Happy 101st birthday, Gerry Bracewell!
At Chilcotin Holidays, we have a long history of empowered female guides, but the first was Gerry Bracewell who became a role model for all our guides, both male and female. She is the oldest and also longest (1945-2023) guide outfitter in the business and is a conservationist, matriarch and pioneer.
Gerry was born into an era of patriarchal society in 1922 in Alberta but from a young age, it was clear she wasn’t going to follow the path society dictated for her. Gerry missed most of the conventional patriarchal stereotyping and lived more on the wild side, in nature away from society and in a matriarchal lifestyle.
Gerry read about the Wild West with Annie Oakley, the female hunter and trick shooter, and other international female hunters as far back as the Greek and Roman times. Gerry read about international hunters travelling from Europe to the mountains of BC to hunt the unique big game animals that lived out West. These stories sparked her imagination. Gerry learned how to trap, shoot, hunt and became a young entrepreneur selling the meat she had hunted.
Throughout her school years, Gerry fantasized about living in the mountains of British Columbia, where it seemed all her desires to live the western lifestyle would be fulfilled. Gerry was clear on her interests, goals and purpose in life, she was going to live in the mountains. As soon as grade school was out, Gerry travelled west and got a job in the world famous hunting mecca, the Chilcotin Mountains, first working on a cattle ranch then branching into hunt guiding.
As with all clarity of interests, goals and purpose, the pieces fell into place. Under the mentorship of KB Moore who became her father-in-law, Gerry became a horse expert, a mountain rider, a rancher, then a big-game hunter then a hunt guide outfitter, conservationist and steward of the land. In the 1940s, Gerry was the first female hunt guide in British Columbia, then just a few years later, the first female guide outfitter in BC.
Gerry was an active participant in the community. Some of her contributions included saving the Tatlayoko post office and campaigning for a new school house. Gerry was also active in the formation of a guide outfitters association, which improved conservation throughout the province and gave the guide outfitters better opportunity to work together to benefit the wildlife of British Columbia.
In the 1990s, one Bracewell guide outfitting business grew into two, Bracewell’s Alpine Wilderness Adventures and Chilcotin Holidays, bookending what became known as the Chilcotin Ark, an area of international ecological importance for its habitat and wildlife biodiversity. Now Gerry and her family had the exclusive guiding rights to a large proportion of the ecologically important Chilcotin Ark that had been receiving international guests since the 1860s. Here, First Nations guides were also a part of the guiding program, sharing their traditional knowledge of the land with guides and guests.
Throughout her time as a guide outfitter, Gerry and her family connected hunters and non-hunters to nature, implementing conservation and stewardship of their guide outfitting territory, instilling personal development in every person they came in contact with through nature’s challenges, focused training from horse packing and shoeing, stalking grizzly bears, calling in a moose, wildlife management and wildlife habitat balance.
Throughout her years as a guide outfitter, Gerry has been a huge inspiration to new and upcoming female guides, both hunt and non-hunt. This culture of learning from a capable, independent female is the concept of matriarchal leadership and society that has been ongoing for tens of thousands of years. Gerry will continue to inspire female hunt guides long into the future.
Gerry Bracewell’s 101st birthday party is on July 8th 2023 at Age Care Cariboo Place 185 4th Avenue, Williams Lake, British Columbia. You are welcome to join us.
Visiting times 8am – 10am, 12pm – 2pm, 4pm – 6pm
