When Steve walks
into a room his presence fills every corner.
His booming laugh and tell it like it is matter of fact way leaves you
with no doubt that he says what he means.
I met Steve at the
2015 Challenge when he graciously stepped up to help his daughters competition
in the 12 dog race that year. I spent
many hours with him traveling between checkpoints and was left feeling both taken
care of and given confidence to carry on.
Steve himself wasn't
racing the Challenge that year as he didn't feel their kennel, Ice Haven, out
of Rocky Mountain House had enough dogs race ready for both his daughter and
himself to run teams.
This year is a
different story as both himself and daughter, Jillian Lawton, have entered the
8 dog class.
Steve, a retired
RCMP officer, was first drawn to life of dogs when he and his wife were
stationed in the Yukon back in 1976.
The two of them
would cross country ski 100 to 150 miles into the bush to go camping
together. It was the day that Bruce
Johnson passed Steve and Carol on one of those treks at -30 temperatures. Bruce was sitting on his sled drinking
coffee while being pulled along by 10 dogs, this was the moment that Steve
realized they had being doing it all wrong.
It all began with
two puppies, a Malamute and a Siberian.
Joining his first team were three dogs from Dough Urquhart, the
cartoonist of Skookum of the North. In
fact Willy, one of the dogs purchased, was featured in Dougs comic strip.
In 1980 Steve, Carol
and his young family moved to the Rocky Mountain House area where sprint racing
was flourishing. It was possible to race
every weekend in a season and make money doing so. Steve in fact was the 7 dog Sprint Champion.
As races began to
fade away he turned his attention to tourism and ran dog sledding tours out of
Nordegg for 15 years.
Once he quit the
touring business his daughter, Jillian, wanted to try her hand at racing before
they got out of dogs.... 10 year later and she is still racing.
Steve mentioned it
isn't really his 'thing', it is a joint effort to train for and attend mid
distance races with his daughter.
Racing is not the
end product, it is part of the enjoyment, but he doesn't race to win, but to
enjoy the moment. "You can only do
the best your dogs can do and that's it."
I asked Steve to
share some stories with me, but I think we needed to be sitting face to face
with beers in hand. He said that there
are too many good stories to share when it comes to the Challenge and did
mention that the more beer there is the harder it is to believe any of his
stories, but I don't doubt they are all
true.
He did tell me about
a dog named Sasha and how she had saved his life twice. They were running on
ice that she knew was too thin, in fact it was candling, which is a form of
rotten ice that develops in columns going down.
Sasha turned the entire team around to get them off of the ice.
He also mentioned
that she once helped discover an illegal trap line.
This year Steve is
running puppies, he's gearing up for a 200 mile road trip, relaxed and
fun. The Canadian Challenge is a race he
returns to every year. There is an aura
about the race, the people involved, it's what keeps him coming back.
When asked what the
future in dog sledding holds for him, he laughed and added, that he's got to
keep going because there are many others younger than him that are much worse
off physically.
So, he's gotta keep
going.
Didsbury Sprint Race 2017
Photo Credit: Mike Forhan
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