BANFF – Mike Henderson is coming to the end of a long and distinguished career as a Parks Canada warden.
The final icing on the cake on a standout 31-year career for Hendo, as he is affectionately known, is winning Blue Line magazine’s prestigious 2022 Lifetime Law Enforcement Achievement Award in March.
The award, given to just one law enforcement officer each year, recognizes a leader in law enforcement who has made a difference in their communities through “exceptional dedication and compassion”.
“It was an utter surprise, to be honest,” said an ever humble Henderson, the first national park warden to win the award. “I was very caught off guard, but I feel pretty honoured to be truthful.”
Blue Line’s Lifetime Law Enforcement Achievement Award is open to all law enforcement officers who are below the rank of a senior official, including those working for non-police organizations such as Parks Canada, Canada Border Services Agency and Correctional Service of Canada
Henderson, whose career with Parks Canada began in Banff National Park in 1991, became an operational dog handler with the agency in 2001 working a mix of visitor safety search and rescues and law enforcement components.
“We tried to train hard at both aspects,” said Henderson.
Henderson’s first dog was Attila, a search and rescue dog who worked for five years until passing away in 2006. Next was Atar, who retired in 2011, and was renowned for tracking a naked man who was high on drugs through the forest when a grizzly bear was known to be in the area.
Henderson’s last, and closest, rescue dog was Cazz, an affable Czech shepherd that retired in April 2019 following a full eight-year career in which he responded to more than 450 calls. Cazz, that had difficulty walking due to pinch points in the spine, was put down in order to end his pain in June 2020.
On the law enforcement side of the job, Henderson worked with his dogs to discover countless illegal camps, provided back-up to park wardens in campgrounds, responded to wildlife poaching, located firearms, and regularly patrolled the park boundaries during hunting season.
“We had lots of calls with the regular day-to-day job, things like hauling folks out of the forest and stomping out those illegal campfires,” said Henderson.
“A lot of folks in the Banff townsite probably don’t think much about that, but we’re keeping the edge of town a little bit safer from wildfire and from having grizzly bears get into people’s food.”
Henderson and Cazz were also instrumental in a team effort to apprehend a prolific antler poacher. A lengthy investigation led to a mandatory court appearance and a $2,500 fine for that individual.
“That took a lot of effort; we had to build intelligence,” said Henderson.
“There was a lot of hard work as a team to get eyes on what was going on and figure out how to catch him.”
As a multi-tasking professional service dog team, Henderson and his search and rescue dogs were called on by other agencies such as Alberta Parks, Alberta Fish and Wildlife and the RCMP in both Alberta and British Columbia.
With Henderson, Cazz specifically pulled more than $2 million in drugs off the streets over the course of his career, which included the largest single drug seizure of MDMA, most commonly known as Ecstasy or Molly, in Alberta at the time in 2016.
“I worked a lot with the moving traffic unit and because of the proximity to the (Trans-Canada) Highway, they would call quite frequently and we got quite a few good hits with those guys,” said Henderson in reference to drug busts.
“It’s definitely a little bit out of the Parks Canada realm, but it was about interagency cooperation and putting a great resource on the problem in a timely manner. We did some good work.”
In 2015, Henderson and Cazz were involved in the successful apprehension of a man fleeing from the RCMP after a traffic stop in Banff National Park.
Henderson and his dog were recognized with a Parks Canada CEO award for exemplary service following that case.
The Henderson-Cazz team was called to help RCMP search for a man who smashed a stolen vehicle through the wildlife fence on the Trans-Canada Highway near Redearth Creek after failing to stop for police – and then bolted.
The local police were quick to set up a containment area, and Cazz ended up working his nose over a six-kilometre track, criss-crossing creeks through the dense forest in -5 C temperatures for well over 1.5 hours on a cold November day.
When Henderson and Cazz finally caught up with the man on the run, he was discovered hiding beneath a spruce tree on an ice shelf in a relatively dangerous section of the Bow River, with deep water and a bunch of sweepers.
They called for him to come out voluntarily, but then he fled across the ice shelf and bolted for the open Bow River and tried to swim away. As the man fled, Cazz was let loose and got hold of the man by the leg in the shallows, at which point Henderson was able to wrestle him to the ground.
“I would say that was a big one in my career,” said Henderson.
On the visitor safety front, Henderson’s dogs were involved in tracking and searching for missing or injured hikers in the mountains, including people who were suicidal, and returning them to safety and reuniting them with family and friends whenever possible.
While there were many false alarms and successful outcomes in dangerous avalanche situations, Cazz was involved in four fatal avalanche recoveries during his career.
The dogs participated in high-risk searches in dangerous conditions, expanding the limits of dog searching in technical terrain.
Cazz, for example, was involved in a six-day search on Polar Circus – one of the most famous routes in the world of ice climbing – for Canadian Armed Forces member Sgt. Mark Salesse in 2015. An avalanche buried the 44-year-old during a routine mountain climbing exercise in the area north of Lake Louise, and Cazz helped locate him buried beneath 2.7 metres of snow.
