Companies are reporting `millions of dollars’ in lost revenue after blazes
This article was written by Lauren Krugel and was published in the Toronto Star on September 3, 2025.
Fewer tourists are coming to Jasper, Alta., than usual this year, but it’s not for a lack of people eager to visit the picturesque Rocky Mountain town.
Numbers are about as good as they can be, considering about onefifth of the town’s overnight accommodations burned when a ferocious wildfire swept through last summer, said Tourism Jasper CEO Tyler Riopel.
“There’s about as many people visiting Jasper this summer as we have overnight accommodations for, so I say it’s a win,” he said. “We’re seeing between a 16 and 20 per cent actual visitor number reduction overall, and that is 100 per cent directly attributed to the loss in fixedroof accommodations and campgrounds.”
Spots that are available are almost entirely full, Riopel said, adding the squeeze is likely to last into next summer as the town’s rebuild continues.
Visitors seem to be spending less when they’re in the town in shops and at attractions, but Riopel isn’t sure whether that’s a widespread trend.
There’s still plenty to do in the national park, he said. That includes more than a thousand kilometres of hiking trails, whitewater rafting, the SkyTram gondola, the golf course and boat cruises on the turquoise waters of Maligne Lake.
“Jasper is such an intriguing place to be right now. Parks Canada has worked really hard to ensure that there’s a few fire impacted forests that people can walk through,” Riopel said.
Though summer may be peak tourist season in Jasper, Riopel said winter will also be important as people come for skiing and other winter activities.
As the Jasper recovery continues, tourism operators affected by wildfires elsewhere this year are struggling.
Northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba have been particularly hard hit, which has taken a toll on outfitting businesses that cater to hunters and fishers.
Roy Anderson, acting CEO of the Saskatchewan Commission of Professional Outfitters, said his group is surveying members to quantify the financial impact.
“We’re talking millions of dollars in terms of lost revenue at a minimum,” he said.
Many businesses serve a small number of repeat customers — mainly Americans — willing to splurge to hunt big game. Those clients book well in advance, so operators have to prepurchase supplies and staff up ahead of time, leaving little flexibility when unexpected disruptions arise.
Anderson said early in the spring, concern centred around Canada-U.S. trade tensions and any knockon effects on crossborder tourism.
“It wasn’t maybe as impactful as we thought it might be,” he said. “And then we moved right into the reality around the wildfires.”
Fires burning close to a camp or hunting area would of course require trips to be cancelled for safety reasons. But even in unaffected areas, highway closures, air travel disruptions and bans on offroad vehicles have had big impacts, Anderson said.
He’s calling for a discussion with government officials about how to deal more proactively with the fire threat in future.
“We know this may be a unique year, but it might not be,” Anderson said.
Anderson said government could reconsider the scope of allterrain vehicle bans, perhaps having some allowances for commercial operators or in certain zones. Sparks that come off the machines can trigger fires when a forest is tinder dry.
Tourism Saskatchewan is still determining the impact.
“Anecdotally, some operators have experienced losses, while most have remained fully open. In addition to the fires themselves, evacuation alerts and highway closures contributed to disruptions, including cancellations and reduced visitor traffic in some areas,” said Alexa Lawlor, a spokesperson for the provincial agency, in an email.
“Many accommodations stepped up to provide emergency shelter for evacuees and firefighting personnel, and we are deeply grateful for their contributions.”
The Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada has been hearing from members that it’s been a particularly tough summer, said chief executive Keith Henry.
The effects have been felt right across the country. Some visitors have cancelled because they didn’t want wildfire smoke to ruin their experience. Full closures of wilderness areas in Atlantic Canada have caused business to evaporate overnight.
Operators in northern Manitoba had been “expecting a really exceptional year,” said Henry.
“Their business is down 30 per cent.”
Wildfires haven’t been the only challenge though. Labour disruptions at Air Canada have also caused wouldbe travellers to put off their trips.
Tourism is a major economic driver for Indigenous communities, Henry added.
“Indigenous tourism is so much more than economics. It’s cultural revitalization, it’s local employment, it helps families, it help the artists,” Henry said. “We don’t want to lose faith in what we’re trying to build and what we’ve been building for many, many decades now. We’re going to continue to work really hard to make sure it survives and thrives.
