The Jasper Local October 1, 2020

ALTERNATIVE +

LOCAL + INDEPENDENT

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2020 // ISSUE 174

SPACING OUT // Lada Kvasnicka snapped a self-portrait under the Milky Way at the Hidden Cove campsite on Maligne Lake. Jasper’s Dark Sky Festival runs Oct 16-25. // LADA D PHOTOGRAPHY

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The Jasper Local // ISSUE 174 // THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2020

EDITORIAL //

Local Vocal The harvest is a special time of year.

Every fall, right around this time, Jasperites are digging up their potatoes, carrots and beets—plus whatever else that resourceful gardeners can grow in our relatively inhospitable growing environment.

Members of the wildlife kingdom, of course, are also readying themselves for the cold road ahead, gorging themselves on what’s available so they can survive the long winter.

What’s available in Jasper, however, is much more than what nature intended. Of course I’m talking about the choke cherries, crab apples and mountain ash berries which are bending the branches of local trees all over town. These beautiful and aromatic species are non-native to Jasper National Park and because of the bounty of fruit they produce, they are an attractant to the animals who wouldn’t normally have such a smorgasbord of options available to them.

Black bears, in particular, have become habituated to feeding on the fruit blossoming in residents’ yards and subsequently, Jasper National Park human-wildlife conflict specialists are spending a lot of time dealing with these animals, which year over year display increasingly aggressive behaviour.

We all know by now a fed bear is a dead bear and even more worrying is that the specialists in the field predict that grizzlies could soon adopt a similar pattern of coming into town for fruit.

Old timers around town tend to roll their eyes when this is brought up as an issue. “Wasn’t a problem in my day,” is the common refrain. Let’s remember this is the same community that for decades tolerated bears tipping over garbage cans in every alley until the park instituted more wildlife-safe waste removal practices.

Bears getting into our fruit trees might have a certain nostalgic charm, and certainly there have been countless instances where animals are living in close proximity to us and no one is the wiser. Life in a national park will always mean living with wildlife, and to some extent we simply have to accept the hazards.

But when it comes to aesthetics versus human safety (or aesthetics versus wildlife mortality, if that argument is more persuasive to you), there is something we can do.

Harvest your fruit or remove the darn tree.

Sacrifice the ornamentals and give these bears a better chance at survival.

BOB COVEY // thejasperlocal@gmail.com

Chuckin’ that mattress will cost ya Parks Canada would like to advise Jasper and area residents of charges now in place for the disposal of mattresses at Jasper Transfer Station.

The West Yellowhead Regional Landfill in Hinton introduced a $20 disposal fee for mattresses in 2020, which is being passed along to residential users when they

dispose of mattresses at Jasper Transfer Station.

Also, be advised that commercial operators must dispose of mattresses directly at the West Yellowhead Regional Landfill in Hinton, because Jasper Transfer Station no longer accepts mattresses from commercial operators.

As a premier tourist destination, thousands of mattresses are replaced in Jasper each year, and need to go to the landfill for proper processing.

At this time, only credit or debit are accepted as payment at Jasper Transfer Station.

-Jasper National Park

The Jasper Local //

Jasper’s independent alternative newspaper 780.852.9474 • thejasperlocal.com • po box 2046, jasper ab, t0e

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// LOCAL WILDLIFE

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2020 // ISSUE 174 // The Jasper Local // PAGE A3 LIVING WITH A PURPOSE //Former Jasperite Destanne Norris is promoting her new book which she wrote 15 years after her daughter drowned in the Maligne River.

Norris will be at the Jasper Inn and Grill on October 8 signing copies. // SUBMITTED PHOTOS

Artist reframing loss in new Jasper-based book Destanne Norris has long-known that death is part of living.

However, it’s taken her decades to fully understand that idea.

Norris lost her daughter to a tragic accident in 1995.

Leah was just 19-monthsold when she fell into the Maligne River and was swept away.

“She just got away from our eyes,” Norris said.

For years, Norris was in a dark place. She was lost, tortured by unanswerable questions.

It wasn’t until she started to reframe those questions that Norris was able to start living her life again. No longer would she ask ‘what could I have done?’ Instead, she could ask herself, ‘if Leah was here, how would she want me to be living right now?’

