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Book Reviews

Here if you need me: a story about love and loss

Photo Credit: Little, Brown & Company

By France Bergeron

As a former chaplain in the Canadian Forces, it is with great enthusiasm that I accepted to review Kate Braestrup’s book Here If You Need Me.

From the loss of her husband, a Maine state trooper, in a tragic car accident grew Braestrup’s desire to become a minister and serve side-by-side with Maine wardens on search and rescue missions. Through her personal bereavement and learning of her new role as a widow, mother of four, and chaplain, her emotions are transparent and honest as she brings the reader along for her journey.

Here If You Need Me is a tribute to love and loss. Ultimate love, “the authoritative command of an authentic love” as she describes bathing and dressing the body of her dead husband before the funeral. Ultimate loss: the death of a spouse, parent, child depicted as the stories unfold one after the other.

Braestrup’s book is brimming with humor. She laughs at herself admitting that she can barely find her way from the command post to her truck without getting lost, how the warden dispatch could not hear her because she was holding the microphone upside-down, or delightful stories of coping with her children facing what could be one of the most difficult situation in child’s life; the death of a loving father.

She illustrates well the role of a chaplain in crisis situations: be there, listen, speak with relatives, comfort the grieving spouse or deal with the “un-shaved, beer-bellied backwoods buddies asking hesitant questions about the afterlife”. Her book is filled with compassionate situations, all too real for a chaplain, such as announcing to the already apprehensive wife the tragic news of her husband’s drowning as she “sags against the front of my uniform and we both descend to the kitchen floor”.

Braestrup brings us along on searches for a missing girl at Masquinongy Pond, an ice fisherman on Hobbes Lake, on the trail of a suicidal young mother near Ellsworths, a swimming-accident-turned-possible murder at a waterfall in a state park or a wandering Alzheimer patient. These are familiar stories for search and rescue volunteers and professionals, told with passion and dedication. This is a short, well-written, inspiring book filled with a good dose of spirituality, human kindness and devotion to community and family.

France Bergeron has a degree in Theology and was enrolled as a chaplain with the Canadian Forces for five years. She served on the training Base in Borden and on a NATO base in Lahr Germany. A licensed pilot, she is currently the Director of Coordination at the National Search and Rescue Secretariat in Ottawa.

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Authors document over 50 years of professional rescue

By Lynn Martel

Reprinted with permission from the Rocky Mountain Outlook

In July 1954, seven young Mexican women gathered on the shores of Lake Louise and looked up at the towering steep slopes of Mount Victoria. As members of Mexico’s first all women’s climbing team – a rarity in any country at that time – the women and their guide, Eduardo San Vincente, had come to the Canadian Rockies with several climbing objectives in mind – including heavily glaciated 3464-metre Mount Victoria. Each had earned their spot on the team, and Vincente was considered an outstanding climber, having made ascents of Alaska’s Mount McKinley – at 6194 metres North America’s highest peak - and 6768-metre Huascaran in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca.

Slinging with rescue bag Photo Credit: Kananaskis Rescue

Despite being warned about excessively snowy conditions by the Swiss guides who lived at and worked for the Chateau Lake Louise, the team made their way up to Abbot Pass Hut and spent the night, then set out the following morning minus one member who was ill. Travelling in two rope teams, the six women and their guide reached the south summit, but shortly after they began their descent, one of the women on the first rope, led by their guide, slipped, and all four on the rope were dragged to their deaths. In addition to being the worst mountaineering accident ever to happen in the Canadian Rockies at that time, the tragedy marked a milestone in western Canadian mountaineering, prompting the beginnings of a professional mountain rescue service.

The story of the Mexican team’s tragic accident is related in great and thorough detail in the brand new Guardians of the Peaks: Mountain Rescue in the Canadian Rockies and Columbia Mountains, written by Kathy Calvert and Dale Portman and published by Rocky Mountain Books, the Calgary based division of Heritage Group. At over 300 pages, the book is a comprehensive and long overdue volume chronicling the dedication, expertise and continuous evolution of Canada’s world-renowned national park rescue service.

Rescue on Snow Patch Bugaboo Photo Credit: Brad White, Banff Park Warden

The authors’ extensive research and devotion to the project makes for captivating reading, with in-depth accounts of some of the mountain parks’ most dramatic rescues, worthy of any adventure lover’s attention. But more than an action tale, Guardians of the Peaks shares the stories of the people who shaped and built the rescue service, starting with the recognized father of Canadian mountain rescue, Swiss guide Walter Perren, who served as Chief Warden of Mountaineering Services from 1955 until his untimely death in 1967, organizing mountain travel and training for park wardens, most of whom were more comfortable on horseback than scrambling up rock ridges.

The book also recognizes the complicated evolution of rescue techniques and training, detailing the earliest helicopter rescues under the guidance and innovative ideas of retired Banff and Jasper rescue specialists, Peter Fuhrmann and Willie Pfisterer, and their efforts in promoting and ensuring the viability and practical applications of helicopter assisted rescue. Through engaging narratives, the authors portray the continuing dedication of subsequent generations of public safety and rescue experts, including the Bow Valley’s Mark Ledwidge, Lloyd ‘Kiwi’ Gallagher and Tim Auger, Gord Irwin and George Field.

As a former park warden and rescue dog handler, Portman brings intimacy and insights to the 50-year-old rescue profession, as he and Calvert recall stories of bold yet unfortunate climbers and dangerously innocent tourists, including a child fatally wedged into a crevasse on the Athabasca Glacier.

Interspersed with captivating historical photos, this book reveals not just the technical, but also the political and cultural development of the region’s professional mountain rescue service, and also the human costs of a stress-laced, demanding, alternately draining and rewarding profession.

Specializing in mountain adventure and culture, Lynn Martel is a freelance writer and editor for newspapers and outdoor magazines who lives in Canmore.

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