After the Flames: We Have Important Choices about Jasper’s Future

Nine years ago, my husband and I got married at the Tekarra Lodge, in Jasper National Park, overlooking the confluence of the Miette and Athabasca rivers in the Alberta Rockies.

The reason we chose to say our wedding vows at this location wasn’t that we wanted a stunning backdrop for our photos. My husband was born and raised in Jasper, as was his father, whose memory of the town spans 95 years.

Visiting my in-laws a handful of times a year meant that I began to see the town of Jasper in a different light. It became more than a place to go hiking and swimming in the summer, or cross-country skiing in the winter. Over the last decade, Jasper became a home away from home.

Those experiences let me see behind the curtain set up to shield visitors from reality, and allowed me to observe the growing tensions between environmental protection, tourism and the needs of residents. Despite the extraordinary beauty of the natural landscape, keeping Jasper a magical destination took plenty of work.

Now I wonder what will rise from the ashes — and who the new Jasper townsite will benefit.

Neither the campgrounds where visitors made happy memories nor the picturesque townsite happened by chance. The ecological and cultural integrity of the 11,229-square-kilometre Jasper National Park have been closely guarded by Parks Canada since the park was established in 1907, displacing Indigenous Peoples from their ancestral lands to attract visitors.

Invisible to tourists, the politics behind seemingly small decisions, like allowing colourful murals on the sides of commercial buildings or charging non-residents for parking, have highlighted the challenges in building a town that serves the interests of businesses, visitors, locals and seasonal workers.

Although tourism is often portrayed as an industry compatible with environmental goals, its growth gobbles up all kinds of resources and produces about eight per cent of global carbon emissions. In 2016, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society criticized Parks Canada’s mission, accusing it of straying from conservation and towards increasing visitor numbers across Canada’s national parks.

While Parks Canada limits the physical footprint of the Jasper townsite and restricts residents to those who work there, the number of tourists who visit the park each year has kept growing unrestrained. Even in the face of a changing climate and growing wildfire risk, the number of visitors in 2023 reached about 2.5 million, or 30 per cent more than in 2010.

Overtourism has caused significant changes to both the park and the townsite since I married into Jasper.

A strained parks budget meant volunteers had to look after some trails and spearhead initiatives to protect vulnerable habitats in Cavell Meadows and Whistlers.

Meanwhile, parking lots at Mount Edith Cavell, Valley of the Five Lakes and Jasper Lake were significantly expanded to accommodate demand; the first new hotel in 40 years was built by Pursuit, a hospitality group owned by global hospitality conglomerate Viad Corp.; and the town’s seasonal population exploded, with little housing to accommodate the thousands of workers employed in low-wage hospitality jobs.

In this context, it comes as no surprise that on the night of July 22 about 25,000 people had to evacuate the roughly 5,000-resident townsite, forced to leave everything behind as an out-of-control wildfire devoured the forest on its way to Jasper. Less than 48 hours later, these flames would swallow one-third of the town’s buildings.

The damage goes beyond the material loss of 350 structures — homes and businesses. The largest fire in a century has significantly changed the sense of place for Jasperites.

After the fire, hundreds mourn the loss of a part of themselves.

According to French philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre, the idea of place is socially produced. So rather than just a collection of natural features and prescribed uses, places are imbued with meanings ascribed by the people who experience them, producing a shared code that fosters a sense of belonging.

For visitors, the town of Jasper may have been a scenic pit stop before heading out to explore the park’s pristine wilderness. But it was through the memories shared with me by my husband and in-laws that I slowly learned to decode what the built and natural landscapes meant to local residents.

For Jasperites of my husband’s vintage, some of these memories include roaming freely in the thick woods around the emerald waters of Lake Edith, or retrieving golf balls from the bottom of Lac Beauvert near Jasper Park Lodge.

The small forest between the train tracks and my in-laws’ home wasn’t just a vacant site slated for future residential growth then. It was a place where many Jasper kids had their first taste of freedom. Invaded by pine beetles, the woods had to be razed six years ago to protect the townsite from wildfires and became a pile of rocks awaiting development — its past meaning invisible to visitors or future residents.

In time, memories like these are bound to fade.

Perhaps because protecting memories seems less concrete than preventing the loss of entire ecosystems, we rarely discuss the impacts a changing climate has on the places where our collective memory resides — but we’re meaning-seeking creatures.

As the town is inevitably rebuilt, new landmarks should rise from the ashes, new meanings built into the landscape, and a renewed sense of place should emerge.

However, the underlying tensions between conservation and tourism are likely to resurface as strongly as ever.

With more than 30,000 hectares of forest turned to ashes, and fewer memories to protect, tourism ventures could try to take hold of what remains in the name of reconstruction — as any capitalist endeavour would.

But the recovery tourism offers is often inequitable.

If transformed into a true resort town, Jasper could become an exclusive enclave, where access to nature is a privilege afforded only the wealthy.

In the face of economic uncertainty, and with scant physical evidence to uphold their collective memory, will Jasperites finally succumb to the shiny promises of tourism?