Thinking of running for council this October? Figure you can do a better job of helping to run this town than the current stock of elected leaders? You might be right! But how will people ever know it? How could you possibly let Jasper know just how smart and in-touch you are? How will you win the election? Oh dear, what possible solution could there be?

IT’S EASY. USE THE MEDIA. 

Jasperites, ultimate ownership of the lands we hike, fish, climb, and enjoy ourselves on is disputed. There are people who believe that significant portions of the lands east of the Rocky Mountains were never formally handed over to the Canadian government by the First Nations groups who first lived on them.

“The federal government has never properly addressed the fact that the Kootenay Plains, the Bighorn Wildland, the half of Banff National Park north of the headwaters of the Red Deer River, and a broad, profitable strip of Jasper National Park, including the Columbia Icefield, were never the subject of treaty negotiations at all,” writes author, playwright, and lawyer Gary Botting, in his biography, Chief Smallboy: In Pursuit of Freedom. 

Botting believes that those lands still rightfully belong to First Nations groups as the original treaty negotiations ceding away their ownership were nothing more than a government backed fraud.

Why does he think this?

Recently I was in New York. In a city that practically defines the word overcrowded, people kept dogs, cats, lizards, whatever kind of pet you can imagine in their rented apartments. I saw a man who kept a full-size pitbull in his eighth floor apartment. He was a total fool, but it’s amazing that his landlord even allowed him to do this in the first place.

If landlords in New York City (New York City landlords are generally considered the lowest form of life in existence) are willing to allow their tenants to take on pets, then what does it say about the majority of Jasper landlords who do not?