Mr. Fish Creek: Former park ranger explores relationship with urban wilderness in new book

It’s a fall morning at the Fish Creek Provincial Park. The creek, clear as glass, gleams as Calgary’s blinding sun chases away the night’s lingering cold.

Dew beads dot poplar leaves, which wear a golden shade before they carpet the ground. Black-capped chickadees fill the silence with bird song. Runners flit by on pathways. And Wayne Meikle watches, reflecting on his relationship with the park.

He saw it in its cradle, more than five decades ago, when it was strewn with equipment, turning from the fortress of a ranching empire into an expansive conservation site. He became the park’s ranger and defended its borders from urban encroachment. He has seen the park battered by floods and brought it back to life. As his own loved ones passed, he carved their memorials into the very sanctuary he restored.

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“Fish Creek to me was special because of diversity,” he says. “Like every day, I walked in the office and never knew what would come.”

To him, what more than a million Calgarians see as a fixture of the city — a solace from the urban bustle — is, in fact, the result of a series of deliberate choices that have kept alive one of the world’s largest continuous public park systems at more than 2,500 acres.

“Every decision we made was for the park and the protection of its wildlife, the fauna… that was always number one,” Meikle said. “Once you lose that, then it’s gone.”

That meant immersing himself not only in park operations but in various proposals — including roadways, power lines, and any nearby development — and pushing back on any encroachment by authorities. As he grew in his role, it also meant planning how to rebuild its sections from scratch when calamities struck.

That and much more is in his new book, Mr. Fish Creek , where he details the park’s history and how it was shaped over the years.

“I wrote the book because I was doing tours with people, and they said, ‘Wayne, what happens when you go?’ … Well, the stories disappear, and the history disappears,” he said. “You can only have so many plaques with text written on it.”

Meikle’s first encounter with the park was in 1973 during his honeymoon with his wife Sheena, following the invitation of a park ranger. Meikle had been managing a campground in Fort McMurray, and the experience was “very interesting,” since the park was a conservation site in the city.

“I think the one thing that really intrigued me was the number of pathways, and how well they were being used,” he says.

Twenty years later, he was handed the keys to the park and was made responsible for its operations.