Joanne McQuarrie, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter | [email protected]
Kevin Van Tighem’s love of nature started when he was a young fellow and took many forms over the course of his life.
Van Tighem was born in December 1952 in Calgary to Eileen and Jack. He’s the second of 10 offspring: Gordon, Mary (passed on), Margaret, Michael, Patricia (passed on), Tom, Greg, Bernie and Jane.
“We were an urban family with rural roots,” Van Tighem said. “I spent my childhood in and around Calgary. We lived on the edge of the belt line - the older part of the city. There were big trees, big yards. It was a good place to grow up. We spent a lot of time fishing and camping, and hunting in the fall, with Dad.”
All that time outside led to Van Tighem’s interest in birds, starting when he was about eight years old.
“So when dad was busy I went out by myself - I was encouraged by both parents - and it never let up,” he said.
Van Tighem signed up with the Calgary Bird Club and with few members under the age of 30, he had a lot of mentors. Being a birder later led him to his first job in Jasper.
Van Tighem graduated from high school in 1970 and that fall he started studies at the University of Calgary.
“It took a few pulls of the starter cord to get going,” Van Tighem said, noting he took time off here and there over the next few years.
He graduated in 1977 with a degree in botany. Two summers before graduation and then in the summer of 1977, Van Tighem worked as a park naturalist in Kootenay National Park. That fall, he got some contract work with Banff National Park.
One evening, Van Tighem had supper with his contract manager Liz Holroyd and her husband Geoff.
“Geoff told me he was doing wildlife inventory for the Banff and Jasper national parks and he needed somebody to count wildlife in Jasper National Parks (JNP) so I was pretty interested in that,” he said.
“In the course of the conversation, we started talking about birds.”
Combined with Van Tighem’s botany degree, this piqued Geoff’s interest and Van Tighem was hired to work with the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS).
“What a gift for a recent graduate,” he said. “I was the wildlife technician responsible for supervising the Jasper crew. It was part of an effort to help Parks Canada know where things of value were in the park - the most important habitats for wildlife, the most important to protect.”
CWS staff collected information about birds, small mammals, carnivores and ungulates throughout the year.
“We had to go out in the spring; that’s when we’d be counting breeding birds,” Van Tighem said, noting those days had an early start at 4 a.m.
“We had different techniques for different species. We’d work in an area two or three times a year to spread out our work through the whole park.”
CWS crews worked with Parks Canada often.
“It was a collaboration between the CWS and park wardens and park interpreters,” Van Tighem said.
He noted Jim Todgham, a chief park interpreter, was very supportive of the crew's work.
In the early 1980s, the CWS crew moved out of JNP into the Kootenay Glacier and Mt. Revelstoke national parks. In the latter two areas, “It was going to a much more challenging terrain - very, very steep, deep snow,” Van Tighem said. That was another couple of years.
Married in 1982, Van Tighem and his wife Gail raised Corey, Katie and Brian over the years.
In the fall of 1984 the CWS crew - 84 total across the country - were told their jobs were coming to an end effective the spring of 1985.
“They promised us all we’d have priority in other government jobs; they had a huge list of jobs across the country,” Van Tighem said. “There was one on the list - area interpreter in JNP.”
It was a drop in pay, but Van Tighem took the gig, working in interpretation and education. One of the bonuses of that position was working with Todgham.
Van Tighem and his family lived in Jasper from 1985 to 1989.
“It was kind of neat helping people turn a visit to JNP into something more than a few photos, turn it into a learning experience,” he said.
From there, Van Tighem moved to Yoho National Park as the chief interpreter, based in Field. That was followed by a two-year position in Calgary as an interpretation specialist at the regional Parks Canada office.
Waterton Lakes National Park was next for the Van Tighem family.
“That’s where the kids grew up,” Van Tighem said. “I was their conservation biologist. It was a great time for the family, from 1993 to 2000. After a few years there I started looking for other work and got on as Parks Canada’s Ecosystem Secretariat Manager from July of 2000 to June of 2004. I was responsible for the Park’s science program and its planning.”
Van Tighem was the manager of resource conservation for about a year after that, followed by a position as chief park warden from June 2004 to July 2005. Then it was on to a neighbouring province.
“Gail and I moved to Waskesiu, Saskatchewan in the fall of 2005, where I became the superintendent of Prince Albert National Park and Elk Island National Park,” he said. “From there I spent two years there and then we went into Banff. I finished up my career as superintendent PC in Banff.”
Van Tighem’s long, varied career finished when he retired in June 2011.
“It was a real relief,” he said. “I was exhausted. It meant I could go back to writing. I’ve done that all my life.”
That pursuit included writing magazine articles for publications including Alberta Views, and being involved with many projects. One of them was a book he created with his son Brian, a photographer in Jasper, titled “Heart Waters: Sources of the Bow River” and published in 2015.
“I wrote the text; he did the photography,” Van Tighem said. “It’s almost like a coffee table book except it’s got a lot more words.”
Van Tighem has written a total of 14 books over the years. The first was Birding Jasper National Park, published by Parks & People, a Jasper-based co-operating association.
Van Tighem expressed his great respect for Jasper.
“It’s always been a community with a really strong sense of place and who they are. It’s a community that looks out for each other and identifies itself through its surroundings. It’s so precious the way it is,” he said.
“A lot of places are generic, part of the broader culture. Jasper has resisted that.”
