Cutting wood and clearing brush for six dollars a day might not seem like a dream job, but the pay isn’t what’s important to a trio of inmates from Grande Cache Institution who recently came to Jasper’s Wabasso Campground to work for Parks Canada.

Chad Waldner, Chris Holm and Dennis Haines each had different motivations for taking part in the work-release program, which appears to be the first of its kind in Jasper and possibly in any national park in Canada.

For Waldner, who was arrested in 2007 on drug trafficking and conspiracy charges, the program offered a chance to secure a transfer to a lower-security facility and begin working towards a more normal life. For Holm, who wound up behind bars after escalating a relatively minor drug offence into dangerous driving charges by trying to evade police, the work was an opportunity to prepare for re-integration into society and a return to the construction industry. And for Haines, who was nearing the end of a 10-year sentence for serial bank robbery, the program provided an escape from the daily grind of prison life.

Literally.

Halfway through what was supposed to be a two-week program at Wabasso, Haines slipped off during the night and fled the campground. A warrant was issued for his arrest and he was later picked up by police near Christina Lake, B.C., about 800 kilometres away.

This, obviously, wasn’t the way officials from either Parks Canada or the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) had hoped the inaugural work-release program in Jasper would turn out. But they aren’t prepared to let the actions of one prisoner put an end to the initiative.

“I think this is a very valuable program, very worthwhile,” said Paul Bailey, deputy warden of Grande Cache Institution. “I think it’s a great opportunity for these offenders in their rehabilitation paths.”

“We were happy with the work that the CSC work crew was doing,” added Suzy Whitty, a public relations officer with Jasper National Park. “It’s unfortunate that they were not able to complete the work due to the one inmate walking away.”

Initially, the plan was to have all three inmates work for two weeks at Wabasso, taking on tasks that wouldn’t otherwise get done without breaking the increasingly stretched park budget. The prisoners were to cut and move a large pile of fallen trees and mow down hundreds of buffaloberry bushes to reduce the amount of bear-attracting berries at the 228-site campground.

All went according to plan for the first week, and the inmates even exceeded expectations when it came to their workloads. By the morning of the fifth day they had cut and removed 56 pickup-truck loads of wood and the buffaloberry bushes had been substantially thinned out.

The inmates and their guards all seemed to be in good spirits, too, when they sat down for a coffee break and took time to speak with the Fitzhugh on Sept. 22. Holm, for example, reflected openly on the decisions that led him to prison.

“I got 18 months for dangerous driving and six months for possession for the purpose. I got caught with some pot,” he said.

“If you would’ve stopped you would’ve just got six months remand,” Waldner chimed in.

“Not even,” Holm replied. “I would’ve got nothing. I took off on the cops. That’s why I got the 18 months – dangerous driving ... but it was three in the morning and it was just on the outskirts of town.”

“That’s justifying,” Waldner said.

“I’m not justifying it,” Holm shot back. “I’m just saying. There was no inherent risk.”

“We call it minimizing,” added correctional officer Jeremiah D’Lugos, one of two staff members from Grande Cache Institution who accompanied the prisoners at the campground.

Sensing his attempt to explain his actions was gaining no traction, Holm moved on to other topics, like his family.

“I’ve got an eight year old, a six year old and a one year old,” he said. “I’m looking forward to seeing them. I never really expected to ever come to prison. But things happen, I guess.”

After spending 17 months straight behind bars, the young father also hopes to return to work in the construction field once he is released.

“I’ve been fairly inactive for the last year and a half,” he said. “So this is a good little warm-up, I guess, to get some exercise and fresh air.”

Waldner, who received a 30-month sentence in November 2010 on drug trafficking and conspiracy charges, also hoped his time at Wabasso would serve as a stepping stone to a better life. In his case, the immediate goal was to secure a transfer to a lower-security facility.

Grande Cache Institution has been described as a “hybrid” facility – a cross between a minimum and a medium-security prison. Waldner said the difference between life there and life in an open, minimum-security facility would be like night and day.

“It’s a totally different environment,” he said. “It’s one step closer to being home — cooking your own meals versus having catered food, real food versus institutional food, sleeping in real beds.”

In coming to Wabasso, working to improve the campground and demonstrating that he can be trusted in an environment with relatively little supervision, Waldner hoped to build his credibility in the eyes of corrections officials, and it seems to have worked. He said he recently got word that his transfer request had been approved and he expects to be moved to the more open Rockwood Institution in Manitoba, just north of Winnipeg, within the next few weeks.

