One of St. Albert's foremost foresters is in Hinton this week to celebrate the anniversary of a school he helped found 50 years ago.
Peter Murphy, a retired forestry professor and St. Albert resident, is one of many special guests set to appear in Hinton today as part of the Hinton Training Centre's 50th anniversary. Murphy was the centre's first director.
Run by Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, the centre trains foresters and firefighters throughout Canada, Mexico and the United States and is known for its research into forest management.
And it all started in an old prisoner-of-war camp, Murphy notes.
"We wanted to make this school a part of forestry and a part of Hinton when we started, and I think that happened."
A school in the trees
Alberta started its first formal ranger program in 1951 to better manage its forests, says Murphy, now 80. In 1956, Murphy, just three years after graduating from the University of New Brunswick, was asked to become head of the program.
"It was pretty heady stuff," he says. He had to take trappers and loggers and teach them to fight massive forest fires. "I played the guitar and sang, so I was accustomed to entertaining students," he jokes.
He and his students first worked out of tarpaper buildings in an old P.O.W. camp in Kananaskis. "We had a coal burning heater in there that was good, but very dusty."
In 1959, the province agreed to give the program a permanent home. Murphy and his staff chose Hinton — it was close to utilities, near a pulp mill, had a diverse array of trees and just happened to be in the riding of Norman Willmore, the provincial land and forest minister at the time. The centre opened Oct. 1, 1960.
Students spent about two-thirds of their time outside the classroom getting hands-on experience in the forest, Murphy says. "I felt it was important to get them trained right from the start."
Each had to learn compass navigation, forest management, fish and game regulations and fire prevention. "They were jacks of all trades." They also had to contend with black bears and angry moose.
Forestry evolution
The centre took off in 1964 when it partnered with the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) to start a two-year program, Murphy says. As fire science evolved, so did the curriculum. Students now had to manage logistics, aircraft and hundreds of firefighters at a time. "It just burgeoned."
The centre now trains thousands of students a year on forest and wildfire management, says Rob Galon, the current director, and plans to build a new student life centre, forensics lab and burn simulator in the near future.
This centre gives rangers the practical skills they need to do their job, says Bruce Mayer, the assistant deputy minister of forestry with Alberta Sustainable Resource Development and a graduate of the Hinton Training Centre.
"It's given me a good understanding of field operations," he says, particularly when it comes to fire behaviour and tactics. It also builds camaraderie amongst students, many of whom will work with each other in the field. "You don't learn those things at the NAITs or the U of As. You just get the basics."
Murphy left the centre around 1972 to become a forestry professor at the University of Alberta, but not before creating another important forestry institution in 1965 — the Junior Forest Rangers. He still studies trees in St. Albert, and visits the centre regularly.
It's the resiliency of trees that keeps him in forestry, Murphy says. "It's such an exhilarating sight to see a young stand with all those leaders [young trees] reaching for the sky."