Her answer was: To life’s fullest. She poured herself into her art. Norris is a Vernon, B.C.-based oil

painter known for her depictions of the cosmos and outer space, majestic mountain peaks and wild weather systems. Her works have been featured in public, university and artist-run galleries. It has been collected by the Alberta Foundation of the Arts, Jasper National Park and the Consulate General Japan, among other agencies.

And now, living life to its fullest has given rise to a new project. Norris has written a book about the transformational power of love and loss. The publication of Leah’s Gift represents a point in Norris’ life where she’s finally ready to reveal more of her story.

“This is a story that has been growing inside of me for many years,” she said. “The experience of losing my daughter utterly transformed my life and I hope that in sharing my story I can touch the hearts of others.”

Because grief, of course, isn’t just for death.

“Grief can be for a career, a dream or living relationships,” Norris said.

Regardless of the source of the grief, the process of healing has to take place.

“I had to live it,” she said.

“Until you’ve lived through the nitty gritty you can’t get to a new place.”

She wasn’t alone. Norris’ friends and family in Jasper were critical to her surviving the journey, from the moments after Leah went missing to years later, as Norris gradually gained the tools to reframe her loss.

Now, through her book, she wants to share those tools.

Norris will be launching Leah’s Gift in Jasper on October 8, from 4-6 p.m. at the Inn Grill Restaurant, 98 Geikie Street. For more information about the event or the book, visit destannenorris.com.

B COVEY // thejasperlocal@gmail.com

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The Jasper Local // ISSUE 174 // THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2020

LOCAL CONSERVATION

Opinion: Bad faith by Parks Canada allowed Maligne caribou to fade away By Ben Gadd But in 2002, after the agency’s own studies laid out the plight of the caribou in distressing detail, park superintendent Ron Hooper announced that he was closing the road beyond Medicine Lake from November through April. Hooray!

Well, it has happened. The Maligne caribou herd has been officially declared “extirpated.” No caribou are left in the Maligne Valley.

When I arrived in Jasper in 1980 I began exploring this magnificent watershed. If I got above the treeline in the Bald Hills I nearly always saw caribou. Same when I hiked through the alpine tundra along the Skyline Trail or explored the rugged wilderness valley north of the Opal Hills.

However, Ron was immediately overruled by Ottawa. The road remained open.

In any event I wasn’t using it any longer.

By then I had quit skiing at Maligne. How could anyone who cared about the caribou keep going there in winter? There were other places in the park in which we humans could have our fun. The caribou had no such luxury.

In the cold months I could see lots of caribou tracks in the snowy, lichen-rich forest at the north end of Maligne Lake, where the caribou wintered.

Fast forward to last winter. More people than ever were taking that plowed road to the lake, and the Maligne herd had declined to zero, extirpated by government unwillingness to protect it properly. Incredibly, this happened in a national park, one that is also part of a World Heritage Site.

And I thought nothing of it. Sure, Jasper National Park had caribou. These were classic Canadian Rockies animals. Of course they would be found in the park, even though their numbers were dwindling elsewhere.

They were protected here. Not hunted. Not in danger of losing their habitat to logging and mining.

But ten years later it became clear to me that something was wrong. I was seeing fewer caribou in these places. Why? What was going on?

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE? // Some caribou, such as members of the Tonquin

Yes, there was some predation by wolves and bears. Always had been. The caribou could handle that. No, this was something against which the caribou had little defence.

herd, remain in the far-western and northern areas of Jasper National Park. Author Ben Gadd holds little hope they will survive in the long run. // SIMONE HEINRICH PHOTOGRAPHY

Us. Cross-country skiers, and I was one of them, were barging into those woods around the outlet of Maligne Lake. We didn’t intend to harm the caribou, but we were. They would run from us in the deep snow, using up energy they needed just

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to stay alive through the park’s long, cold winters.

Some of us brought dogs, which were wolves as far as the caribou were concerned, further stressing them out.

In the meantime, real wolves were following the Maligne Road from the Athabasca Valley to the lake. They wouldn’t have been able to get at the caribou in their winter sanctuary without the help of Parks Canada snow plows that kept the road cleared so that we humans could use this critical habitat for recreation.

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In 1992 the Jasper Environmental Association, of which I had been a founding member, proposed a Caribou Conservation Area at the lake.