In light of these stories, Haines’ decision to flee after spending more than a week working at the campground seems that much more perplexing. After being convicted for nine bank robberies and numerous other charges, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison but only had about a year and a half left until he was eligible for parole. He had also been involved in work-release programs within the community of Grande Cache prior to coming to Jasper to work at Wabasso.

“I was very surprised,” said deputy warden Bailey. “We sent him out there because this was the next stepping stone towards eventual release. He had earned the ability to go and do that and he earned the trust of us to do that. And so this comes as a complete shock to us that he would walk away like that.”

Unlike Waldner and Holm, however, Haines didn’t express the same desire to use the work-release program as a tool to turn his life around. When asked why he wanted to participate in it, he had a different kind of answer.

“I saw it as kind of a vacation, even though we’re working all day,” Haines said. “It’s a way to get away for a couple of weeks.”

Or perhaps a little bit longer, as it turned out.

Haines was arrested at about 3:45 a.m. on Oct. 2 by officers from the RCMP detachment in Grand Forks, B.C. Police picked him up without incident after receiving a complaint about a drunk man passed out along Highway 3 near the resort community of Christina Lake.

After Haines was found missing from the campground on Sept. 27, the inmates and guards cut short their second week of work and returned to Grande Cache. Bailey said this is standard procedure and doesn’t reflect poorly on either Holm or Waldner.

“My understanding is that those other two guys did stellar work out there,” he said.

He added that corrections officials will review this specific incident and the program in general along with officials from Jasper National Park, but by no means does Haines’ temporary escape mean inmates will never work in the park again.

Before Haines fled, D’Lugos had spoken about the growing trust between the inmates and himself, as did unit assistant Robert Beer, the second official to come from Grande Cache Institution to supervise the work crew.

“Out here you have to trust,” D’Lugos said. “There has to be trust because, well, they’re walking around with chainsaws.”

He added that there tends to be a “big barrier” between guards and prisoners within the institutional setting but, after spending a few days together at the campground, that started to melt away.

“You kind of see their more personal side,” he said.

Both D’Lugos and Beer said they had noticed positive changes in the inmates as a result of the work-release initiative in Jasper and would like to see the program continued and even expanded.

“Hopefully they keep this up,” Beer said. “It’d be good to come down a couple of times a year.”

For Parks Canada, meanwhile, the program offered a chance to accomplish tasks that wouldn’t otherwise get done without breaking the budget.

“There’s a lot of work that piles up and we don’t have a way to do it,” said Chris Whitty, a visitor experience, operations and prevention co-ordinator with Jasper National Park.

Whitty was instrumental in bringing the inmates to Jasper from Grande Cache, some 210 kilometres away, to work at Wabasso. Having worked in corrections himself for 15 years — starting as a prison guard and working his way all the way up to deputy warden — before moving over to Parks Canada, he is familiar with the needs of both federal agencies and figured this would be a win-win situation.

“It’s an efficient use of public funds,” he said. “It’s departments working together.”

He added that all Parks Canada has to do is provide the inmates and their supervisors with meals and a place to stay, while the Correctional Service of Canada covers the transportation costs and pays the inmates their modest wages, which work out to $6.90 per day at the top end of the scale, minus deductions.

Inmates from Grande Cache have already contributed to the park in other ways, fabricating about 100 metal fire pits and 120 picnic tables in the last year alone, but all that work was done at the institution itself. Other parks in Canada have also purchased products made at correctional institutes, according to Jasper National Park Supt. Greg Fenton, but to the best of his knowledge this was the first time that prisoners have been brought to a park to do on-site work.

Prior to the inmates’ arrival, Whitty admitted having some concerns about how the public might react to the presence of prisoners in the park, but said he believed the benefits of the initiative outweigh the risks. He also figured Wabasso Campground was a perfect place to introduce the program in Jasper as it’s about 17 kilometres removed from the townsite and comes complete with staff cabins where the three inmates, along with two guards from Grande Cache, could reside.

And despite their criminal pasts, he added, the prisoners were considered to be “very low risk.”

“Typically guys who participate in this would be seen as good candidates for release,” he said.

That, it seems, would still be the case for two out of the three participants in the program. Haines, meanwhile, now faces a new criminal charge: escaping lawful custody.