Just about everyone I've talked to in the past week has a Jasper story. This one is mine.
For me, Jasper was the accidental starting point of my journalism career. I had worked at the park's east gate as a summer job in university in the 1990s – my first taste of freedom, living in a Panabode log cabin tucked away in the woods near the park and taking off into the park for hiking adventures every weekend.
After finishing university, I got my old summer job back so I could save up money to go to journalism school. I headed into town to visit the local newspaper, the Jasper Booster, to see if they had any extra freelance work I could pick up along the way.
They didn't – few weekly newspapers did (or do). They did, however, have a full-time job, since the one reporter there had quit the day before I walked in. And despite my lack of a journalism degree, they took a chance and hired me.
I took a pay cut of more than 30 per cent from my Parks Canada job – 50 per cent if you count the free housing that came with that job. My parents thought I was nuts. I told them it was exactly the sort of job I was hoping to get after journalism school.
I had no idea.
In some ways, Jasper is a small town of 5,000 people, which means covering the basics – church suppers, Legion gatherings, school plays, council meetings and court.
But it’s also a small town in the middle of a national park, which means I got to do amazing things like follow park wardens chasing herds of elk from the school yard and out of town using a hockey stick with a shredded garbage bag taped to the blade. I got to be at the front row of artists like Ashley MacIsaac at the Atha-B Pub or Spirit of the West at the Jasper Heritage Folk Festival. I got to see people from all over the world seeing Canada with eyes filled with wonder at Canada Day celebrations bigger than any town of 5,000 could ever hope to put together.
And now it’s changed, forever.
The house on Cabin Creek Drive I lived in when I first moved into town – a tiny studio suite just big enough for a bunk bed, a dresser and a microwave – is gone now. So is the more spacious, but still spartan, one-bedroom suite in an apartment building on Geikie Street I moved into a few months after that. So is St. Mary and St. George’s Church, where I got to play a pipe organ concert as a fundraiser for the Food Bank. And Jasper United Church, where we organized a New Year’s Eve celebration for families with young kids called Blast Night.
But, in a miracle powered by dozens of dedicated firefighters and first responders, more than two thirds of the community survived a storm of 300-foot flames. More importantly still, the people remain, with not one human life lost. And, as Shakespeare said: “What is the city but the people?”
Or, as Mayor Richard Ireland said so eloquently: “If there are homes for some, there is community for all.”
Which means while Jasper is forever changed, it is not, and never will be, gone forever.
And there will be more Jasper stories.