For as long as I can remember I have always wanted to be a photographer or cameraman. I remember as a small boy watching on television Palestinian children, no older than me at the time, throwing rocks at soldiers in Israel. I didn’t understand the politics of the time but I know I was fascinated with the images that were be portrayed on this small screen in front of me as a young child and knowing then that this is something I wanted to do when I grew up.
I grew up in a semi-normal family with a good upbringing since my parents arrived in Toronto, Ontario from Liverpool in 1972. I was two.
My days were spent mostly outdoors playing street hockey, chasing sticks which were imaginary boats, as we chased them along a creek not far from where we lived, we caught frogs and snakes and we were terrified yet excited when the girls from out street would chase us. Everything was pretty well normal.
Except for those images of those kids throwing rocks never left my mind and as I grew into a young adult the world around me interested me more and more every day. Photography and film started to become a passion and I picked up any magazine that had photographs in them and could pretty much look at images all day. Film was a release for me and confirmed there were people out there that loved the media machine as much as I did.
I didn’t get my first camera until I was 16 for Christmas. My parents bought it for me and I clumsily learned it from scratch. In 1986 digital cameras still belonged to the aliens, so film was your only option but wow did you have choices. Most of my early photographs were either over or under exposed, blurry or poorly composed but now and then I would get something I was proud of. I took a night course in photography and filled in the blanks from there I was on my own and never took a photography course again.
By the time I was 17. I had become a student photographer and reporter for a city newspaper. The subject matter was fluffy but gave me a taste and the thrill of having something published. It was almost like a drug knowing that your images or words could reach people and if you could save or help one person it is all worth it right?
As time passed and my interest bloomed the money spent became a problem, Having crappy part time jobs after school didn’t support the costs being an amateur photographer and the cost of beer and hash.
I never had any extra money. The money I did save went directly to paying for slides, darkroom kit and used heavy Nikon lenses passed on from a long dead, old man. My mother hated it, whenever I brought home another lens or $50.00 stack of printing paper. She could see a career in photojournalism or becoming a photographer and that really pissed me off at the time and pushed me harder when I look back now it was just a little tough love.
It took me 53 hours from Toronto to Banff National Park on Greyhound. I had left my mother crying in the cold Toronto winter evening with my dad consoling then settle in to listen to The Wall I had bought earlier from Sam The Record Man downtown on Younge Street.
Although gritty and sometimes smelly the bus ride was liberating, stopping through countless towns, villages and cities of Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Jumping on and off the bus every few hours only to jump on again and repeat it over and over but only to find a different place, face and time which we left behind the bus once those giant doors closed behind us. The trip was helped along with bouts of hacky sack with a guy I would recognize if I saw him in the street. The two of us also befriended a young Vietnamese kid, he could have only of been about seven, didn’t know a word of English but was headed to Vancouver. I wonder what ever became of him.
The taxi driver dropped me off at the YWCA next to the Bow River. It was three in the morning but the clerk seemed content and gave me a key to the dorm style room. He threw me a towel and I washed two and a half days of Greyhound scum from my shell shocked body. The dorm room was empty and I grabbed a bottom bunk in the corner of the room. Banff was a great place to rest for a day before I headed to Vancouver my final destination.
Light gave way to some of the most beautiful views I had ever seen. Not only were there majestic mountains there were wild animals walking down the street. I fell in love with Banff instantly and ended up staying for 4 years. It was also known as part of the VD triangle which also included Jasper and Lake Louise for the simple reason of having thousands of young men and women who come to Banff for a working holiday mix booze and drugs and voila. If you had something growing off the end of your penis you were one of the boys.
It was nearing the end of ski season in Banff and managed to pick up a job as a valet attendant at the Banff Springs Hotel in the first week. I pretty much parked every car made at the time except for one no one knew how to drive, some sort of tree branch gear shift, only one guy knew how to drive it and he looked nervous. One of my valet moments was when Clint Eastwood came to Banff for Thanksgiving, they were having a break from filming “The Unforgiven” in Northern Alberta. I ended up getting his rental car, he had photographs on his dashboard of himself behind the giant Panavision cameras on set and all his clothes and personal belongings were strewn across the back seat.
