This story has been updated to correct inaccurate information
Ten conservation officers from around the province have been recognized for their years of exemplary service. Powell River’s Gerry Lister is one of them.
Lister received the award last month while completing his annual recertification training at Vancouver Police Department’s Tactical Training Centre. BC Lieutenant Governor Judy Guichon and Environment Minister Terry Lake presented the medals to seven of the 10 recipients that day.
The ministry of environment’s conservation officer service is the province’s primary responder to human-wildlife conflicts where there is risk to public safety, conservation concerns or where significant property damage has occurred.
Lister, 50, was awarded with the Peace Officer Exemplary Medal, created in 2004. “It’s a career milestone,” he said. “I’m hoping for at least another 10 years.”
Before starting with the service in 1992, Lister worked for BC Forest Service and BC Parks over a 10-year period. Last year he received a 30-year service award for his combined years of service to the province.
After completing his education at Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo, Lister took his first conservation officer post in Port Alberni. “It wasn’t too far from where I had grown up,” he said. Lister grew up in Gold River and graduated from high school in Gibsons.
Since then, his career has taken him to some of the most remote corners of the province, from Chetwynd in the northeast to Atlin in the northwest near the Alaskan border. For the past five and a half years he has called Powell River home.
“It’s a bit of full circle for me,” said the father of two teenagers. “My parents had been living here for about 20 years when we moved to Powell River. I wanted my kids to get to know their grandparents better.” A few months after moving, his younger brother, who graduated from Max Cameron Secondary, also moved back. Other than his older brother, Lister’s whole family is now in the community. “I don’t have any plans of leaving,” he said.
Lister has been maried for 20 years and is thankful that his wife can "put up with all the long and odd hours that have come along with this adventure."
Lister, an amateur historian, is the service’s go-to person for any historical inquiries about its 108-year history.
He started collecting badges and arm patches from other conservation services in Canada and around the world when he was serving in Chetwynd. He discovered a connection early on that the first game warden in the province had come from Atlin 100 years earlier.
“It was a hobby and a way to meet people,” he said.
As he researched further he became more interested in how the service had changed over the years.
In 2000, BC was selected to host the 2005 North American Wildlife Enforcement Officers Conference and Lister volunteered to put together some displays of his memorabilia.
“As I started working on the displays and went out looking for old uniforms and photographs it just kind of snowballed,” he said. By the end he had an 875 square foot space “stuffed with display boards and cases.”
As he was working through the past he discovered two documents that outlined the service’s history, and “they were full of errors,” he said.
Lister spent time searching through the BC Archives looking for primary sources and not only did he find the answers he sought, but enough material for a couple of books on the service. “It just became a bit of a passion with me,” he said.
