As Jasper residents began returning to their homes on Friday (Aug. 16), Jasper’s mayor said he felt “a lot of relief and some optimism” at how the day had gone.
Richard Ireland said he heard from residents that they were also feeling relief, which started once they go to the east entrance to the townsite.
There, they were greeted by the Jasper Fire Department, the Jasper Volunteer Fire Brigade, RCMP, Parks Canada and municipal officials, with a Canadian flag hanging from the ladder of an aerial fire truck.
“The reports I got back was that the first tears of the day came right there, but they were tears of gratitude and appreciation, so a great way, really, to start a really difficult day,” Ireland said.
Having already toured the wildfire-devastated townsite three weeks ago and his destroyed home, the mayor knew ahead of time what many residents would be going through.
“They should be prepared for a sight, in a sense, that cannot really be adequately conveyed just through photographs on social media and even on film footage that they might see on social media or on the television,” Ireland said.
“To actually stand there and see your house, for example, from street level, if it is in the really most impacted part of town, is just so unsettling. It is just so beyond what I think people can legitimately expect until they get there to see it for themselves.”
To give Jasperites a chance to process their loss, only residents are currently being allowed into town.
Non-residents are not allowed to enter for the foreseeable future, although media will have the opportunity to visit the townsite on Monday (Aug. 19).
“Just with the prospect of visitors, and more importantly, I think the media being there, there was concern raised by residents that they would appreciate some private time to confront their losses and confront their own grief without television cameras in their face,” Ireland said.
“I think residents, first, will be focused on their own plans to rebuild their homes, their businesses and their lives, and that will be an intensely personal decision for so many of them.”
Road to recovery
The Municipality of Jasper will focus on supporting residents and helping businesses get into a position to eventually reopen, with Ireland saying he hoped the town could welcome visitors in the winter.
“I don't think the town can survive until the spring and early summer without some economy, so I share with Marmot [Basin] and with others a hope that we can be in a position to start up at least a part of our economy by the late fall and in time for a winter season.”
Temporary housing will be required to host the workers needed for the town to function and offer services for tourists.
Ireland said council would receive a report about temporary housing at a future meeting detailing the status of ongoing discussions between all three levels of government.
As for rebuilding Jasper, which has lost close to a third of its structures, Ireland reported that he had been speaking with both provincial and federal politicians about how to have the fastest rebuild possible with appropriate safety measures.
He acknowledged that Jasper was in a multi-jurisdictional environment where Parks Canada has control over land-use planning and development, but he added how he had received assurances from both the federal government and Parks Canada that any barriers to rebuilding would be removed.
“Parks Canada and the federal government are not going to stand in the way of our community rebuilding, and that's for a number of reasons,” he said.
“Firstly, they just wouldn't do that. But secondly, so many of the people who are now without homes in our community are Parks Canada employees, so I think Parks Canada is sensitive to the need to rebuild with a degree of haste that will require some barriers to be removed, and they have undertaken to do that.”
Hope for the future
While many of Jasper’s buildings have disappeared, Ireland said it wouldn’t change the core character of the community, noting that the people and the attitude would return in time.
Although Jasper has a core of long-term residents, it also has many newer residents and a degree of changeover in its resident population.
“And so, for some, they will come and make a home in a new community, and they won't know how different it is from the community that was there,” Ireland said.
“For others, every day they walk down the street, they will notice how things have changed, but overall, long term, we will have a solid, cohesive, functioning community, which will be strong and will get stronger based on the resilience that citizens are demonstrating through this catastrophe.”
The mayor recalled a resident who acknowledged what had been lost but expressed amazement and gratitude that much of the town and its critical infrastructure had been saved, providing a solid foundation for the community to be rebuilt.
“I think that that sense of optimism and hopefulness will become pervasive,” Ireland said.
“I encourage people to cling to that, even though they are in the midst of reckoning with severe loss. There is hope for rebuild. There's ample hope for our community in the future.”