After work that day I saw Morgan Freeman in the currency exchange. I felt like going up to him but chickened out but I did stand there and stare at him for awhile. “Holy Crap! That’s Morgan Freeman” I remember saying to myself.
The next day I had the morning shift and stood at the entrance watching Clint and a pretty young blonde packing up two feet away from me. Some chubby tourist to cars away was freaking out. It was fun to watch but never did get a pic of ole’ Clint.
Another funny night came when Don Henley showed up drunk in the lobby of the Banff Springs late one night as the bellman and I talked shit to pass the nightshit. Accompanied by a gigantic bouncer and two sexy blondes who I heard from one of the bellman were the backup singers. It was my time to freak out because I grew up listening to The Eagles and knew Henley very well. “Are you Don Henley?” I screeched. I knew it was but my brain was too excited to comprehend that the drummer for The Eagles was standing right in front of me. I must have looked almost excitedly psychotic because the bouncer stepped in between us and from behind this gorilla protector I heard “The last time I checked I was” Henley slurred and the two blonde women’s giggles soon followed. He could hardly stand up.
I didn’t think I was like that freaking out when you see a celebrity but that time I did and felt like an idiot. Even the bellman looked at me and said “WTF?”
Nightshift is brutal wherever you work but it gave me my days free to photograph and hadn’t been to the only local paper in town called the Banff Crag and Canyon.
The sole newspaper, a town treasure owned by Small newspaper mogul Bob Doull, a quiet but nice man who for the large part kept out of the editorial side of things. With a circulation of 3,500 was tucked in a non-descript single story building on Wolf Ave next to a café with the best chocolate chip banana muffins you’d ever tasted. You couldn’t help but get a whiff through the Banff fresh air as you neared.
This was really where it started for me as a photographer. I had self-taught myself for the most part. I took a few adult education courses but never spent a penny of photography school. I had a couple of old Nikons which I was struggling to get my head around. I hated math but soon discovered the Law of Reciprocity would need hours and hours of practice to get it just right. Back then digital wasn’t even in the dictionary. Can I can’t even count the amount of lost photographs to inexperience and technical inability. But for every lost photograph was a push to learn the craft to the best of my ability and be ready and prepared at all times when photography people, news, wildlife, everything and anytime because you just never know when something will happen.
The Crag and Canyon editor at the time was Richard Blonski, a very welcoming man and we hit if off right away, he was impressed with the work I had already published and sent me off into the street with a dozen rolls of bulk rolled HP5 black and white film. It was like winning the lottery. Not only did I have loads of free film to shoot and practice with I had the chance to be published in the paper and do what I loved to do, although I would have to support myself with the night-shift at the Springs I still had my foot in the door of the photography world and there was no stopping me.
From the day I received the film from editor Blonski I was published every week at the once a week paper. I would get home from work parking cars and head straight out to photograph the Town of beautiful Banff. I would weave in and out and up and down the back alley and streets since I didn’t have a car at the time, I didn’t even have a flash for my rusty Nikons.
My days walking around Banff meeting and photographing people was amazing but what I ended up really truly loving was photographing the wildlife that came into the town site for safer ground from predators higher up in the mountains. I was by no means a wildlife photographer I wouldn’t make it one night in a hide up in the woods by myself.
They were mostly Elk. Urban Elk as they came to be known that came into town. I had heard of countless stories of attacks on humans who ventured to close to one of these huge ungulates and paid the hairy price. Now and then you would see a wolf somewhere in the distance but they stayed far away from human activity. Can you blame them. Black bears were everywhere and caused Bear Jams as they ate berries on the roadside, traffic would stop to look and take pictures causing vehicles to jam up the road watching the bear eat or shit. Saw many coyotes. I even took a photo of a police officer holding a dead one night a drunken man was seen carrying downtown.
