be simplified as this: listen to campers complain and do your best to make campers stop complaining. “I can do this!” I thought, so I applied.
Applying for a Provincial Government job was a snap. Easier than 1, 2, sixty billion. Now I know what they did with all the paper made in the Corner Brook and Grand Falls mills! They merged the two products into one, put it on a huge toilet paper roll and stuck it out in back of the Labrador West Manpower Office. As applicants would come, Ruth would tear off a block and ask them to fill it out. I won’t go into details regarding the contents of the form. Suffice to say that if anybody ever needs to know the entire cultural, socio-economic and medical history of the descendents of Adam they need only consult the Newfoundland & Labrador Provincial Archives under the heading ‘Huge Rolls of Toilet Paper on Microfiche’ (if you can’t find it there, try ‘Boring Stuff Nobody Will Ever Read’).
Turns out I got the job. Notification arrived by Post and included start date, location and supervisor’s name. It also contained information regarding the rate of pay…which definitely was NOT obscene amounts of cash. However, seeing as how I had not landed any other job to that point I dutifully accepted the position and so embarked on a journey of discovery and adventure.
The first order of business was to arrive at Duley Lake Provincial Park on a cold, snowy late May morning to commission the outhouses (see, I told you this was no ordinary job!). This meant that we would be cleaning them out after a winter’s neglect. With a high pressure washer mounted in the back of a pickup truck we sprayed them until the paint was peeling off the wood…that is the paint that was left following the last summer’s season of use! Later we would repaint all the outhouses again, in that lovely ‘Park Dark Brown’ that was so popular, presumably so that there would be paint to peel off the following year. Once the outhouses were fresh and clean again, we would throw down enough dry chemical to qualify as a contender for the ‘Biological Terrorist of the Year Award’. A quick check then to ensure the building was firmly mounted on its supports and that the latches, seat covers and screens were in good working order, and then stock up with rolls of paper.
Next came the picnic tables. There were none of your garden variety tables at Duley. No sir, these were serious tables. Each one weighed in at just under the average weight of a tandem axle dumptruck but were much hardier. In fact, if you could throw them they could be used to stop a runaway train! The tables too were ‘Park Dark’ and also would get a new coat of paint at some point during the summer. In fact, every item in the park was either dark brown or forest green.
In short, the main thrust of the first few weeks was getting the park up to the standards that guests had become accustomed to complaining about. In time we were there.
I never said anything about the crew yet. There were three shifts of two guys each, plus we had a boss that we hardly ever saw. He stayed in a mobile trailer planted over in an area away from the park, but still on Duley Lake. For some reason that I can’t quite put my finger on, his trailer always smelled heavily of alcohol and he was not usually in a very good mood at 6:30 in the morning. Go figger. Anyway, the point being, once we had the park up and running for the season, we pretty much were unsupervised. This was good because for the most part, we were fairly responsible young fellows. Sure, there were minor indiscretions perhaps, but I’m not admitting to them!
A typical day went like this: Drive the eight miles from town to the park, unless you were already in the park of course. Take over from the nightshift guys, find out what was happening, who did what in the park overnight, had there been incidents? Have coffee and a smoke (that was in the days before my brain got the message that cigarettes were stupid). Then wander out on the rounds.
That was one of the good parts of the job. Another good part was that we had a truck at our disposal. It wasn’t a four wheel drive, which would have been really great, but you wouldn’t know it judging by the locations we actually managed to get it unstuck from. It is a commonly held belief that if you give a group of young men a pickup truck they will handle it in a respectful manner. This of course is true. We respected that General Motors had designed trucks to do truck things and so with highest regard we proceeded to relegate that poor vehicle to the elite group of automobiles that can be described as ‘Offroad’ machines. We did not, of course, have the 5 point harnesses, the 4” lift kit, the 5 ton winch and all that other offroad gear but we made up for that with unbridled optimisim and the faith that, despite being sadly lacking in the technology required for safe, successful thrashing about in the uncharted hinterland of Labrador, this truck could traverse any stream, climb any bank and jump any crevasse (provided we could get it going fast enough through the spruce!). In true hero form, the truck came through with flying colours! By the end of the summer most of the colours had been left on rocks and tree bark from one end of western Labrador to the other, and the surface looked more like a foil wrapper from chewing gum than a motor vehicle. Lucky for us, the truck was Light Park Brown and so the dirt disguised the fact that there were extensive stretches of paint missing.