“We’ve just got to figure out how do we adjust to these kinds of external factors that seem to have such downstream impacts on us?”
This article was written by Dave McGinn and was published in the Globe & Mail on July 2, 2025.
In the gymnasium of Jasper Junior/ Senior High School last week, near the base of mountains covered with charred trees, the graduating seniors were enjoying a moment they will never forget, and one many worried wasn’t going to be possible.
Nearly one year ago, as wildfires forced the Alberta town to evacuate, the sad thought for many of those in suits and gowns up on the stage – most of whom have known each other their entire lives – was that they would not be able to spend their last year of high school together.
“Last summer, after we’d been evacuated from home, there was a period of time where many of us had to come to face the fact that we may not have a home to come back to,” Oliver Noble, this year’s grad president, said in his speech at the graduation ceremony.
“What makes a moment like this so unique and important is not simply the occasion, but who we managed to spend it with. The fact that all of us as a class still ended up here after having to reconcile with the idea that we might not be able to do so, with this group of people in this place, should put into perspective what it means to be celebrating in the way that we are today.”
“We’ve been surrounded by the risk of a wildfire pretty much our whole lives,” Tyler Pearson, one of the graduating seniors, said of himself and his classmates.
In 2011, a wildfire took out approximately one-third of Slave Lake, a town a little more than a four-hour drive north of Jasper.
The Fort McMurray wildfire, which prompted the largest evacuation in Alberta’s history, destroyed nearly 2,400 homes and buildings in 2016.
Then, more fires, with increasing frequency and close enough to be worrisome: Lytton, B.C., in 2021, West Kelowna in 2023.
Nestled within Jasper National Park, an 11,000-square-kilometre expanse of pristine wilderness in the Rocky Mountains, the town of Jasper is home to just fewer than 5,000 residents. More than two million people visit the park each year to hike and camp, to see wildlife and to marvel at the mountains.
For the tourists who travel there, it is the picture-perfect home of the Canadian wilderness.
For those who live here, it is a place where you keep a bag packed with important documents ready to go at a moment’s notice, because a wildfire is a matter of when, not if.
But nothing could have prepared the graduating seniors for what came to town on the afternoon of July 22, 2024.
That Monday, a fire was reported near the Jasper Transfer Station, north of town. Within less than an hour, three more fires were spotted south of Jasper. Just before 7 p.m., gusting winds up to 30 kilometres an hour merged the three fires in the south and pushed them toward town, with flames 50 metres high.
Inside the Jasper Brewing Company, where 17-year-old Jackson Irwin was busing tables, a nervous energy began spreading among the diners.
“People were running outside looking at the wind because it was a massive windstorm,” he said. “There was dust and smoke and ash flying everywhere. It was insane. There were umbrellas flying everywhere.”
Jackson’s mom, Shelly Irwin, a teacher in town, has known since about 2017 – the year after the Fort McMurray wildfire – to have all her family’s important documents ready to go at a moment’s notice.
“When the ash started falling on us, it was, this is going to happen,” she said.
Tyler Pearson, one of Jackson’s classmates, was at home when his mom called from the restaurant where she was having dinner.
“Tyler, things are bad,” she said. “Go fill up your car with gas.”
By then, it was raining ash.
He filled his tank, came home and started packing. “I grabbed my childhood stuffed animal. I grabbed my skis, my golf clubs, some gold cufflinks from my grandfather.”
By then, panic had begun to set in. “All hell was breaking loose,” Tyler said. Cars were racing up and down the street outside his house, the fire getting bigger and bigger.
Soon enough, though, traffic ground to a halt, with so many cars trying to evacuate.
Tyler looked outside and saw a friend stuck in traffic in his car.
They walked to the friend’s house so that he could pack more things.
The friend poured two shots of Buffalo Trace Kentucky straight bourbon whisky into two plastic cups. By then, Tyler knew he wouldn’t be driving that night – his parents had decided that because his car had fire insurance, they’d leave it behind.
The two friends toasted to their childhood homes, both of which they expected to be swallowed by the fire.
“It was kind of a send-off,” Tyler said. (His friend’s house was destroyed by the fire; Tyler’s survived).
Starla Ferland, another Jasper student, was at home packing keepsakes and photo albums.
“I definitely regret not grabbing more clothes,” she said.
