A Proud History
| The Hinton Training Centre's beginnings date back to just after World War II, in response to a shortage of qualified personnel to service the Alberta Forest Service. The Alberta Department of Lands and Forests decided to organize its own training program. The main objective was to upgrade staff and train them in advanced management techniques. A school was therefore set-up in the Kananaskis area of Alberta. Twenty Forest Service personnel were selected to attend what marked the beginning of natural resource technical training in Alberta. Kananaskis remained the site for ranger training for nine years. |
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In 1959 a decision to move was made due to the poor condition of the facilities. The present site of Hinton, Alberta was chosen as the new site to build a training school and to set-up a permanent training forest. The area was more centrally located with easier accessibility and would also be in close proximity to a newly established pulp mill. Hinton, at the time, was rapidly becoming the focus of forest management in the province. The school was officially opened on October 1, 1960 and provided both basic and advanced training to Alberta's forest rangers.
In the fall of 1964, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology entered into an agreement with the school to conduct a two-year training program whereby NAIT would teach the first year of the program in Edmonton and Hinton would teach the second year.
The year 1965 marked the expansion for the newly named "Forest Technology School" (FTS). Increased enrollment following these years led to the need for further enlargement and by 1973 a newly completed expansion had been officially opened.
In October 1976, the administration of the school was transferred from the Alberta Forest Service to the personnel branch of the Department of Energy and Natural Resources. The new role as departmental school would allow the FTS to offer training programs to other divisions including Fish and Wildlife and Parks and Recreation, as well as to students from outside the province.
Then in 1994, the school was to serve a larger role in training in a majority of the environmental disciplines and fast-approaching new technologies. The Forest Technology School was renamed to the "Environmental Training Centre" which at that time served the Department of Environment.
In 2002 the Centre began a new era under the Department of Sustainable Resource Development and celebrated the unveiling of a new name "Hinton Training Centre". The new name reflects new changes, new business and a new direction in which stakeholders will benefit. The stakeholders of the Hinton Training Centre are many and varied and include the following:
- Employees of the Department of Sustainable Resource Development;
- Other Alberta Provincial Government employees;
- Federal Government including:
- Provincial/Federal Partnerships including:
- Foothills Model Forest
- Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada (FERIC)
- Municipalities such as the Town of Hinton;
- Colleges, Universities;
- Resource Industries such as Hinton Pulp A Division of West Fraser Mills LTD;
- Youth groups such as the Junior Forest Warden program;
- Law Enforcement and emergency fire departments.
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Our stakeholders will continue to benefit from training, conduct research and acquire the benefits of that research in a facility that is second to none the
"Hinton Training Centre". |
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