My family has been involved in the forest industry for a long time. My dad and grandpa probably have a combined 1.2 million years of wood product sales experience. My grandpa also began building bridges on forestry roads at the tender age of 14. The coolest forestry job anyone in our family had definitely belonged to Uncle Bob though. He’s the guy in the middle of the below picture picking up “liquid lunch” in the work truck one day (photo courtesy Bruce Mayer and Alberta Sustainable Resource Development).
THE WAR
Uncle Bob did not actually start his career in the forest industry right out of high school. He did what most people did when they graduated in 1941 and went to war. He actually joined the Royal Air Force and was on a bomber crew that helped drive the Japanese out of Burma. He got to cruise around in one of these beasts of a British bomber:
THE FOREST
When Uncle Bob got back from the War he went to UBC and took Forestry, graduating from the same program as me 58 years previously. He probably also had way better marks than I did. Once out of school he took on one of my favorite jobs, forest planning. He did a lot of photo interpretation and road layout. He actually laid out a big portion of the trunk road (also called highway 734) which cuts through the mountains from pretty much Cochrane to Grande Prairie. It must have been a tough job. Those are some crazy big hills and giant rivers to build a road through. These guys all look like they have tree trunk legs with no body fat though. I’m sure it barely felt like work, building roads through places people may never have been before. And by “barely felt like work” I mean “would probably kill most of us but at least you get to work outside”.
THE OFFICE
After some long hard years in the bush, Uncle Bob moved indoors and worked as the Director of Forests and Lands and Deputy Minister of Forests for what is now Sustainable Resource Development (ie – he was the guy who made the final decisions about the forests that cover 60% of our province). He did such sweet things as:
1) introduce planes and helicopters to fight fires,
2) make it the law to regenerate forests after cutting them down leading to sustainable forest management,
3) allocate forest areas to forest companies to manage and make detailed forest management plans for. This gave companies the security to plan their business for longer periods of time, which led to more sustainable forest practices. He was also a big reason the working class of government in Alberta is structured the way it is. It’s cool to think one of my family members is the reason the forests of Alberta are managed sustainably today.
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
Uncle Bob made huge contributions to how the forests of Alberta are managed today. He’s one of the reasons we live in one of the most beautiful, natural places in the world. I’m proud to be part of the Steele family and take part in the spreading of Robert Gordon Steele’s ashes in the forest of Alberta this weekend. His ashes will be spread in the very same forest he cared so much about and made sure existed for his nephews son (that’s me). It’s just like I’ve been trying to tell everybody I’ve talked to on my travels, the way to make a difference in the environment in Alberta is to work in the forest industry.