With the help of Cazz, the body of an 11-year-old Calgary boy who fell into the Yoho River near Takkakaw Falls in 2016 was recovered. The boy was found in Kicking Horse River four days later 13 kilometres downstream from where he fell in.
Henderson’s job was definitely more focused on visitor safety than law enforcement during the earlier part of the 2000s when the contentious and divisive debate over whether or not to equip park wardens with sidearms was going on.
“For the first part with Attila, and mostly with Atar too, we actually were out of the law stuff because of the sidearm thing,” said Henderson, noting he helped the RCMP as much as he could within the confines of Parks Canada’s policy at the time.
“That definitely pushed me towards the visitor safety side of things for that period of time. I had to be careful with what I was doing with the RCMP and make sure I wasn’t getting into hot water. When we got sidearms and we got Cazz, we were pretty full-throttle with law enforcement.”
Henderson was nominated for Blue Line’s Lifetime Law Enforcement Achievement Award by Parks Canada’s law enforcement branch recognition committee.
Steve Anderson, park warden supervisor of the law enforcement branch in Banff National Park, said Parks Canada congratulates Henderson on this well deserved career achievement.
“The award is considered an exceptional honour to receive as nominations are shared across the greater Canadian policing and law enforcement communities,” said Anderson.
“Since the beginning of his law enforcement career in 1991, Mike has demonstrated compassion, leadership, dedication and integrity while serving Canada’s mountain national parks.”
In May 2008, the federal government authorized Parks Canada to create a law enforcement branch with up to 100 armed park wardens dedicated to law enforcement.
All other wardens were stripped of their warden title, ending a lengthy and controversial dispute over whether or not park wardens should be issued handguns to carry out their duties.
This direction fundamentally changed the federal agency’s approach to law enforcement.
“To see a park warden, like Mike, achieve this award is a testament to Parks Canada’s efforts in developing a strong and reputable law enforcement program,” said Anderson.
“Sincerest congratulations are extended on behalf of Parks Canada to Mike on his hard-earned success and this astounding achievement.”
According to the National Parks Warden Association, Henderson has been a mentor, colleague, and friend to so many wardens.
“It is wonderful that Mike’s accomplishments and contributions are being recognized by the greater law enforcement community,” states the association’s Facebook page. “Hendo, you do the warden service proud.”
Henderson is proud of where Parks Canada’s law enforcement branch has come in a relatively short period of time.
“When you put on a sidearm, it sort of changes things quite a bit and you have to get people to trust you, but at the end of the day, we really try to do a good job and our record is solid… it’s been a lot of good work by good people,” said Henderson.
“To me, this Blue Line award is more about the whole crew. It took a lot of work to get the greater policing community to figure out who we were and it feels like the scouts are looking at us for the big league.”
As his career draws to a close, Henderson thanked his many mentors, including Frank Burstrom, a legendary warden who The Wardens sing about in their single ‘Coming Home’, which tells the tale of their colleague who mastered the art of solitude.
“My very first summer, Frank got dragged out of the backcountry to be paired up with me and so we got along really well and worked together really well,” said Henderson, noting Burstrom had such in-depth knowledge of the parks.
“He always had that philosophy that there’s a lot of ways to get hurt or worse in the job we were doing, so it was about trying to do something good for people. If you go out of your way to help folks, it’s a good thing, and I’ve definitely incorporated that into my whole career.”
Henderson also paid homage to Tim Auger, who passed away at age 72 in 2018, as well as Gord Irwin, Marc Ledwidge and Brad White and “that whole motley crew in the visitor safety world” for all their help and support throughout the years.
He also thanked Terry Willis, a retired supervisor of the Banff warden law enforcement branch.
“Terry was such a good supervisor and mentor over the years who had a strong leadership ability,” said Henderson.
“He gave me lots of room to get the job done and always have support for you. Then when you stumble he was there to help pick you up and he had lots of time for the dog program.”
Lastly, Scott Ward, a retired Parks Canada dog handler who is a current and founding member of the band The Wardens, was a big influence in Henderson’s career.
“Scotty got the whole thing going for me,” he said. “If I ever had a dog problem, especially with Attila, I’d go through Scotty and he’d sort it out. It was always nice to have that sounding board and fix small problems before they got big.”
Henderson’s official retirement day is July 29 this year.
Immediately after, he plans to head to Vancouver Island with his wife Nadine Delorme. His twin daughters, Neve and Marike, are in second year university and will likely head home to the Bow Valley for summer jobs.
“We’ll head out to Vancouver Island right at the get-go and get in some surfing time and some mountain biking time,” said Henderson.
“I think it’s going to be some mid-week ski touring next winter to try and find the secret stashes that are still out there somewhere,” he added.
“I think I’ll gather my thoughts, gather my energy… it will be chilled.”