For some reason the Elk and I clicked. We liked and respected each other, well that’s what I thought until one charged me and I almost killed me down by the Bow River early into my time in the park.
But every day as I toured around they were either in the cemetery, eating prize flowers in people’s gardens, walking down the street, stuck in fences, threatening tourists all before my camera. Every week for three years Urban Elk photographs adorned the pages of The Crag.
I had even caught a frozen elk rescue on the Bow River after an elk went through the ice with wardens struggling to come up with a way to free it including a chainsaw. Eventually it was freed. The photographs were first published in the Calgary Herald and then were wired to newspapers across Canada.
It wasn’t until 1992 that I grabbed the photographs which would race around the world and put Banff on the map for its volatile dilemma with elk and humans.
It was like no other day in fall in Banff. The mountain chilled air hinted at what was around the corner. Locals began to wind down and the last few tourists scurried around Banff’s downtown park as giant buses lumbered in the parking lots nearby.
This time of year is mating season, or the rut. Large male elk which aren’t see that much during the summer descend on Banff to coral their harem of female elk and this day was no different except for the fact that there were a larger number of elk than usual in and around the park. Asian tourists would tiptoe up and then turn their backs to the elk for that human animal encounter picture and then tiptoe back and giggle to themselves. With locals and tourists mingling in the small park, It was starting to resemble a petting zoo and that’s when all hairy hell broke loose.
The Crag and Canyon in 2000 contacted me and asked me to write an article on my experience that day.
ELK photo brought fame.
Published in: The Crag and Canyon. Wednesday December 6th, 2000
It would be a late evening in in the fall of 1992 when a hairy terror would rip through the peace and serenity of Banff National Park. The day a mist shrouded bugle would be heard around the world which would, for years to come, leave a lasting imprint on those who faced it.
It all came to a head in Banff’s Central Park. There were quite a number and mixture of people milling about for that late in the evening, I remember thinking.
Unknown to most as they shuffled towards a harem of elk in a clearing by the Bow river, it was mating season. While a mini circus began to develop, a furious 1,000-pound bull elk was crashing towards the crowd from the opposite side of the river.
By the time the antlered beast made it to shore, the scene almost resembled a petting zoo as people posed next to the docile females.
The bull elk struck with a wild-eyed fury not even Mother Nature could contain. A young, bike-riding Japanese girl crashed to the pavement as a result of the first assault. It left her crouched under the massive, drooling mammal.
The bull elk bowed its head attempting to ram his sharp rack into the terrified girl’s back. As the scene was unfolding, I had positioned myself behind the bull elk and was trying to distract it away from the girl by stomping my feet. An older man had the same idea but had literally taken the bull by the horns.
In an instant, it had turned on him. Life drained from his face when he realized how quick this mammoth monster could move its tank-like torso. He had barely inches between him and possible permanent disability as he darted up the path towards three other unlucky people.
There was almost a split-second hesitation as their brains tried to comprehend what fresh nightmare was racing towards them. Fortunately, they all did the right thing and scrambled behind the nearest tree, which gave them only a couple of vital seconds to capture the spot news photo.
The elk quickly tired of being predator and slowly trotted off towards the watching harem, giving the tree-bound four time to exhale deeply and move away swiftly.
I managed to catch four different photographs of the events at its peak without getting antler wounds myself. It seemed like slow motion as it played before my eyes, yet it could have only lasted a few terrifying seconds.
My titanium Nikon was really like a bar of gold.
Reuters Wire Service purchased the series of elk attack photographs the next day, and quickly distributed them across the wire to newspapers and magazines across the globe from The Washington Post to The Financial Times to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Out of hundreds of elk incidents recorded between people this was the first-ever captured on film.