As dispersed as they were that night, every student of Jasper High was connected digitally, sharing messages and images on group chats on their phones.
Emmett Lent was at home with friends from town and pals from Hinton, a community about an hour’s drive northeast of Jasper.
“We’re all hanging out watching TV, and then the texts are rolling in with photos of houses on fire. Everyone was just sitting on their phones waiting for the next update,” he said. “We had group chats that previously had been used for planning get-togethers and parties, but had then been transformed into, like, ‘Hey, my dad sent me this photo of this guy’s house on fire.’ So it’s like, ‘Oh no, that’s my house and it’s on fire.’ ”
By 10 p.m., an evacuation order was issued for the entire park, including the town.
Fears of the immediate present soon gave way to worries about the future – specifically, their senior year of high school together in the fall.
“Eventually the gas station blew up. And that’s kind of when we felt like we really wouldn’t be able to go back and have our whole class there,” Oliver Noble said.
That worry would grow and expand over the coming weeks for many students and their parents.
Emmett Lent and Oliver Noble’s families had both evacuated to Hinton. The two have been best friends their entire lives. One day, Oliver told him he had talked to his parents, and mentioned he might be going to Toronto or Calgary to live with extended family and finish high school.
“That was pretty sad, thinking I won’t be able to graduate with my best friend,” Emmett said.
The Jasper wildfire, 32,000 hectares in size, destroyed 358 of the town’s 1,113 structures, most of them homes. The school, along with the hospital and wastewater treatment plant, were saved.
Of the 184 students at Jasper Junior/ Senior High School, 47 of them lost their homes. That included five of the graduating seniors.
It was the biggest wildfire to hit Jasper in 100 years.
For the kids in town who had been excitedly anticipating their grad year, none of whom had yet turned 18, it was the second “once-in-a-century” catastrophe of their lifetimes so far.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, Jasper, like most everywhere else, obeyed social-distancing rules. That meant that year’s graduating class was not able to celebrate together, with the school instead doing small, individual ceremonies for each student.
Nancy Robbins’s son was one of those seniors. When the fire hit, one of her first thoughts was of her daughter, Daisy McLeod, not being able to enjoy a proper graduation.
“I was like, are you kidding me?” Ms. Robbins said.
Like many small communities, Jasper is a place of long traditions, and high-school graduation is no exception.
Each spring, after a ceremony at the school, students, parents, extended family, teachers and staff head to the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge for dinner and speeches.
“It’s quite a ceremony,” principal Mark Crozier said.
Some of the parents of this year’s seniors celebrated their own grad nights at the lodge.
It has hosted celebrations every year for the past 40, with one exception: the first year of the pandemic.
“It’s one of the more special moments of your life,” Christine Oeggerli, a mother of one of the graduating seniors said of the event at the lodge.
Last year, when the evacuation order was lifted in mid-August and families began returning to town, parents, teachers, administrators, sports team coaches and so many others banded together, determined to give kids a senior year as close to normal as they could manage.
“It was a top priority for us,” said Leslie Currie, assistant principal at Jasper Junior/Senior High School. “The fear of losing the memory markers in the year, those foundational moments – that’s what the kids were afraid of,” she said, adding that everyone was committed to making sure that did not happen.
The start of school was delayed by two weeks to deal with smoke damage. But then things were up and running – the ski program for the juniors, finding volunteers for basketball and volleyball and track, getting a yearbook started, organizing school dances.
“We really tried to hold on to those social experiences because we just know how important connection is in their little world,” Ms. Currie said.
Terry Lanigan, who owns a ready-mix
concrete company in Jasper, has been coaching the girls’ volleyball team for a decade. He remembered how devastating it was for the seniors on the team who forfeited their season because of the pandemic.
He lost his house in the fire, but when the evacuation order lifted, he got on the phone.
“I got a hold of the parent group and I said, ‘Listen, I’m going to give these kids whatever kind of season we can get,’ ” he said.
The first tournament of the season was on the first weekend of September. The team’s jerseys were in Mr. Lanigan’s garage when it burned down, so the girls wore T-shirts with their numbers written with tape. (Soon enough, a company in Hinton made new jerseys for the team, the words “Jasper strong” printed on them.)
A mom from the opposing team handed Mr. Lanigan $300 in cash for the girls who had lost homes.
