Calgary veterinarian stars in APTN spin-off series Wild Rose Vets

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When the producers of the APTN series Wild Rose Vets first approached Dr. Emma Jackson about participating in the show, she turned them down.

The team had a good track record, having produced two seasons of Dr. Savannah: Wild Rose Vet, which focused on Savannah Howse-Smith, a Métis veterinarian based in rural Alberta. Wild Rose Vets is a spin-off of that series, with producers widening the lens to focus on three separate vets in Western Canada. Jackson was approached in January 2023, not long after she graduated from the University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. At first, she decided reality-TV was not for her.

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“It’s a very vulnerable position to be in and it’s very vulnerable to watch it,” she says. “I couldn’t see myself on that platform. I think that was a little bit of fear that I had.”

Still, the producers were persistent and, after a few months, Jackson changed her mind. Born and raised in St. Paul, she went to school in the Saddle Lake Cree Nation and eventually saw Wild Rose Vets as an opportunity.

“The main reason was that I wanted to showcase primarily to Indigenous youth that there are veterinarians who look like them, who are from reserves, who went to school on reserves who can go into veterinary medicine and become veterinarians themselves,” she says.

Jackson had some conditions. She wanted her segments to focus specifically on the work she did at the Calgary animal shelter run by the Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society, or AARCS, on her days off from working full-time at an emergency animal hospital.

Jackson’s segments revolve around her work there, which often involves helping homeless animals find homes, and her travels to reservations in Southern Alberta. The series debuted on APTN last Monday, but Jackson did not appear in the opening episode. In the episode that airs Monday, Sept. 9, she is introduced as taking on the new role at the busy rescue shelter, while future episodes will have her tackling her first rabbit surgery and wrangling dogs for a canine blood drive. Also featured in the series are Dr. Allison Hay, a First Nations vet from Saskatoon and Dr. Cori Stephen, the Metis owner-operator of Nechako Valley Animal Health Services in Vanderhoof, B.C. Jackson did not meet the other two vets during the seven-month shoot as their segments were all shot separately.

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Jackson has reviewed certain scenes in the series to make sure the medical content was accurate but, at the time of this interview, she had not watched a full episode other than the first one focusing on Hay and Stephen.

While the series is meant to focus on positive Indigenous stories, Jackson says some scenes were filmed that she hopes don’t end up on the cutting-room floor, even if they are darker in tone.

“I haven’t seen a lot of the conversation, interview pieces, which is also a very vulnerable component to be in,” she says. “Because we talk about very deep topics. In one of my interviews, we talked about colonialism and Indigenous representation altogether but we also talked about the more challenging side of veterinarian medicine where there is not a lot of diversity in the field and it has one of the highest suicide rates of a profession, which isn’t spoken about a lot. I like to call it my vulnerability tour.”

Jackson credits growing up on a farm for sparking her interest in animals and veterinary medicine.

“There wasn’t as much socialization aspects if you grew up on a farm or a reserve because there are limitations of not being able to drive somewhere,” she says. “There were always cats and dogs and horses around to interact with and developing the human-animal bond in that capacity was really important. I think that’s where it came from and I think it just stuck with me, always wanting that capacity to help and give a voice for those who don’t have a voice.”

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Jackson says she did have a career-altering moment when shooting. In episode 10, she travels to the remote Indigenous community of Ahousaht, a settlement on Flores Island, B.C., that is only accessible by water or air. Volunteering with the Mission PAWSible mobile vet unit, she spent a week in the community. She said the experience has convinced her to focus less on emergency medicine and more on improving access to veterinary care in remote areas.

“It was amazing to show going into these communities that don’t have veterinary care and doing this fantastic job and providing a service that needs to be provided,” she says. “But I hope there is also a showcase of the inequities of rural, remote Indigenous communities and the lack of access not just to veterinary care but to human health care, education, to all sorts of things, especially economic development and infrastructure. I can go to a reserve and offer my services for spaying and neutering and vaccinations, but I hope it highlights how they don’t have a lot of infrastructure in certain places. It’s easy to forget that places like Ahousaht exist in Canada, but they do.”

Wild Rose Vets airs on APTN.

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