Two Paul Kane grads turned food industry entrepreneurs are major players in a project to help tourism and hospitality workers displaced by the Jasper wildfire.
Peter Keith, owner of Meuwly’s Artisan Food Market in Edmonton, and Scott Downey, owner of Edmonton’s The Butternut Tree Restaurant and The Marc Restaurant, teamed up with Mary Bailey of The Tomato Food & Drink Magazine and Kaelin Whittaker of Awn Kitchen to start YEG Hospitality for Jasper.
“I have a lot of friendships [in Jasper], a lot of connections,” Keith said. “I have friends who have lost their restaurants or lost their homes.”
Keith travels to Jasper about four times a year for food events at Jasper Park Lodge, which was damaged in the fire.
Jasper’s tourism and hospitality industry, a pillar of the region’s economy that was on the path to a post-COVID economic recovery, is bracing for another financial hit and facing the prospect that it will have rebuild once again.
Adding to industry’s difficulties is the fact that the summer months are Jasper’s busiest, with the park welcoming over 1 million visitors. Many hospitality workers take some winter months or “shoulder seasons” off, relying on summer overtime hours to help get them through the year, Keith said.
“What I'm hearing from my friends is just this total sense of loss,” Keith said.
In the aftermath of the fire, Keith and friends in the industry felt a collective desire to do something, and they wanted to do it fast.
“As hospitality entrepreneurs from Edmonton, we know how big of a role these sectors play in their communities,” Keith said. “In Jasper, the tourism and hospitality sector is really at the core of that community. It’s a large number of people, and we knew that they would really need some immediate support.”
Despite it being a tough time in the food service industry, Keith said, the group rallied and came up with a fund that goes directly to tourism and hospitality workers. They partnered with the Edmonton Community Foundation to make it a reality.
The project also encourages Edmonton businesses to get involved.
“If you're putting on an event, if you want to host some kind of campaign on your website or on social media, we're trying to get those people talking, share some ideas, share some resources,” Keith said. “If we can put those people in contact, then I think we can expand the impact, of all these different efforts … We're trying to be a platform for collaboration across the industry.”
The group also built a job board that allows Edmonton businesses to connect displaced hospitality workers with jobs.
As of Aug. 7 the group had received nearly $30,000. Some 90 businesses signed on to help with fundraising efforts, and there were 25 job listings on the YEG Hospitality for Jasper job board.
Many in the tourism and hospitality industry don’t make enough to save for a disaster, Downey said.
It’s why getting workers help as soon as possible was critical.
“[The Edmonton Community Foundation] basically set up a fund for us overnight,” Downey said.
The fire hit the Jasper townsite on a Wednesday night, the YEG Hospitality for Jasper group formed on Thursday, and the fund was online by Friday.
The decision to help connect charity activities between businesses instead of hosting multiple events was in part made because the YEG Hospitality for Jasper crew have businesses of their own to run.
“Realistically, we were aware that we were not going to be able to be hands on and involved in every single event,” Keith said. “It's just not something that we can realistically take on with our schedules.”
Each time a big natural disaster happens, it seems to hit “closer and closer to home,” Downey said.
He grew up skiing and hiking in Jasper, and he remembers climbing on the Jasper the Bear statue, a Jasper townsite icon that has survived the fire.
“[The fire] really hit home,” he said. “For me, I took it kind of personal. We didn’t just want to sit idly by.”