Another factor in our favour was popularity with the campers. We justified our jaunts into the bush by bringing back a pan of wood to be cut up and made available for firewood. This helped our jobs immensely because people really did appreciate having heat during the Labrador nights, and days for that matter. Often they would show this appreciation in the form of food and drink…both commodities that park attendants think highly of. Eventually though, all good things came to an end. It seems the company leasing us the vehicle actually came up to the park and saw it. Almost immediately the vehicle ceased its role as an offroad adventuremobile and became the sole transportation property of an alcoholic senior park official who spent the rest of the summer too drunk to walk, but luckily for him, he had a taxpayer financed pickup at his disposal day and night. The campers spent the rest of the season either cold or getting their own wood…and diving into ditches everytime the truck came careening into the park.
Another story that comes to mind about the park job is the case of the black bear problem. Actually there was no bear problem, it was a people problem. Here it is.
In the summertime (just like the song says) the weather is hot and the black bears hang out at the dump, doing dump things that bears do. Sort of summer holidays for the bears. Then when the evenings get to being longer and cooler they start to feel like they might like to have a long winter’s nap so they abandon the dump and head back into the bush from whence they came. For some of the bears, this means wobbling down over the hill from the dump, swimming across the Walsh River and shortcutting across the sandspit peninsula that is the Duley Lake campground and perhaps stopping to snack on anything left out in the open or poorly stored around the campsite. Believe it or not, going for a pee in the wee small hours and stumbling onto a bear can frighten the bejeesers out of you! Which in turn causes you to perhaps emit a blood curdling scream, consequentally frightening the bejeesers out of everybody around you, including the damn bear! In late summer this becomes so common as to become a problem and so, reflecting the wisdom that comes only from government decision makers deeply noninvolved with and blissfully unaware of the situation, the following line of action was taken.
They gave us guns.
But, don’t worry, they didn’t give us any bullets. The Provincial Government logic was thus: The campers were uneasy due to the fact that bears were roaming the park at night on their way to bed. Being a proactive sort, the government decided to cure the problem by pretending that the park attendants could actually DO something about the bears! We couldn’t of course. We did manage to buy a few shells ourselves and keep them in our pockets just in case something really did happen. I wonder how that report would have unfolded?
Newsman: “What happened?”
Park Official: “The camper was attacked while taking a pee”
Newsman: “What happened?”
Park Official: “The attendant shot the bear.”
Newsman: “This surprises you?”
Park Official: “Yes. We didn’t issue bullets”
Newsman: “You issued rifles for protection without ammunition?! That’s just stupid!”
Park Official: “I…er…ummm…”.
Lucky for all concerned there never was any incident, and the closest anything came to being shot was the night the boss in a drunken stupor nearly ran over a pup tent full of beer while he was driving willy, nilly through the park in the government issue truck that we couldn’t use for work anymore because we were too irresponsible. All survived.
The very best part of that job without a doubt was the picnic tables. After the park had gone to sleep and the final rounds had been made I could lie back on a table and watch the sky. The Labrador sky is the most beautiful natural vision I have ever seen. There are the billions of stars in the heavens above and every one of them crisp and clear; sharp pinpoints on deep indigo. There I could look for satellites or falling stars or just gaze out into infinity. All this was the backdrop for the Northern Lights and their shimmering, rippling dance. In all, this was perhaps the most impressive sight I have ever seen. Sometimes I long to go back to do just that. Lie on my back and look at the sky.