Similar acts of generosity followed as the season progressed.
“The Drayton Valley team had this huge care package for my girls, you know, Amazon gift cards, Tim Hortons cards, Starbucks cards, candy mugs,” Mr. Lanigan said.
The residents of Drayton Valley, south of Jasper, had had to evacuate their homes because of an out-of-control wildfire in 2023.
As important as a normal year was, there could be no such thing.
Early in September, the local school division hosted an online presentation on trauma awareness for parents.
In February, students were invited to attend a seminar in town on postwildfire mental wellness for teens, which covered managing anxiety and coping with grief and loss.
“Their whole teenage years have been racked with worry. You’re concerned of the unknown. You go through a pandemic to wildfire to your house burning down,” Shelly Irwin said.
For her son, there is who he was before the fire and who he is after.
“My house burned down. It’s kind of like all my childhood was there, so I guess you could say that my childhood kind of comes to an end like that,” Jackson said.
Those who didn’t lose homes have often struggled with survivor’s guilt.
“When you’re walking to school, it’s sad because you’re seeing all of these people, your friends and coworkers and the people you’ve grown up with who have lost their homes,” said Daisy McLeod. “A lot of us struggle with the guilt of when somebody asks you if your home is up and you get the privilege of being able to say ‘yes.’ ”
That guilt was hard to ignore when fundraising for the graduation ceremony.
The bottle drive that the school usually does had to be cancelled because the bottle depot was destroyed in the fire. But the cookie-dough fundraiser went ahead.
“Our class really struggled with that one because it was hard to go up to people and ask them to buy a $25 tin of cookie dough when they were really struggling,” said Annika Oeggerli, a senior and the class secretary. “We ran into lots of people who said, ‘I wish I could buy it, but I still don’t have my fridge yet.’ ”
Then there were moments of just plain weirdness.
Tyler Pearson was used to walking home at night after parties or hanging out with friends. One night after the fire, walking home from hanging out with buddies, he felt something was off, but at first, he couldn’t put his finger on it.
Then he realized it was the darkness. This stretch of road had always been illuminated by street lights and the warm glow coming from living room windows. All that light was gone now, taken by the fire. Just this eerie darkness left.
As challenging as the school year has been, the graduating students managed to perform well above the provincial average on their standardized exams – getting the highest grades, in fact, of all five high schools in the division.
Next fall, some of the graduating class will head off to university. Others are taking gap years.
Wherever they go, they will take with them the lessons they have learned from the past year.
“We learned to really cherish what we have and not take anything for granted. We also learned how important support from your friends is during hardship. It definitely taught us to appreciate each other and what we have more,” Daisy said of herself, Starla and Annika.
When I asked Jackson Irwin what he had learned, he paused for a moment.
“I think what I learned this past year is that a good community is essential for recovery.”
As dispersed as they were that night, every student of Jasper High was connected digitally, sharing messages and images on group chats on their phones.
Around 2,000 northern Manitoba residents have made an unexpected trip to tourist hot spot
This article was written by Sharif Hassan and was published in the Toronto Star on June 7, 2025.
Until two weeks ago, Tyrone Caribou and his five children lived together in a house on a remote First Nation reserve in northern Manitoba. Then the scorching wildfires tearing through the Prairies blanketed the region in thick smoke and split his family across two provinces.
Caribou and his 15yearold daughter, Rosa Caribou, were part of a cohort of evacuees brought to Niagara Falls, Ont., while his other children are staying in Thompson, Man., — three with a relative and one, his 19yearold daughter, with her boyfriend, he said.
“We’re displaced all over. We got out as soon as we could,” Caribou said this week, standing outside the downtown hotel where he and his daughter settled three days ago.
Wildfires also forced the family from their home in Pukatawagan, part of Mathias Colomb Cree Nation, in 2022, but Caribou’s late wife, who he described as the “glue” of the family, was around back then to keep everyone together, he said.
Caribou had to leave the region due to his asthma, he said, and only Rosa chose to accompany him as the others stayed behind.
The two of them boarded a small plane at the local airport in Pukatawagan, which shut down soon after due to the encroaching blaze, Rosa said.
Her siblings, meanwhile, took refuge at a youth centre until they could be taken away by helicopter, she said.
