Jasper is open to visitors again — but what can tourists expect?
CBC
Landon Shepherd, sporting his yellow Parks Canada jacket and blue safety helmet, stood in a campground in Jasper National Park, beside a wooden pole with the metal remnants of a bear bin wrapped around it.
Patches of green grass were starting to sprout on the earth nearby, juxtaposed against a desolate landscape of fallen trees and others standing like burned matchsticks. The trees lining the mountainsides in the background were torched too.
"This was not green even a week ago; there were just a couple of odd plants. Since then, a bunch of things have sprouted up," said Shepherd, a Parks Canada incident commander, while guiding a media tour through a couple of campgrounds on Sept. 7.
"In a month and a half, we've already got really good ground cover — even in a site that was stripped so severely as this."
An immense wildfire — and the storm it created — swept through the national park nearly two months ago, burning accommodations, landmarks and attractions to various degrees. Eventually, the flames reached the Jasper townsite, destroying about one-third of its buildings.
Recovery is ongoing, but visitors were recently allowed back into Jasper as well as several trails and day-use areas within the national park.
Locals are welcoming visitors with open arms, but experts suggest it is unclear how tourism will be affected due to a lack of research into how they respond to wildfires. The tourists who do go, they said, should prepare for the area to look different from its photos, as it may take years for the town to rebuild and decades for nature to heal.
The economy of Jasper, a town of roughly 5,000 people surrounded by the Rocky Mountains, relies heavily on tourism: Parks Canada annual reports show more than two million people visited Jasper National Park almost every year for the past decade — a fraction of whom are there for camping.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, international tourists spent more than $1 billion on the Alberta side of the Rockies, Statistics Canada data shows. Spending in the region has yet to reach such levels since the pandemic, but international tourists still spent more than $500 million in 2022 — the last full year of data available.
"For those tourists who do go, know that you're supporting a community in a time of need," Michelle Rutty, an associate professor of geography and environmental management at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, told CBC News in an email.
"Your dollars spent will have a meaningful impact in terms of supporting Jasper in its efforts to recover and rebuild," she wrote.
Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland has described re-opening to tourists as a delicate balance essential to the town's recovery. Premier Danielle Smith, on her radio show last weekend, encouraged people to visit the town.
Residents were allowed home to start assessing their houses and businesses on Aug. 16, nearly four weeks after the evacuation order was issued. Some businesses are back in operation, while others may not be able to start up for a while yet.
Business owners recognize the challenging recovery ahead and need tourists' help, recalling how hard it was for some to get by from the local population alone during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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