Canmore wildlife photographer’s wolf shots land on new Canada Post stamp

CANMORE – John E. Marriott still remembers the day 12 years ago he took the shot that’s now on Canada Post’s newest stamp.

In the cold of December, off Highway 93 South, Marriott was one year into his project tracking the Kootenay wolf pack.

At this point, he’d spent his fair share of days traipsing around the bush trying to catch a glimpse of the elusive pack but this time he wouldn’t have to go farther than a highway pullout and the warmth of his car.

“Anyone that has ever watched or tried to photograph wolves knows that getting an encounter off of a road for six-and-a-half hours is almost unheard of,” said the Canmore wildlife photographer, describing the day in 2014 when he took the shot selected in Canada Post’s newest stamp booklet.

From the sunroof of his car, Marriott snapped photos of the entire pack that was hanging out on the ice of the Kootenay River all day.

“Sometimes I would go a whole month on that project and not get a single photograph, and that one day I got 2,700 photographs of them,” said Marriott, who followed the pack of grey wolves until 2018, eventually writing about the project in his book The Kootenay Wolves: Five Years Following a Wild Wolf Pack.

“As soon as traffic would come along, I would just pop back down into my vehicle. Nobody would notice what was going on,” he said. “It was like I had them to myself even though I was on a road. It was quite remarkable.”

Not long after, in 2015, the pack would disappear from roadsides, forcing Marriott to go back into the bush where he tracked the family for another three years.

“Their final few members that were kind of road comfortable, road habituated animals, were either killed or left the pack,” he said.

“Then it became sort of my skill in tracking versus their skills in figuring out if there was a human around.”

The stamps, part of Canada Post’s effort to “highlight the ecological importance of wolves in Canada” feature Marriott’s shot of the Kootenay pack alongside a close-up of a pup from another family a little closer to home.

After the well-documented Pipestone wolves died off in Banff, a new pair of wolves moved in.

“I call this the Banff Town pack,” said Marriott of the grey wolf family that had three pups.

“This is the pack … that has adapted to living in the town or around the town much more than previous wolves,” he said, adding they are often seen on the golf course, around Lake Minnewanka and corridors near the Fenlands Banff Recreation Centre and Rimrock hotel.

“They’re quite a unique pack. They’re the first wolves in 25 years to do that in Banff.”

One wintry day in 2016, Marriott caught a glimpse of the three pups as he was driving along the Bow Valley Parkway.

“I went up and I kind of sat myself in a clearing near the railway and hid in the bush there,” he said.

As the pups wandered by, one noticed the glass of Marriott’s lens sticking through the bushes.

“That’s the photograph. It’s looking at me, trying to figure out what it was and then it continued walking along the railway tracks, he said.

“There’s not been that many times in my career when I’ve been out in the field and I’ve had a wolf come up quite close to check me out.”

Predators in peril

When Marriott’s career as a wildlife photographer picked up steam in 1996 after he sold his first image to Canadian Geographic, he’d yet to capture any noteworthy wolf shots.

“For 10 years of my career, I had a real struggle getting any good wolf pictures,” he said. “I was fascinated by that aspect, the challenge of it.”

“For lack of a better word, I was completely addicted to wolves.”

Marriott hoped to tell a story of conservation as he searched for the often “persecuted” predators and would spend 10 years combined capturing the Kootenay pack and Banff Town pack.

“Wolves are really heavily persecuted in Canada and really get a bad rap, particularly from Canada’s past as being a trapping nation that was forged by trappers going across the country,” he said.

If a wolf wanders outside of the national parks, into areas like Kananaskis or the Ghost wilderness area, all their protections dissolve, says Marriott.

“Even though we have our national parks, that’s the only place in Canada where wolves are protected in any manner from trapping and trophy hunting, and our national parks just aren’t big enough,” he said.

Marriott, who also founded the wildlife charity Exposed Wildlife Conservancy, says he’s glad to see the elusive animal in the spotlight.

“ I was excited to hear that Canada Post was doing this campaign,” said the photographer, whose burrowing owl image was also featured on a Canada Post stamp in 2014.

“[Wolves] are a key apex predator. They’re critical in maintaining ecosystems because they’re a keystone species. They’re the ones at the top of the pyramid, and they help protect the health of the ecosystem below them.”

Marriott’s photos are featured alongside images of eastern wolves, found mainly in central Ontario and southwestern Quebec, the Arctic grey wolf and coastal wolf, found on Canada’s Pacific coast and near-shore islands, in the collection of four stamps.

The stamps are available in select Canada Post locations and online.

The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada. This position covers Îyârhe (Stoney) Nakoda First Nation and Kananaskis Country.