“There was a lot of burnt trees and a lot of smoke,” Rosa said, describing the scene from the air. “It was very emotional, seeing that the way it was and not knowing if you’re going to be able to go back home.”
The two are among some 2,000 Manitoba residents who have taken refuge in Niagara Falls after fleeing wildfires raging in their province.
Evacuees have been put up in five hotels near tourist attractions and the iconic Horseshoe Falls, with around 1,000 more expected to arrive in the coming days, officials in charge of the evacuation operation said.
More than 18,000 people have been displaced due to the wildfires in Manitoba since last week, including 5,000 residents of Flin Flon near the Saskatchewan boundary, along with members from at least four First Nations.
Some residents from Pimicikamak Cree Nation, east of Flin Flon, were taken to Niagara Falls on Sunday, with more arriving since then.
Carmine Colomb always wanted to visit Niagara Falls.
But not under these circumstances.
The 25yearold resident of Mathias Colomb Cree Nation Pukatawagan in northern Manitoba said the wildfires have been unlike anything he has ever experienced.
“To wake up in the middle of the night and just see smoke and flames a distance from our community,” he said.
Colomb said he and about 20 family members have been in Niagara Falls for a few days.
“I feel at peace. I’m able to actually come out of a building and breathe clean air instead of putting a rag over my mouth,” he said.
“I’m grateful for the people here to give me a space that I can relax and actually sleep without being stressed. I’ve always wanted to come here, but people want to go home — that’s the same thing with me. I just miss my home.”
Kelly Ouskun’s family of six also had no choice but to leave everything behind. He first drove about 145 kilometres from Split Lake to Thompson, then flew to Niagara Falls.
He said he saw so much fire and smoke along the highway that he felt “nauseated.”
“It made me feel a little off and … my eyes were hurting, feel it in the chest, and I just seen a lot of our reserve area burned,” he said, his children playing around him. “It’s pretty sad, seeing it like that.” Ouskun said he has heard the homes on the reserve where he lives, including his own, are still standing, and he hopes that will continue to be the case.
For many, the evacuation represents their first visit to one of the country’s top tourist destinations, and the opportunity to see the sights offers a small silver lining to the upheaval.
Adolphe Thomas, who fled Cross Lake with his family, went to see the falls at night and was planning to go back in the daytime, he said. He described the view as “awesome.”
For Caribou and his daughter, the feeling of being away from home brought a mix of excitement and concern.
Rosa saw the falls for the first time and loved seeing the rainbow form over the Niagara River, the teen said. “I really like it. There’s lots out here to experience,” she said.
But her father said he was counting days until they could go back home and reunite the family. “I’m very worried,” Caribou said. “… I miss Pukatawagan, that is our home. It feels different here.”
This article was written by Jana G. Pruden and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 28, 2025.
A destroyed forest blanketed by snow remains after wildfires roared through Jasper National Park and part of the nearby town last summer. Although the airflow within the fire hasn’t officially been classified as a tornado, researchers are investigating the rotational air movement in the pattern of fallen, burned trees.
Colette Kaufmann was inside her store, Rocky Bear Gifts & More, knitting a blanket on a cold winter afternoon. Through the window behind her, the Rocky Mountains were dusted with snow and smudged with tendrils of black, slivers of the 32,000 hectares that burned around and through Jasper National Park and the town of Jasper, Alta., last July.
“I don’t think I can handle talking about it today, hon,” Ms. Kaufmann said. “But just look up. The mountains will always be here.”
On the stereo, Neil Young crooned like he was joining the conversation. “I was lying in a burned-out basement with the full moon in my eyes,” he sang. Ms. Kaufmann hummed and harmonized. Her partner, Karl Peetoom, arrived and joined her, whistling.
It will be the 12th blanket that Ms. Kaufmann has made for people who lost their homes in the fire. Arguably she could use one, too, since she and Mr. Peetoom escaped with little more than the clothes on their backs, losing their house and a lifetime of treasures and cozy blankets.
And even though there are upsides – their business survived, and Mr. Peetoom sometimes feels lighter and freer without all that stuff – there is still plenty to mourn. That’s where the blankets help.
“I’m healing just making them,” Ms. Kaufmann said. “I get more out of it than the people I give them to, probably.”
