Campaigning while using a cane will get a little tedious for B.C. Conservative candidate Dan Brooks in the Nechako Lakes riding.
But telling the story about why he’s using it is never going to get old.
Brooks has an adventure tale that would capture the interest of anyone who opens the door to him on his door-knocking forays.
He’s been asked so often about why he’s using the cane that be posted the “Broken Leg Story” on his campaign website last week.
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It’s reminiscent of the gripping wilderness yarn the late Al Passarell spun 30 years ago. The northern MLA showed up at the legislature with stitches in his forehead and a riveting story about an encounter with a charging grizzly bear.
It later turned out Passarell had good-naturedly highlighted the drama at the expense of accuracy. His hunting partner said the MLA tried to shoot a small black bear and missed. The recoil is what injured him.
Brooks’ story tops that, and has the advantage of being true. His degree in classical literature helped him tell the tale.
He’s a guide-outfitter and got a call last fall to help haul out a moose that had been downed 20 kilometres from his camp, in an area with no roads or trails.
As he recounts it: “Having carried a few moose out of there on my back, I decided it would be more intelligent to take horses (I’m not just another pretty face).”
He got two pack-horses ready — renamed Catastrophe and Chaos in his story to “protect their identities” — and set out on a six-hour hike.
They were almost at the site when they got to a tiny creek. Brooks crossed it, leading the horses, and felt the lead rope go taut as Catastrophe balked at crossing the water.
“Daydreaming, and very foolishly without looking back, I pull on the lead rope — Catastrophe jumps the creek and Chaos is right behind. Catastrophe’s front hoof lands on the back of my left leg … breaking it instantly.
“It forces me to my knees, his chest then strikes my back and drives me the rest of the way into the ground.”
Brooks said the horses proceeded about 20 metres farther then “stopped to see what’s taking me so long.”
The leg was very badly broken. His brother, Nathan, and a partner heard his yells and arrived 30 minutes later.
They tried to get him comfortable, then someone ran off to get help.
By that point the pain was excruciating. One of his partners brought back a sleeping bag and some food and they settled in, five hours after the accident, for a long night.
By 11 p.m., Brooks was lying in pain by the fire in -10 degree weather, “roasting on my left side and freezing on my right.”
By 1 a.m., two packs of wolves started howling and approaching his bivouac. One pack headed for the dead moose and, with Brooks right in the middle, the other headed that way, too.
“Nonchalantly, I wake Nathan up. … Hey those wolves are going to get that moose. Run the chainsaw to scare them off! [But] none of our yelling or chainsawing seems to affect them,” Brooks said.
“They continue to howl most of the rest of the night. Neither of us was that sleepy anyways, so we just talk, rather loudly by coincidence.”
At 3 a.m., he heard voices and wondered if it was hypothermia or his ancestors come to get him.
It turned out to be the Nechako Valley Search and Rescue. They loaded him onto a stretcher at dawn and carried him about 400 metres to a meadow.
A helicopter touched down and he was eventually moved to the Vanderhoof hospital and on to Prince George, where surgery involved a metal plate and nine screws.
There have been complications since then and he was house-bound for months. Brooks said with so much time on his hands the Conservatives pressed him into service.
He was named chairman of the “unity committee” struck to quell the internal dissent that was gripping the party at that point.
Brooks says the party got so much work out of him “the board passed a resolution to buy Catastrophe and Chaos a bag of carrots to reward them for their help.”
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