Pig remains spill onto highway

Chris Hopkinson Parks Canada

Pig entrails spilled out of this truck in the mountain parks en route to Calgary from Vancouver.

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Pig guts fell from a transport truck along a 65-kilometre stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway from Golden to Wapta Lake in Yoho National Park on Friday (Aug. 10).

Parks Canada crews were quick to stop the truck and clean up the highway in a bid to keep wildlife, such as bears, from heading onto the road to eat the entrails and offal of butchered pigs.

Golden RCMP say they charged the driver, who was taking the load from Abbotsford, B.C. to a meat rendering plant in Calgary, with operating an insecure load under B.C.’s motor vehicle regulations.

“It was just awful, utterly disgusting. It smelled just awful,” said Omar McDadi, a spokesman for Parks Canada.

“There was some thermal expansion happening. The meat had heated up and pushed the lid off the container.”

Parks Canada’s Gary Foster, Lake Louise highways supervisor, was already on the road when the call came in, and quickly intercepted the truck at Wapta Lake near the Great Divide Lodge.

Staff were quick to begin the cleanup, particularly human-wildlife conflict specialist Reg Hawryluk, who immediately used his truck to shovel up the spilled entrails through the park.

Golden RCMP was called out and prevented the driver from continuing.

A convoy escorted the truck at slow speeds to the Lake Louise resource conservation compound, where it was contained in a fenced location until a secure container was brought in from Calgary.

“Our priority was to clean up the entrails on the highway as quickly as possible in consideration of wildlife and visitor safety and to get the truck to an animal-proof area as soon as possible,” McDadi said,

“A big kudo to the staff who, as soon as they heard, began to action it, especially to Gary Foster and Hawryluk who acted within seconds and really helped contain the mess.”

There were no reports of wildlife getting into the pig entrails.