Denise Bertrand is serious about off-road riding. She teaches ATV safety courses around Western Canada and is the president of the snowmobile club at her home in Elkford. Primarily, she hopes to see others get the training they need to keep having fun without making unfortunate, sometimes serious, mistakes. Contact your local ATV club, she said, to find out where classes are available.
What motivated you to get involved with teaching others safe riding?
There are just so many people out there riding right now. It seems that the economy is a little higher than we expected and there are so many people that have just purchased ATVs and it seems like a lot of them are not doing things safely. What I’ve mostly done to date is certification through the oilfields. It’s mandated with the companies out there. Riders there have to be certified and there aren’t enough instructors. I teach all over (B.C. and Alberta) and I’m just going to be moving into Saskatchewan.
Can you describe what the job entails?
Well, there is classroom atmosphere, whether that’s out in the field or otherwise. The one I did in Fort Mac (Fort McMurray, Alberta) was in a boardroom. It depends on your availability and how many people there are involved. A standard course would be five hours whether you have two people or eight people. I have taught children how to ride properly on the correct size machines and then I’ve taught right up to professionals. I did a course for BC Parks. I’m delving into the school program—that’s a huge interest for me. I have three grandchildren that I instructed. They’re ages eight to 12. I actually put them through the course and I take them out riding. They have a small machine here so I wanted them to experience a course and see how safe you need to be before they got out on the trails.
What do you enjoy most about this role?
I like putting effort into safety. Safety is always an issue. For instance, the gentlemen I taught for BC Parks, they’ve been riding for many years, and after we were done they said to me, “I hadn’t thought of all of that.” We teach SIPDE, which is Scan, Identify, Predict, Decide and Execute. They finished the course and said, “I’m looking everywhere now whereas I hadn’t before.” So they’re looking around and learning how to predict what’s coming up. There are lots of people not following common sense.
Do you think there’s a shortage of instructors?
Oh, definitely. Gordon (Galloway) is the only chief instructor west of Ontario (under the new program, Canada Safety Council Instructors [CASI]). That’s why I think I’d like to move forward and become a chief instructor as well. The course for that is only held in Georgia or California, though. It’s expensive but if we can get enough people interested we might be able to bring the course here in 2014. There aren’t enough people teaching safety in any field. Because we’re in the oilpatch we’re very attentive with all that and they stress safety so much, but we need more instructors. I’d like to become a chief so we can get more instructors out there. In Quebec, for instance, they have taught a tremendous amount of people, like a few thousand. In Saskatchewan, there is only one (CASI instructor) in the province. We need to build this up and the only way to do this is to get more chief instructors out there, but there’s only Gord west of Ontario. It’s difficult for him to go everywhere, so that's why I’d like to be chief as well and get people out there.
What are some of the particular challenges in teaching people safety on an ATV?
A lot of time it’s inexperience. Some people have been riding a long long time and they think they know how to ride a quad. When they go through the course then they realize (that they’ve been doing some things wrong). Think back to BC Parks for example. Those guys were saying, “Wow, I never thought of that.” Lack of knowledge is often a good part of it. Most people think they can just jump on a quad and know what’s going on. But it is nice to see that work is getting done out there—that these courses are becoming available. There are a couple retailers in Alberta that want to get into the process of providing a safety course when they sell a vehicle, which I think is excellent. Right now there is no mandate. It would be nice, but I think it infringes on personal rights.
Anything else?
I would just seriously like to see more people take a safety course for the fact that there are so many people out there. They’re just buying (ATVs) because they’re toys . There’s no problem with having a toy, but you need to know how to use it. We teach “know your ability and your machine’s capability,” and that’s so true.
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