Ms. Kaufmann and Mr. Peetoom had been watching the mountains evolving out their store window for decades. They had seen the ravages of the pine beetle, the years of drought. And they, like most other people who pay attention to such things, knew what would come next.
“The next part of the equation is fire,” Ms. Kaufmann said. “It’s bad, but it’s part of life.”
Fire is part of life, especially now, especially in Jasper, though increasingly everywhere else, too.
For 100 years, the approach in Jasper National Park had been to fight it, to put the fires out, to ignore what the Indigenous peoples in those lands always knew: The cycles of nature need to run through.
Down the street, at the Lostlands Café, Kim Stark was on hold with her bank. The branch in town had been destroyed, and the new location was still getting up and running. Ms. Stark’s replacement credit card had gotten lost in the mail, and since the transit number for the branch no longer existed, well, it was a whole thing. Just one example of how everything is connected or, in a town pulling itself together after a disaster, disconnected.
“Even for a positive person, it just seems one step forward and, like, three back,” she said. Hold music droned from her phone. “It’s whatever. It’s fine.”
The café is one of four businesses Ms. Stark owns in Jasper. A self-described single parent by choice with three daughters under 5, she lost her house in the fire, and currently has only one business up and running while she navigates insurance and banks and the multitude of other unexpected challenges that have arisen in the weeks and months since the blaze.
As a volunteer firefighter, Ms. Stark was one of the last locals left in town as the fire roared into Jasper on the evening of July 24. About 25,000 people had evacuated by then, and Ms. Stark was one of the few who felt the heat of the fire up close, one of the first to face the reality of what they were all about to lose.
The months since hadn’t been easy, but as she looked across the street at the frozen mountains, she found it all interesting, beautiful. She’d been staring at those same mountains for 33 years, and now her eyes traced new bumps and rolls, features that had, for so long, been hidden under a canopy of trees.
“Fire is not good or bad. Fire just is. It’s part of the landscape,” she said. “As my daughter said, ‘It was naughty because it ate our house.’ But in the landscape, it’s not naughty. It’s what fire does.” Some trees have cones that need fire to release their seeds, she noted. “So it is natural. But it’s just because it burned down my house that I don’t like it.”
It always seemed like a fire from the west would get them. That dense blanket of mature trees lining a narrow valley, an uninterrupted corridor of forest where the wind rushes right into Jasper. But it was a fire from the south that came barrelling in new and urgent on the evening of July 22, hotter and faster than anyone anticipated.
Landon Shepherd, a fire and vegetation specialist for Parks Canada who would become incident commander of what is now known as the Jasper Fire Complex, was heading into Lake Edith for a swim when he first heard sirens.
It had been a busy fire season. Fires had been burning around Jasper all month, scary but under control – nothing the wildfire crews couldn’t get on top of. But now, a series of lightning strikes were rapidly igniting new blazes. Mr. Shepherd texted a colleague to see whether he should come in. He got one word back. “Yes.”
Things worsened even as he drove to the Parks Canada operations compound. The fire to the north of town was encroaching on the highway, and there were new fires in the south. As crews scrambled to get campgrounds and work sites evacuated and see whether any air tankers were available, Mr. Shepherd sprinted out to a helicopter to get eyes on what was coming. From the air, he could see how big the fires to the south were, and how fast the winds were pushing them.
The area around Jasper was filled with tourists and visitors, the town’s population swollen from 5,000 to 25,000 as it does in the summer months. Mr. Shepherd had been working with wildfire for more than three decades. He knew how difficult it would be to evacuate all the people at the campsites and trails and beaches, all those families scattered around and enjoying themselves, not knowing what was coming.
“Seeing the fire I was flying towards, I thought, ‘This is going to be my first multicasualty event for a fire. We’re not going to get families out of the campground in time,’ ” he said. “I thought we were going
to lose people that night, and we didn’t. Actually, it helped me for the rest of my time on this fire, because I went through the worst in my mind.”
There had been tornado warnings in the region, and the fire that roared toward Jasper created winds so powerful it ripped healthy trees right out of the ground. Mr. Shepherd later counted 270 rings on one, a tree that had lived through other fires and blowdown winds and mountain weather, but nothing like the forces that were unleashed that summer. This was something that doesn’t really have a name, but that Mr. Shepherd refers to as a “firestorm-type event.”