Here’s an amusing after thought. Duley Lake Park is divided down the center by the paved road. On one end there’s the enterance and on the far end there’s the lake. The road simply dips into the lake, ending abruptly. Sometimes on occasion, a driver forgets which side of the park he’s been cruising and turns to head in the wrong direction. Once, a fellow was a good distance under the weather and turned towards the lake, thinking he was headed out to the highway. Once he was on the road and straightened out (the car that is!) he floored it squealing tires and all. A few seconds later the car was skipping out across the lake’s surface like a big flat rock! What a laugh.
Lucky like, nobody got hurt and so everybody in the park could have a good belly laugh at buddy’s expense.
What is the best job in the world? I’m not sure, but being a Park Ranger at a Provincial Park in Labrador in the seventies has got to rank amongst the most fun. I should know. I was one. At the time I didn’t know how fortunate I was (or perhaps I did, but didn’t acknowledge it because I was young and foolish). Here’s how it happened.
When the spring finally comes to Labrador (if it comes at all) it is already summer in most of the northern hemisphere. The birds are chirping and the flies aren’t out yet. The young are trying to find a job. I was no different than the rest of us…we all pretty much were looking for something that paid obscene amounts of cash and required no responsibility or particular talents or skills. Now, you can imagine that the local paper ‘The Aurora’ was just jam packed with ads looking for likely candidates to fill the huge numbers of those positions.
Not.
In fact, I don’t recall the local paper having ANY job listings, certainly not for young people. Local paper fodder usually consisted of the men’s and women’s broomball leagues latest scores and standings. By the way, I have it on good authority that broomball is an activity that was developed resulting from a need to come up with a sport that could be played by people too inebriated to:
a.) Skate
b.) Exhibit the coordination required to hit a little black disc with a flattened curved stick.
c.) Don protective clothing…besides, if protective gear was a requirement that would mean less available cash for essentials such as ‘further inebriating beverages’ and pizza.
Besides broomball, the paper covered other essential local news such as missing dogs and cats, schedules for spraying toxins into the community oxygen reserves and safe bicycle riding courses (which in those days consisted of hand signals and how to check your brakes and spokes. Now days safe bicycling is a university credit course involving several levels of municipal and federal policy makers, fire departments, and health care professionals – not to mention “Who can afford a bicycle these days”?! Have you seen those things? Starting at $4000.00 and up made out of materials we can thank the Space Program for!).
We didn’t find our jobs in the paper.
We literally walked out of our homes, walked uptown, walked up the stairs to the Manpower Office, took the time to say Hello to Ruth on the front desk (who also was a close, personal, family friend – as was just about everyone in Labrador City), and read the little index cards that described various job listings throughout the nation. When one piqued interest we would ask for more information and an application.
After scouring the dozen or so index cards that actually represented jobs that had not yet been filled, I let my eyes settle on the position of ‘Provincial Park Attendant’. Yes, believe it or not, I passed over such gems as ‘Sewer Cleaner’ (although later I did end up as this…Job Description: Shovel The Materials Most Commonly Found in Sewers) and ‘Chicken Sexer’ for a large rural farm in northern Saskatchewan…Job Description: !!! I don’t want to think about this!
As it turns out, the duties of a Provincial Park Attendant were many, filling several volumes of provincial government memorandi but can be simplified as this: listen to campers complain and do your best to make campers stop complaining. “I can do this!” I thought, so I applied.
Applying for a Provincial Government job was a snap. Easier than 1, 2, sixty billion. Now I know what they did with all the paper made in the Corner Brook and Grand Falls mills! They merged the two products into one, put it on a huge toilet paper roll and stuck it out in back of the Labrador West Manpower Office. As applicants would come, Ruth would tear off a block and ask them to fill it out. I won’t go into details regarding the contents of the form. Suffice to say that if anybody ever needs to know the entire cultural, socio-economic and medical history of the descendents of Adam they need only consult the Newfoundland & Labrador Provincial Archives under the heading ‘Huge Rolls of Toilet Paper on Microfiche’ (if you can’t find it there, try ‘Boring Stuff Nobody Will Ever Read’).
