BANFF – A new superintendent for Banff National Park has been named following the retirement of Dave McDonough after 41 years with Parks Canada.
Effective April 1, Salman Rasheed, who began his career with Parks Canada in 2001 and was most recently superintendent of Waterton Lakes National Park, takes over from McDonough who had his last day in the high-profile top job for Banff National Park on Feb. 15, a position he had held since 2012.
Rasheed’s career with Parks Canada began as a conservation biologist for the mountain parks. His most recent position before Waterton Lakes was as the associate director in the Natural Resources Conservation Branch in Ottawa.
Prior to that, he was resource conservation manager in Jasper as well as field unit superintendent in Jasper. He also spent time at Parks Canada overseeing aspects of the federal agency’s national fire program.
Before joining Parks Canada in 2001, Rasheed worked for eight years as a biologist for both the Alberta and British Columbia provincial governments.
Meanwhile, François Masse takes over from Rick Kubian as superintendent of the Lake Louise, Yoho, Kootenay field unit, effective April 8. Kubian, retires in early summer after 36 years with the federal agency.
Masse began his career in the federal public service in 2005 as a senior economist at the Department of Finance after having worked for three years as a senior internal auditor at Ernst & Young in Montreal.
Since 2011, he has bounced around in several positions for the federal government, including at the Department of Finance and the Privy Council Office and Transport Canada.
In 2018, Masse took on the role of director general of strategic policy at Indigenous Services Canada and more recently was at Fisheries and Oceans Canada where he was director general of blue economy policy, a directorate that includes a mix of conservation and sustainable development mandates.
