We know the sight: neighbourhoods reduced to smoking foundations. Trees like crisp skeletons. Families packed into cars jamming the only available route out of town, fleeing at a crawl beneath orange-black skies. Surrounding it all, the cause of it all, an unstoppable wall of fire.
On July 24, Jasper became the latest member of this era’s new Hall of Flame, joining towns and cities it suddenly resembles: Fort McMurray, Lytton, West Kelowna. Jasper National Park is best known for the azure lakes and mountain trails and glaciers that draw more than 2 million visitors a year. It’s also a permanent home to more than 4,000 people who just lost a third of their town. That none of them lost their lives commands acknowledgement and gratitude. That such a unique place could so quickly be transformed into a common sight demands reflection—and a reckoning.
Even for those who don’t live there, Jasper is more than a “tourist destination.” To be a tourist is to drop in, snap a few pictures, hike a trail or two, and move on. The traveller’s equivalent of a one-night stand. But the vast outpouring of grief that followed Jasper’s incineration revealed something far deeper: a long-term relationship, profound and vulnerable. That bond is with the townsite and the landscape it’s embedded in—a place where human habitation and the surrounding wilderness are interwoven. Just as people walk through Maligne Canyon or hike the Skyline Trail, herds of elk regularly stroll down Connaught Drive, while itinerant black bears snack their way through backyards. Golfers at Jasper Park Lodge share the fairway with deer and Canada geese.