The Washington Post was the next to pass through the doors of The Crag and Canyon and soon after ran a large piece on Banff and its elk dilemma.
The image was soon plastered on T-shirts and postcards then later went on to win both National and Provincial awards for spot news.
A couple of months later a National Geographic crew arrived to shoot a television documentary highlighting the problems between man and elk in Canada’s oldest national park.
The day of the National Geographic Explorer shoot was quite fun. Not only were my photographs going to be published in their magazine, they were also going to feature them on a half hour documentary called, you guessed it, “Urban Elk”.
Two crews showed up to film the episode, back then they were shooing on Aaton film cameras. One crew would shoot the interviews while the other crew show b-roll footage of the elk problem. They were able to get some great encounters with humans and elk. I don’t know what is was that year but they were very aggressive. My segment involved walking around various parts of Banff photographing and talking crap about elk while their camera rolled. I was no biologist, to me, I only knew they were great photographic subjects, especially when in weird circumstances or areas where you wouldn’t usually see a wild animal. Other than that Gregg, the director wanted to visit the site of the attack.
As the camera rolled Gregg would ask questions while I explained what happened the day of the elk attack, the first attack ever to be recorded on film. In the corner of my eye I could see an elk in the distance approaching a man on a picnic bench. I yelled to the crew and we both were able to capture an aggressive elk chasing the frightened man off the bench, and it was only that bench that separated death or at least serious injury. My shots turned out great, it was late afternoon and the light was perfect. National Geographic Explorer used their footage with my photographs from that day, as well as using the elk attack images in the NG magazine. For a 22-year-old photographer it was quite a thrill. How was I going to top that?
Not long after my brush with photographic fame in 1992 the photographs were plastered on t-shirts and postcards thanks to the late Larry Marshall who was the Managing Editor at the time. Banff residents who traveled would send in photographs with the t-shirt elk attack from all over the world which were published in The Crag each week. Even the park wardens and the mayor got into the spirit by wearing them to educate the public with the slogan Marshall came up with “Wildlife means wild”.
A year later National Geographic entered it into the Banff Mountain Film Fest and won an environmental award.
Soon after this my position at the newspaper became more embedded, I bought a car and started listening to the police scanner which I tried to avoid but fate would have a different idea of where my photography would take me. My equipment was all over the place and I was constantly borrowing pieces from everyone in the office, who seemed to be alright with it as long as I came back with a great shot for their article. This remember was the film days, so in many ways it was touch and go if you didn’t know your way around the law of reciprocity, which is basically matching your shutter speed with your f-stop to get the right exposure.
One of the assignments I covered was Banff’s first and only murder and Banff’s largest police investigation in history. Lucie Turmel, 23, a taxi cab driver stabbed to death in a frenzied attack for a measly $130.00 dollars. I hadn’t been in Banff for the murder but I was there when they arrested a Ryan Love after obtaining DNA from him and linking blood found in the cab after the murder.
The newspaper received a tip they were bringing Love into the detachment in Canmore, Alberta. I drove the few kilometers from Banff and waited outside the RCMP detachment’s small walk of shame into the building. A police car pulled up and jumped the curb and flew two feet in the air. I don’t know what freaked me out more that or coming face to face with this murderer. They brought the handcuffed Love out and placed him against the brick wall while they waited for the secure door to open and take him in. I took a handful of images and then we just stood there looking at each other awkwardly in silence for what seemed like ages. I had an urge to ask him if he did it but I quickly shot that idea down. Then the door flew open and he disappeared and the door shut tight behind him and the escorting police officers leaving me is disbelief. It’s not every day you stand in front of an accused killer in a brutal attack that made news all over the world. (Press clipping with photo available)
I Googled him after writing this in Dec 2011 and found out that Ryan Jason Love had just been granted day parole after serving a life sentence for the second-degree murder of Turmel.
At the Banff Springs Hotel I had been promoted to bartender and most of my shifts were evening and nights which left me the days off to photograph the tiny town and the news happening around it.
