Many Patrols: Reminiscences of a Game Officer

William A. Waiser is a professor of history at the University of
Saskatchewan, and the author of Saskatchewan’s Playground: A History
of Prince Albert National Park and Park Prisoners: The Untold Story of
Western Canada’s National Parks, 1915–1946.

Many Patrols is the autobiographical account of R.D. Symons’s days as
a Saskatchewan game guardian in 1920s and 1930s. Published more than two
decades after his death, the book not only explains why Symons became
such a passionate conservationist, but hints at his later career as the
author of such popular works as Where the Wagon Led and Silton Seasons.

The British-born Symons became a provincial warden in 1926, thanks to
his connections and his service in World War I. Originally posted to
Saskatchewan’s Battlefords district, followed by brief stints in the
northeast (Carrot River) and southwest (Cypress Hills), Symons was
instructed to ensure that fish and game regulations were observed, in
the words of the department, “without fear or without favour.” What
this meant in the field, however, were quick wits, a plodding
persistence, and the dispensing of a crude kind of country justice.
Symons had to contend with Natives, who claimed that their traditional
use of nonreserve land was guaranteed in federal treaties, and deal with
homesteaders on marginal farms, who tried to supplement their miserable
existence by poaching fish, fowl, and game. There were also the
so-called sport hunters, who indiscriminately killed anything they
chanced upon, even if the animal was out-of-season or a protected
species.

Many Patrols provides a glimpse of another side of prairie society in
the interwar years—life at the margins. It is also one of the few
autobiographical accounts by a former provincial game officer and, as
such, adds a human dimension to the otherwise terse, matter-of-fact
patrol reports held in archival institutions.