Turns out I got the job. Notification arrived by Post and included start date, location and supervisor’s name. It also contained information regarding the rate of pay…which definitely was NOT obscene amounts of cash. However, seeing as how I had not landed any other job to that point I dutifully accepted the position and so embarked on a journey of discovery and adventure.
The first order of business was to arrive at Duley Lake Provincial Park on a cold, snowy late May morning to commission the outhouses (see, I told you this was no ordinary job!). This meant that we would be cleaning them out after a winter’s neglect. With a high pressure washer mounted in the back of a pickup truck we sprayed them until the paint was peeling off the wood…that is the paint that was left following the last summer’s season of use! Later we would repaint all the outhouses again, in that lovely ‘Park Dark Brown’ that was so popular, presumably so that there would be paint to peel off the following year. Once the outhouses were fresh and clean again, we would throw down enough dry chemical to qualify as a contender for the ‘Biological Terrorist of the Year Award’. A quick check then to ensure the building was firmly mounted on its supports and that the latches, seat covers and screens were in good working order, and then stock up with rolls of paper.
Next came the picnic tables. There were none of your garden variety tables at Duley. No sir, these were serious tables. Each one weighed in at just under the average weight of a tandem axle dumptruck but were much hardier. In fact, if you could throw them they could be used to stop a runaway train! The tables too were ‘Park Dark’ and also would get a new coat of paint at some point during the summer. In fact, every item in the park was either dark brown or forest green.
In short, the main thrust of the first few weeks was getting the park up to the standards that guests had become accustomed to complaining about. In time we were there.
I never said anything about the crew yet. There were three shifts of two guys each, plus we had a boss that we hardly ever saw. He stayed in a mobile trailer planted over in an area away from the park, but still on Duley Lake. For some reason that I can’t quite put my finger on, his trailer always smelled heavily of alcohol and he was not usually in a very good mood at 6:30 in the morning. Go figger. Anyway, the point being, once we had the park up and running for the season, we pretty much were unsupervised. This was good because for the most part, we were fairly responsible young fellows. Sure, there were minor indiscretions perhaps, but I’m not admitting to them!
A typical day went like this: Drive the eight miles from town to the park, unless you were already in the park of course. Take over from the nightshift guys, find out what was happening, who did what in the park overnight, had there been incidents? Have coffee and a smoke (that was in the days before my brain got the message that cigarettes were stupid). Then wander out on the rounds.
That was one of the good parts of the job. Another good part was that we had a truck at our disposal. It wasn’t a four wheel drive, which would have been really great, but you wouldn’t know it judging by the locations we actually managed to get it unstuck from. It is a commonly held belief that if you give a group of young men a pickup truck they will handle it in a respectful manner. This of course is true. We respected that General Motors had designed trucks to do truck things and so with highest regard we proceeded to relegate that poor vehicle to the elite group of automobiles that can be described as ‘Offroad’ machines. We did not, of course, have the 5 point harnesses, the 4” lift kit, the 5 ton winch and all that other offroad gear but we made up for that with unbridled optimisim and the faith that, despite being sadly lacking in the technology required for safe, successful thrashing about in the uncharted hinterland of Labrador, this truck could traverse any stream, climb any bank and jump any crevasse (provided we could get it going fast enough through the spruce!). In true hero form, the truck came through with flying colours! By the end of the summer most of the colours had been left on rocks and tree bark from one end of western Labrador to the other, and the surface looked more like a foil wrapper from chewing gum than a motor vehicle. Lucky for us, the truck was Light Park Brown and so the dirt disguised the fact that there were extensive stretches of paint missing.
