Oldman Watershed Council (OWC)

by David McIntyre

Vision-questing in the headwaters of the Oldman

Spring was in the air, and I was walking along the eastern flanks of the Livingstone Range … tracking grizzlies, watching migrating sandhill cranes, shooting landscape images. And that's when it hit me. 

I knew that Puff and Dan McKim, owners of the nearby DU Ranch, were about to celebrate a life-long love affair with their treasured land and its world-class backdrop. I knew that this spectacular, thrust-faulted place of tortured topography—it's named Piitaistakis (Place of the Eagles) by the Piikani—is the flyway for the world's greatest concentration of migrating golden eagles. (More than 1,000 eagles have been counted here in a single day.) And I also knew that the National Geographic's Crown of the Continent Geotourism Guidebook gives praise to this mountain range's cutting-edge virtue. 

What I didn't realize, until it suddenly hit me, was that I could toss a measure of tribute to the McKims on the eve of a community-wide gathering honoring the lives of Puff's parents, the late Carey and Louis Dupret. The event, entitled Story of Their Lives, will take place at 1:30 PM on Saturday, May 31st. The location: Lundbreck Hall.

Further tribute—it's a big part of this good news story—goes out to the 2008 MD of Pincher Creek Council. It turned heads and made news when the MD of Pincher Creek formally designated the DU Ranch Heritage Viewscape, giving recognition to this billion-dollar landscape, showcasing the populace's desire to protect priceless cultural and legacy values.

Council's action showed long-range vision and a commitment to society as a whole.

The MD designation came after this same landscape had been targeted by a company proposing to strip-mine the eastern flanks of the Livingstone Range in order to obtain a thin seam of low-value ore (magnetite) that, elsewhere in Canada, is as common as dirt.

The designated viewscape features a historic log cabin (circa early 1900s) set against the serrated, knife-edged backdrop of the Livingstone Range. This sensational view—it may have inspired Alberta's coat of arms—looks across the western edge of the MD of Pincher Creek into the MD of Ranchland and the eastern edge of the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass. The view also captures an increasingly rare component of intact public land retaining profound aesthetic and ecological virtue. It's been recognized for its Serengeti-like abundance and diversity of wildlife … a home to herds of bighorn sheep, deer, elk and moose. 

The Livingstone Range landscape also holds a wealth of ancient archaeological sites reflecting perhaps 500 generations of habitation. Today, in addition to its ranching and geotourism values, the mountain range is Canada's ultimate soaring site. Sailplane pilots describe it as their Mecca, and they refer to the Livingstone Wave—think of it as a colossal river of wind—as "Canada's Diamond Mine in the Sky."

The MD of Pincher Creek's designation of this iconic heritage viewscape does not provide formal protection. It does, however, deliver a profound statement of public sentiment, and it reflects the populace's desire to save, from further development, one of the most remarkable components of southwestern Alberta's Crown of the Continent landscape. 

The Livingstone Range and its storied headwaters landscape has recently been featured in several Hollywood movies and it appears in Alberta's Remember to Breathe tourism marketing campaign. Artists and photographers are often seen parked along the flanks of the range. I recently stopped to talk with a group of photographers. One of them said this: "It's more spectacular than the Icefields Parkway."

The McKims are caring and diligent stewards of the land. They take great pride in maintaining the ranch's vibrant expanse of native rough fescue grasslands. And their registered Herefords, like their historic cabin and viewscape, always appear to be hand-scrubbed, ready for Hollywood, or a Travel Alberta video shoot. 

When I talked with Puff and Dan McKim about their hopes and dreams for the future, they spoke of their love of the land and a desire to put the reins on life's pace. They reflected on the past, on life and treasured times with Puff's parents and countless friends. And then, standing side by side with the iconic mountain range at their backs, they said they wished for nothing more than for the provincial government to protect the beauty and integrity of the land at their doorstep. They said their greatest wish would be to have the ability to give their daughter (Kate), her husband (Richard) and the McKims' young grandson (Liam), a perpetual view into heaven.

Public sentiment is crystal clear, and it's with the McKims. 

It's been almost six years since the MD of Pincher Creek made its historic viewscape designation. Tomorrow wouldn't be too soon to see the Province of Alberta, embracing this same brand of long-range vision and common public good, present a land-use ethic that lives up to the standard envisioned by the McKims. 

It's time the virtues of the magnificent DU Ranch Heritage Viewscape—its crowning core owned by the people of Alberta—were protected, forever, as an enduring component of this province's aesthetic, cultural and ecological heritage.