Now and then we would get a spectacular car accident or other equivalent newsy event and myself and the other photographer would go together and then sell the images to the dailies in Calgary sending the film via the Greyhound bus back in those days.
They were photographs of twisted wreckage with a media-vac helicopter backdrop or the photo of the paramedics working to save motorcycle accident victims on a quiet street in Banff silhouettes of body bags against a clear sky after an avalanche or fall from the mountains. (Photos available)
One of our editors at The Crag and Canyon was ???. A nice man and we got along very well whenever we met in the office. I guess we all have skeletons but the one big skeleton in ??’s closet was the fact he was a bank robber. His marriage was going downhill and he was an alcoholic spiraling down towards the bottom of desperation. Once the skeleton was out he was quite open about his criminal past and the subsequent jail time he received when he was caught by a rookie cop leaving the scene in a cab after robbing a bank. After sometime in jail he started writing for a daily newspaper from prison, a prison column.
I was surprised at first but never thought twice about it since I believed everyone has a second chance to turn themselves around and change and become a productive part of their community.
But it was ??? who sent me out into the frigid Banff winter to my next assignment. My car was dead so I took a cab to Banff’s helipad just outside the township. Winds were whipping up tornadoes of biting snow and too much time spent in these temperatures would release you from a few fingers or toes or both. I paid the cab and stood outside like an idiot in front of the meshed fence surrounding the pad morbidly wondering would it would be like to stick my tongue to it.
Not far from the Helipad I could see a café which I didn’t know existed in the semi-industrial, Canada Parks lots which housed equipment and some of the wardens offices as well as some construction type businesses. The café was small but cosy and gave me a full view of the area around the Helipad.
I sipped coffee while I prayed my cameras didn’t malfunction by way of condensation on the lenses in the conflicting temperature change.
About twenty minutes later an official looking vehicle pulled up to the gate, I thanked the café owner and I walked over the driver’s side window and a man rolled the window down.
“Are you here for the helicopter?” I asked. He nodded and we continued the small talk. He could see I was freezing so he asked if I’d like to sit in the car. Even before he could finish his sentence I was half way around the car and slid with a sigh into the comfortable seat.
I can’t remember his name but he was a special branch of the RCMP, usually older members who are assigned to security to visiting royals or politicians. He had looked after Prince Charles and his family on a recent visit.
The senior police officer then radioed up to warn the occupants of the helicopter that there was a photographer on site. It wasn’t long before we heard the whir of the helicopter getting closer. We both got out of the car and the officer opened the gate. The rotors along with mother nature’s blizzard created a white hell on earth as it landing. I hunkered down and protected my cameras from the onslaught.
Then everything slowed down and the rotors began to die down. The side door to the helicopter opened and out jumped to burly looking men. Behind them was my target. Margaret Thatcher.
I don’t actually even think I saw her other than through the lenses of the camera. I remember her saying hi to me but I must have been a little to close because one of the men actually lifted me off the ground and spun me around and dropped me to my feet on the frozen earth again.
I had phoned a taxi from the café earlier and once again I stood alone freezing waiting for the cab to chase Mrs. Thatcher to the Banff Springs Hotel. He finally arrived and with some encouragement we raced along Banff Avenue trying to catch up to the Thatcher carrying vehicle in order to get to the Iron Lady before she entered the majestic hotel for a convention.
We screeched to a stop and I jumped out of the cab like it was life or death towards the parked government vehicles and managed to get right in front of her, she had a look on her face that said “Oh, not him again!” before she entered the hotel never to be seen by my lenses and I ever again.
I started to make good money bartending and Banff’s streets were becoming all too familiar and I felt it was time to move on from this beautiful mountain paradise. It would be a place I would never forget and always love.
My next trip was to El Salvador in Central America. My plan wasn’t to fly but to take buses through Canada, the USA, Mexico and then finally into San Salvador, El Salvador’s capital.
