Carrie Chard's career saw her managing a restaurant to working at a pulp mill to being a fire chief in the District of Wells to now being the operations and protection services manager at historic Barkerville. She has a business degree, is a red seal power engineer and knows level three first aid.
Chard moved to Quesnel for what she intended to be two years in 1995, over 30 years later she's still here. She started going to Barkerville and Bowron as a child.
"I grew up hanging out in Barkerville as a kid in the summertime, for the 10 days or two weeks that we were on vacation," Chard said. "You always think 'wow how could I ever work there?' And then a million years passed and here we are."
Part of her job is to help prepare Barkerville for disasters like the Antler Creek fire that recently led to the evacuation of the historic town. She said the strategy has been using the resources they have to defend the historic town, but funding is an issue.
"Sometimes what we need today we may not get funding for for a long time," Chard said. "You really have to be able to budget what is top priority and what can be left. And that's a hard decision because when a fire is rolling up close to you, you hope you made the right decisions."
In 2020 Chard got involved with Firesmart BC to figure out how those principles of fire prevention can be incorporated to Barkerville.
"Firesmart is traditionally meant for your neighbourhood or your home, your own residence. Not necessarily for an entire abandoned community," Chard said. "When you come to Barkerville the buildings are very tight together so your 'neighbourhood' is 200 buildings plus on a a streetscape that is 100 years old, or older, of the driest (wood)."
But she said using the ideas behind Firesmart, they've cleared out many of the flammable materials that were laying around the site as well as small bushes that could easily ignite larger trees. Chard credited her team with helping ensure the Firesmart guidelines were applied to Barkerville.
"Our park actually starts at One Mile Bridge which is back towards Wells. So we have been Firesmarting campgrounds to try and keep customers safe," she said.
When the Antler Creek fire began to threaten Barkerville, Chard stayed at the site to help support BC Wildfire Service and ensure the pumps and sprinklers were working as planned. Chard, along with volunteer firefighters from Wells and a few members of her operations team, checked in on the buildings as they were being sprayed with sprinklers daily to make sure they weren't being damaged.
"We were doing wildfire fighters' laundry and we were running hoses from buildings and testing pumps out of the creek," she said as were her daily activities during the evacuation. One of the concerns was the amount of water they could use from the reservoir without running out so the creek became vital to keep the buildings damp.
Chard got into firefighting "by accident".
"I worked at Quesnel River Pulp and we just learned how to firefight and because we had fires like sometimes it would be out in the yard, sometimes it'd be in the mill." She said. After the District of Wells' fire chief retired Chard was recommended for the role. "I said I would do it for six to 12 months. And three-and-a-half years later I finally retired from that because I really needed to focus on Barkerville and I couldn't do both."
When asked what her favourite thing about firefighting was, she said it might be weird but it was the fire itself.
"Fire's a beautiful thing. There's a lot of power to it and it's unpredictable but it is a force to be reckoned with," she said.
One of her goals at Barkerville has been to engage stakeholders and offer the historic site as a muster station for BC Wildfire, Search and Rescue and other first responder groups.
One of her other passions was coaching Special Olympics. She said she had to stop doing it because she couldn't put in as much time as the athletes deserved once she started shift work but it was inspiring and rewarding.
"I thought 'this is really satisfying' not only for me, but to see them win and see someone who is going through life and constantly being challenged and constantly having roadblocks thrown up in front of them. To be able to help them navigate through that. That was probably the driving force," Chard said. One of her favourite memories was having the Special Olympics team playing next to the Canadian Olympic Women's Softball Team at an event. "You get to hobnob with the olympians and then they get to come over and meet your guys and girls."
Chard said she absolutely recommends anyone get involved with Special Olympics if they'd like to be inspired and do something rewarding.
Some of her favourite places around Quesnel are Barkerville and Bowron. She enjoys outdoorsy activities like camping, hiking and fishing. She said while fires are terrifying and they need to fight to save places like Barkerville and Jasper, which Chard said is one of her favourite places in the world, fires are necessary. She said the burned sections from the Antler Creek will without a doubt have a stronger ecosystem in the future.