In those conditions, a 3,200-kilogram metal construction container was picked up and tossed into the Athabasca River. A bear-proof garbage bin was ripped right out of a concrete slab and sent flying into the trees. Massive chunks of burning debris swirled high in the air like sparks from a campfire.
Although the airflow within the fire hasn’t officially been classified as a tornado, Mr. Shepherd said a research team is investigating rotational air movement in the pattern of the fallen, burned trees.
That ferocious blaze tore through the forest to the east, gathering energy as it headed toward Jasper Park Lodge. To the west, it raged up Whistler Mountain before collapsing into itself, sending embers raining down from the sky into Jasper, where the 32 members of the Jasper Fire Brigade, along with other firefighters from communities nearby, were desperately trying to save the town.
On one side of the valley, flames licked 30 metres above the forest canopy. On the other, Mr. Shepherd recalls, was “something so angry, just this swirling mass of dark smoke with glows of red inside it,” a “dark red, sort of Hollywood apocalyptic kind of scene.”
Six months later, Mr. Shepherd stood atop a pile of concrete construction slabs, surveying that same land at the base of Mount Edith Cavell. It was a grand mountain vista, as awe-inspiring as it had ever been, though in a different way. Now, broad swaths of blackened tree trunks dashed the landscape, like burned pickup sticks tossed to the ground.
Mr. Shepherd sometimes brings members of the fire brigade to that spot, to show them evidence of the wild fury that ripped toward them and assure them “this wasn’t a fair fight.” He knows it would have been far more likely, given what they faced, that the whole town would be lost.
“It’s outstanding that didn’t happen,” he said.
Mr. Shepherd says he’s incredibly proud of the work that was done in and around Jasper, but when he begins to speak of the success he always comes back to the death of Morgan Kitchen, a 24-year-old firefighter who was killed by a falling tree on Aug. 3.
“There were so many challenges with the fire. The highway and railway and a community and pipelines, and people’s connection to the place … having that as a backdrop was a lot,” Mr. Shepherd said. “Given what was happening, I felt like we were doing such an amazing job, and Morgan’s death – it’s not that it takes that away, or changes my mind about that – but suddenly I didn’t feel like I could celebrate it any more. And I still don’t. It doesn’t feel worth it.”
Despite the early reports – when images of the historic St. Mary & St. George Anglican Church and the Petro-Canada station burning made it seem as if the entire town was lost – most of Jasper still stands, at least for tourists. A visitor who trains their eyes only on the commercial streets may not even notice there’s been a fire in town. Stores and restaurants and hotels are open, waiting for tourists that are trickling back too slowly, perhaps thinking, wrongly, that it is too soon, that their presence would be unwelcome, or that there is nothing left at all.
In reality, it was mostly homes that burned – more than 350 structures in all, about one-third of the buildings in Jasper.
Security fences now surround the remains of those houses, ashy pits dotted with rusted benches and barbecues, front steps that go nowhere, white picket fences framing holes in the ground. The devastation itself is a record of the way the fire roared and raced, where it jumped and ravaged, licked, spared, destroyed.
Girlie Tan and her 18-year-old son, Syd, live on Patricia Street, in the one house still standing on an entire block of burned wreckage. They rent the house, which the fire miraculously did not touch. It stands six doors down from their former home, which burned to the ground.
“It’s hard,” said Ms. Tan, who came to Canada from the Philippines in 2020. “You have to go day by day to let go. And yeah, I’m thinking, just appreciating what we have.”
They don’t have much. Her previous landlord wrongly told her she didn’t need her own insurance because he had the home covered, so she’d cancelled her policy. She and her son lost everything. The Mount Robson Inn, where she worked, also burned down, leaving her out of work. Unable to find a full-time job since, mother and son have been surviving with assistance from the Red Cross, friends and people in the Filipino community.
Ms. Tan keeps the windows of the home closed and covered so she doesn’t have to look outside at everything that burned. It hurts too much to think about it.
Sometimes when she walks by, she stops and looks at the wreckage that was their home. There’s a red mug in the rubble she thinks was hers, but she can’t go in to get it.
Many people have left Jasper since the fires, and Ms. Tan worries she and Syd may have to go as well. They only have their current place for six months, until April, and she doesn’t know where they’ll live after that. People she knows have invited them back to Saskatchewan, but they don’t want to leave.
