Skinny dipping Banff employees reinstated
Couple swam in thermal hot springs, which is home to endangered snails
Two longtime Parks Canada employees who were dismissed for skinny dipping in Banff’s thermal hot springs — the home of the endangered Banff Springs Snail — have been reinstated, according to an arbitration decision.
In September 2013, Kristy Hughes and Stephen Titcomb were let go by Parks Canada a few months after they illegally entered the Cave and Basin National Historic Site late on May 18, 2013 and swam in one of the pools.
They appealed the dismissal and an arbitration hearing was held in October 2014.
The decision, now posted online, shows that Hughes and Titcomb — both of whom have since pleaded guilty to charges of entering a closed area under national parks regulations — were reinstated on Aug. 21, 2015.
No one from Banff National Park responded Tuesday for a request for comment on the decision, but the lawyer for Parks Canada argued during the hearing that the case was important because it affects their mandate to protect the country’s natural heritage.
“Therefore, reinstating the grievers would send the wrong message and would impinge on the employer’s ability to deliver its mandate,” he told the hearing.
The lawyer added that the Cave and Basin is the birthplace of Canada’s national parks.
“Moreover, the cave pool in which ( Hughes and Titcomb) swam is the natural habitat of a protected species of snails,” he noted. “What the grievers did was a clear and intentional contemptuous act against their employer.
“Not only did they do it, but Mr. Titcomb was also proud of it: he bragged about it.”
Titcomb, who worked for Parks Canada since 1999 — including at the Upper Hot Springs where he informed visitors they weren’t allowed to swim at the Cave and Basin — admitted that they went into the pool.
His girlfriend, Hughes, added that she and Titcomb removed their clothes, then “floated and cuddled but did not have sex.”
Titcomb said going into the pool was the biggest mistake of his life, while Hughes said the termination had a massive impact on her life because she hasn’t been able to find another job after working for Parks Canada since 1982.
The arbitrator, Linda Gobeil, decided to rescind their dismissals.
“While I think that the grievers’ actions were very serious and contemptuous and that they deserve a serious penalty, nevertheless, I think that the terminations, which were imposed for a single unplanned event and on employees with lengthy years of service without incident, were not appropriate,” she wrote in the decision.
Gobeil reinstated the employees, without any retroactive pay for the 21 months away from work to account for the seriousness of their actions.
Neither Titcomb nor Hughes could be reached for comment, but the union representing the two employees said neither has returned to work for Parks Canada.
“The matter is still sitting with senior labour relations on the employer’s side and senior union officials in Ottawa,” said Kevin King, national executive vice- president for the Union of National Employees. “I don’t even have a guess of what the parameters of those conversations are, whether they are coming back to work or if they aren’t.”
He declined further comment until those discussions are concluded.
Either way, an expert on the Banff Springs Snail was upset to hear about the decision.
“I’m disappointed because a Parks Canada employee should be held to a higher standard than visitors, especially people who know how sensitive these habitats are,” said Dwayne Lepitzki, a conservation biologist.
The Banff Springs Snail made history in 1997 as the first mollusk to be designated as threatened.
Now endangered, the world’s entire population is confined to tiny patches of rare and fragile habitat: the thermal springs in Banff National Park. They are closed to protect the snail’s habitat.
Hughes and Titcomb were also charged criminally under the national parks regulations for entering the closed area after an investigation by wardens. They pleaded guilty in Canmore Provincial Court on Nov. 19, 2014, and each received a fine of $ 1,500.
Their court case concluded a week before another man admitted to the same charge for entering one of the thermal pools.
Because there was evidence of damage in that case, the man was also the first person to be charged with destroying the habitat of an endangered species under the Species at Risk Act.
Prior to last year’s two court cases, Parks Canada wardens hadn’t laid any charges for people entering the Cave and Basin closure since 1999, when eight people were charged, found guilty and each fined $ 1,000.