HONOURING OUR VOLUNTEERS
Our volunteers are at the heart of everything we do. Through their time, passion, and dedication, they help care for the park, support our programs, and inspire others to connect with nature. In this series, we celebrate the stories and contributions of the individuals who have shaped and continue to shape the Kimberley Nature Park and the community around it - past and present.
In Memoriam
Struan Robertson
November 10, 1934 - April 5, 2024
There was no mistaking Struan Robertson for someone else,: the rich Doric accent was the first clue, as was his first name—Scottish Gaelic for ‘small stream’ or ‘brook.’ A fitting name for a man deeply rooted in the natural world. He was everywhere, attending the Kimberley Nature Park Society’s (KNPS) board meetings, leading guided hikes through the Kimberley Nature Park (KNP) and Horse Barn Valley (HBV) Interpretive Forest, flagging delicate spring coral root shoots so that inattentive hikers and mountain bikers didn’t trample them. In the winter, he and his family, Myrra, a gaggle of kids, and later his partner Alison, skied around the park. When he wasn’t advocating for the protection of Kimberley’s natural areas, he wandered the trails, underneath a faded cloth sunhat, enraptured by all that grew and lived in and amongst the forest and wetlands.
It never got old, the knowledge that Dipper Lake's aspen grove was a family of clones, or that the Tora Bora rockfall housed a small colony of North American pikas. If he was very lucky, he would cross paths with a moose, but if he didn’t spy one, no matter… There was always next time. It was enough to know that there was a place bigger than Vancouver’s Stanley Park right outside his door for all young and old in Kimberley to explore, to learn about, and, with careful stewardship, to keep wild.
He didn’t believe in wasting time or moaning and groaning. He wasn’t shy. If a job needed doing, he’d say so, do it himself, or better yet, rustle up a party of volunteers to come with him. Trails were maintained, boardwalks built, interpretive signs installed, Halfway Cabin repaired, and in the winter, polite yellow directional signs planted in the snow nudging skiers to keep right and everyone else to keep left. Please and thank you. If the summer volunteer crews halted work while Struan identified a wildflower, nobody minded. It was common knowledge that he was a walking encyclopedia of flora and fauna.
It was common knowledge that he was a walking encyclopedia of flora and fauna.
HBV Interpretive Forest was his passion project. Outside of the City of Kimberley’s municipal boundaries, and thereby originally not under KNPS purview, Dipper Lake, Halfway Cabin, and their surrounding forest and riparian areas were unprotected, to be used or abused by whoever saw fit. That didn’t sit right with Struan. How could it? There were dense spruce and cedar groves, a wetland, rockfalls, and cliffs. Wildflowers. Amphibians. Pikas. Williamson’s Sapsuckers. Moose. All too precious to be left to fate. In the beginning, it was hard slogging, and there were significant headwinds. The KNPS had only just been appointed as a steward of the 808 hectares known today as the Kimberley Nature Park, and the newly elected provincial government, eager to follow through on a campaign promise to cut government spending, had caused the KNPS’s application for management of the HBV Interpretive Forest to grind to a halt. If HBV Interpretive Forest was to be, it needed a champion, so Struan stepped up. Collaborating with BC Ministry of Forests and the KNPS, Struan, with his dogged, good-natured perseverance, spearheaded the negotiations to identify boundaries, objectives, terms, and conditions for a co-management agreement for HBV. He liaised with the Ktunaxa Nation and wrote reports. Emails flew back and forth. Volunteers were mobilized. Finally, in February 2003, the KNPS received notification that the Chief Forester had signed an order establishing the HBV Interpretive Forest. This was an amazing victory, but Struan never viewed the forest as ‘his’. It belonged to the community and, more importantly, to the plants and animals that called (and still call) it home. His commitment to the project was his way of keeping faith with the younger generation.
When he was asked where he might want a memorial bench, he naturally pooh-poohed the idea. Sitting was an anathema to him. The key to life worth living, he maintained, was to spend as much time as humanly possible outside and to keep moving.
“Gie me ae spark o’ Nature’s fire, That’s a’ the learning I desire…”
- Epistle to John Lapraik, Robbie Burns, 1785
When he was asked where he might want a memorial bench, he naturally pooh-poohed the idea. Sitting was an anathema to him. The key to life worth living, he maintained, was to spend as much time as humanly possible outside and to keep moving.
