Oldman Watershed Council (OWC)

A love affair with the Oldman

The Oldman is so pleased to introduce David, our newest blogger!

David McIntyre lives on the landscape he loves, within the late-day shadow of the Livingstone Range in southwestern Alberta. 

Retired now, David worked for the Smithsonian Institution as the leader of educationally-focused hiking and rafting tours. He led multi-day hikes throughout the Canadian Rockies, along the Pacific coastline and across the storied mountains of Alberta, British Columbia, Montana, Oregon and Washington. He also led whitewater rafting trips down Idaho's celebrated Salmon River (the "River of No Return"), and the Colorado River (through Grand Canyon). 

David's work history includes two decades of employment with the Government of Alberta. During this time he managed historic sites and interpretive programming in parks throughout southern Alberta. 

Today, David's work-and-play environment revolves around the enjoyment and protection of heritage landscapes.

David fell in love with the headwaters of the Oldman Watershed while passing through the area 40 years ago. He says the raw beauty of the drop-dead-gorgeous, world-class, Crown of the Continent landscape stopped him in his tracks, and led him to make the stunning, thrust-faulted landscape his home. 

David remembers his first decade on this landscape as the glory years, a time when he was lost in exploration of a land he describes as "paradise." 

Paradise, during more recent years, he reports, has been subjected to a litany of abuses. David cites the past two decades as being particularly destructive, a time when he says unrestrained landscape degradation was allowed to run from valley bottoms through alpine meadows.

David still loves the land at his doorstep, and he devotes much of his time in efforts to protect pockets of aesthetic and ecological virtue while, elsewhere, and within the big-picture, working to restore—and safeguard for future generations—headwaters integrity to the Oldman Watershed.