“Jasper is home,” she said. “Our heart is still in Jasper.”
Firetorn Jasper is entering new year with hope, anxiety
This article was written by Jack Farrell and was published in the Toronto Star on December 28, 2024.
About 5,000 residents and 20,000 visitors were safely evacuated before a wildfire breached the western edge of Jasper and destroyed 350 homes and businesses, including 820 housing units. Months after the fire, debris is still being cleared — lot by lot.
JASPER, ALTA. This year, Kim Stark’s kids took responsibility for decorating the family Christmas tree.
Ornaments include toy cars, puzzle pieces, string and a pair of binoculars — things her three young daughters had handy after the family lost their home in summer’s devastating Jasper wildfire.
“I have the most wonderful tree on the planet,” said Stark. “It’s part of our story and part of who we are.
“If (the kids) are happy, I’m happy.”
Stark is part of the fabric of the Jasper townsite, a 10year member of the fire department and owner of a coffee shop and bakery. Her family, plus three furry pets and a fish, are living in a condo as they navigate rebuilding their home. “(The kids) miss our house, and we talk about our house,” said Stark. “We make sure we go to our neighbourhood, so that it doesn’t become somebody else’s neighbourhood.”
Stark and other residents are anxious and nervous for the future following the fire that hit the town July 24.
About 5,000 residents and 20,000 visitors were safely evacuated before the fire breached the western edge of town and destroyed 350 homes and businesses, including 820 housing units. The Insurance Bureau of Canada pegged the damage at $880 million.
Months after the fire, debris is still being cleared — lot by lot.
Locals including Stark are quick to say things could have been worse. But anxiety over temporary living situations and what may be a long and slow rebuild process has many residents and municipal leaders feeling unsettled heading into 2025.
For Sabrina Charlebois and David Leoni, the top concern is the Alberta government’s $112million modular housing project. It’s to put up 250 prebuilt rental units in the town and rent them to those displaced by the fire.
Social Services Minister Jason Nixon said the first homes should be ready by late January or early February, with the rest in April. The majority are to be multibedroom suites to accommodate families.
“If we can get all of our approvals on time, we definitely are on time to be able to build in the context of what we promised,” Nixon said.
It’s complicated, he added, given there are layers of government with an Alberta town in a national park.
Charlebois was born and raised in Jasper. The fire destroyed her childhood home, which her late father built, as well as the salon where she worked. “It’s better than nothing,” she said of the housing project, noting at least 2,000 residents were displaced so demand could outnumber the new units.
Charlebois, who has been staying in a hotel, said it’s understandable projects like this take time. But “we’re six months into this, and there’s no homes for anyone.”
“My fear is not finding a place to live, because I have to be out of my hotel by the spring,” she said.
Leoni, a dentist and former Olympic biathlete, and his family also lost their home, as did seven staff at his clinic. He said the April cutoff date Charlebois is facing also applies to his staff staying in hotels.
“Hopefully that’s concurrent with the provincial government’s opening of these modular units that they’re putting in, because we’re going to lose staff,” said Leoni.
“Without them I can’t do anything.”
The clinic needed to replace $160,000 worth of equipment and required a toptobottom scrub before appointments resumed in October.
Leoni estimates his patient list is down onethird because of the fire. Whether those patients return remains to be seen.
Charlebois and Leoni both said their anxiety is heightened when they consider the unpredictable nature of the town’s tourism economy and how it could complicate the pace of rebuilding.
It’s a Catch22: residents need houses in order to rebuild and restart the economy, but they can’t restart the economy without tourists. And tourists require services, which require workers, who require housing.
Bill Given, the town’s chief administrator, said he’s optimistic the municipality can “thread the needle.”
But he has his own anxieties when it comes to rebuilding, namely the complexity of Jasper operating under both federal and provincial oversight.
“An associated risk of that is that individual agendas from different orders of government overtake the public interest in delivering on what Jasper needs,” Given said.
“I think there’s also a risk, maybe somewhat smaller, that private interests overtake the broader public interest.”
Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland, who lost his home in the fire, said they have to find a way.
“Failure is not an option for anybody,” said Ireland. “We have one chance to get this right, and that’s what we have to do.”
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