A southern Alberta man with an intriguing past will share his experiences through stories and song in a heritage home in Okotoks’ downtown Friday.
Park warden turned poet, novelist and musician Sid Marty has plenty to share with Foothills residents about his love, appreciation and concern for the region’s precious land during an event at Lineham House Galleries on Elma Street April 27 at 7 p.m.
The award-winning writer will recite a few of his poems and read excerpts from his books including Men for the Mountain featuring true stories of heroism and folly as told by park wardens and Leaning on the Wind: Under the Spell of the Great Chinook, which captures the experiences of the province’s early people including First Nations, miners, early homesteaders and his own family.
Marty will also sing songs of the west while strumming the guitar, accompanied by Pincher Creek musicians James Van Leeuwen and Joe Cunningham.
“It will be a mix of spoken word material from my published books and original songs,” he said. “There are strong humourous elements throughout. I find that you can inform people about things more effectively by not beating them over the head with a message, but by storytelling.”
Marty said he served as a park warden from 1966 to 1978 at national parks including Yoho, Jasper, Prince Albert and Banff.
“I began working for them in the summer at Lake O’Hara because I knew the wardens that were stationed there and I used to go climbing with them and help them with work on my days off,” he said. “When the job became available I applied for it on the basis of education and work experience. At that time it involved a lot of mountaineering. I had climbed most of the routes around there, plus I had experience working outdoors running equipment and chain saws.”
With some of his work already published in magazines, Marty developed an interest in writing about the places he lived in, but in a way that would create universal interest.
“What I found working in the mountains was a pretty rich trove of historical experiences that other people shared with me,” he said. “I had the opportunity to listen to their stories and pursue the same kind of work that they had been involved in which was in the mountains working on horseback. A lot of those folks died off now.”
Marty’s books range from mountaineering experiences to his environmental concerns.
“I see a lot of degradation of the environment everywhere I turn in Alberta,” he said. “I see destructive practices everywhere in the east slope of mountains.”
An advocate for land use planning in the Livingstone Porcupine Hills area and a member of the Livingstone Landowners Guild, which consists of farmers, ranchers and rural residents concerned about the proliferation of transmission lines, unregulated off-highway vehicles on the east slopes of mountains and thousands of kilometres of trails and stream crossing, Marty has a lot to say.
“The main problem is the creation of so many roads and trails which create new water courses which throw sentiment into trout steams and threaten us with more floods,” he said.
The Black Grizzly of Whiskey Creek, a New York Times bestseller, explored the series of bear attacks near Banff in 1980.
“It had a profound impression on me because I was no longer in the warden service, but I volunteered my services because people were being injured and one person died after being mauled by the bear which was trying to defend a territory that had a rich food resource,” he said. “In that book I tried to look at the world from the bear’s point of view and explain what was actually going on. He wasn’t out to attack people just for the hell of it, he was trying to defend an area that was an important food source.”
That book and Leaning on the Wind were shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award.
“Leaning on the Wind is about the natural history of Alberta that was shaped by the elements, in particularly the chinook wind and the role that played in creating the rangeland for the buffalo and cattle ranches that followed,” he said. “It includes an explanation for how the chinook wind is created and the force it had.”
Marty’s writings have appeared in various newspapers and magazines including Canadian Geographic, Reader’s Digest and Alberta Views Magazine.
Marty’s first book of poetry, Headwaters, was published in 1973 featuring poems about his mountain experience and he’s published several since.
Music entered Marty’s life when friend, poet and fellow warden Andrew Suknaski, who worked at Lake O’Hara Lodge at the time, gave him one of his mandolins.
“He said, ‘I don’t need two’ and showed me how to play it,” he said. “I started playing, learned to play guitar and harmonica and began to play in coffee shops and bars.”
It wasn’t long before the natural-born writer began penning his own songs and released two albums – his most recent, Elsewhere, in 2001.
Marty’s music took on a combination of roots, folk, country and blues sound with his lyrics reflecting his love of the land and his concerns about the future.
“We’ve been hard on this environment and it’s up to us to rise up and accept the responsibility we have to be stewards of this place,” he said. “We are not willing to curtail our activities on the landscape and give it a chance to regenerate.”
Tickets to see Sid Marty cost $45 and can be purchased at the Lineham House Galleries or online at eventbrite.com