Another factor in our favour was popularity with the campers. We justified our jaunts into the bush by bringing back a pan of wood to be cut up and made available for firewood. This helped our jobs immensely because people really did appreciate having heat during the Labrador nights, and days for that matter. Often they would show this appreciation in the form of food and drink…both commodities that park attendants think highly of. Eventually though, all good things came to an end. It seems the company leasing us the vehicle actually came up to the park and saw it. Almost immediately the vehicle ceased its role as an offroad adventuremobile and became the sole transportation property of an alcoholic senior park official who spent the rest of the summer too drunk to walk, but luckily for him, he had a taxpayer financed pickup at his disposal day and night. The campers spent the rest of the season either cold or getting their own wood…and diving into ditches everytime the truck came careening into the park.
Another story that comes to mind about the park job is the case of the black bear problem. Actually there was no bear problem, it was a people problem. Here it is.
In the summertime (just like the song says) the weather is hot and the black bears hang out at the dump, doing dump things that bears do. Sort of summer holidays for the bears. Then when the evenings get to being longer and cooler they start to feel like they might like to have a long winter’s nap so they abandon the dump and head back into the bush from whence they came. For some of the bears, this means wobbling down over the hill from the dump, swimming across the Walsh River and shortcutting across the sandspit peninsula that is the Duley Lake campground and perhaps stopping to snack on anything left out in the open or poorly stored around the campsite. Believe it or not, going for a pee in the wee small hours and stumbling onto a bear can frighten the bejeesers out of you! Which in turn causes you to perhaps emit a blood curdling scream, consequentally frightening the bejeesers out of everybody around you, including the damn bear! In late summer this becomes so common as to become a problem and so, reflecting the wisdom that comes only from government decision makers deeply noninvolved with and blissfully unaware of the situation, the following line of action was taken.
They gave us guns.
But, don’t worry, they didn’t give us any bullets. The Provincial Government logic was thus: The campers were uneasy due to the fact that bears were roaming the park at night on their way to bed. Being a proactive sort, the government decided to cure the problem by pretending that the park attendants could actually DO something about the bears! We couldn’t of course. We did manage to buy a few shells ourselves and keep them in our pockets just in case something really did happen. I wonder how that report would have unfolded?
Newsman: “What happened?”
Park Official: “The camper was attacked while taking a pee”
Newsman: “What happened?”
Park Official: “The attendant shot the bear.”
Newsman: “This surprises you?”
Park Official: “Yes. We didn’t issue bullets”
Newsman: “You issued rifles for protection without ammunition?! That’s just stupid!”
Park Official: “I…er…ummm…”.
Lucky for all concerned there never was any incident, and the closest anything came to being shot was the night the boss in a drunken stupor nearly ran over a pup tent full of beer while he was driving willy, nilly through the park in the government issue truck that we couldn’t use for work anymore because we were too irresponsible. All survived.
The very best part of that job without a doubt was the picnic tables. After the park had gone to sleep and the final rounds had been made I could lie back on a table and watch the sky. The Labrador sky is the most beautiful natural vision I have ever seen. There are the billions of stars in the heavens above and every one of them crisp and clear; sharp pinpoints on deep indigo. There I could look for satellites or falling stars or just gaze out into infinity. All this was the backdrop for the Northern Lights and their shimmering, rippling dance. In all, this was perhaps the most impressive sight I have ever seen. Sometimes I long to go back to do just that. Lie on my back and look at the sky.
Here’s an amusing after thought. Duley Lake Park is divided down the center by the paved road. On one end there’s the enterance and on the far end there’s the lake. The road simply dips into the lake, ending abruptly. Sometimes on occasion, a driver forgets which side of the park he’s been cruising and turns to head in the wrong direction. Once, a fellow was a good distance under the weather and turned towards the lake, thinking he was headed out to the highway. Once he was on the road and straightened out (the car that is!) he floored it squealing tires and all. A few seconds later the car was skipping out across the lake’s surface like a big flat rock! What a laugh.
Lucky like, nobody got hurt and so everybody in the park could have a good belly laugh at buddy’s expense.