Central to this idea was closure of the Maligne Road in winter. Parks Canada supported the plan at first, then dropped it.

But wait, there’s more. I have it on good authority that Parks Canada will be ending the minimal conservation measures it had in place to make it look as if it was trying to save the few remaining animals. There’s no need for that now. There are no longer any caribou in the Maligne Valley to save.

Such irony. Such cynicism.

Some caribou remain in the far-western and northern areas of the park. Will they survive?

Probably not. Their numbers are too low.

Given the agency’s bad faith at Maligne, plus the constant intentional growth in park visitation, plus threats to these animals when they move beyond park boundaries, I don’t hold out hope for them.

And here’s the kicker, the thing that really hurts me the most. Of all the caribou in the Rocky Mountains, the Maligne herd was the only one that stayed within national and provincial parks year-round—that is to say, this was the only herd whose habitat was fully protected under the law.

Everywhere else the skiers and snowmobilers and loggers and drillers and miners and road-builders had been getting pretty much anything they wanted, all at the expense of the natural world.

These caribou had a chance against us. And in one way or another, we wiped them out. ______________________________________ Can Parks Canada be saved from the commercial exploitation and political interference that have cost the Maligne herd its existence? Ben Gadd thinks it can. Read his essay Saving the National Parks from Politicians on his website, www.bengadd.com, under “Essays and lectures.”

BEN GADD // info@thejasperlocal.com

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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2020 // ISSUE 174 // The Jasper Local // PAGE B2

LOCAL ARTS

Visual artist is jack of all trades, master of nun Michael Flisak has a propensity for puns.

Don’t be embarrassed—he’s certainly not. The Jasper visual artist has come too far, lived too many lives and created too many art projects and pieces to start worrying about what others think now.

“For a long time I’ve questioned the whole idea of seriousness,” he said while in his garage-based studio recently. “I like to sit between the definition of things.”

Flisak, long-known in Jasper for his highly technical style which has bounced between figurative and abstract disciplines, is once again setting out to put a fresh perspective on both as he prepares for his current art project. On October 5 he will bring a massive, unfinished canvass to the Jasper Art Gallery where, in full view of the visiting public and fellow artists, he will tie together all of the components and elements that have inspired him thus far.

And there have been a lot of them.

“I started to think of 40 bad habits,” he said. “And that spurred all these crazy nun puns.”

Yes, you heard that right. Nun puns.

Flisak is riffing—in his own offthe-wall, yet disciplined way—on members of a religious community who live under vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

Here’s the thing: it works. Once you see Flisak’s nun ninjas, nuns on horses and nuns on unicycles living and

moving within the larger context of the painting; once you allow yourself—like he clearly has—to have fun with it; the project takes on an experimental, avant-garde character that, particularly in the Jasper artist scene, feels like a fresh dunk in the river.

“I like mountains too, but there’s so much more out there,” he says.

Four-and-a-half decades ago, as an 18-year-old, Flisak was figuring out there was more out there than what he’d experienced thus far in Simpco, Ontario. He moved to Jasper and, although he flirted with a dangerous scene, ended up saving himself by diving headlong into art.

His revelation, of sorts, came after he took a bet that he couldn’t bike across Canada. When he made it to Southern Ontario—and subsequently made another long cycle journey from Jasper to California—Flisak started to find out who he really was.

“You have to give yourself permission to do what you want. You have to accept that it’s right in you.”

“All that time watching the wheel turn, the lines going underneath you and the freedom of no one knowing who you are helped me listen to my guiding voice,” he said.

That voice led him to art school in

PABLO PICASSO MEETS GARY LARSON // Artist Michael Flisak will bring his unfinished canvasses to the Jasper Art Gallery on October 5 where he will hang them on the Project Wall, a large space designed to give the viewing public insight into the artists’ process.

Flisak, known locally for his avant-garde style, will be there all month. // BOB COVEY

Victoria, where, ironically, he found he was a natural at teaching. And the guiding voice has helped him remain confident in his art creations—even when the work he was producing looked nothing like that of his colleagues’.

“You have to give yourself permission to do what you want,” he said. “You have to accept that it’s right in you.”

That confidence is what will help him bring his current project to a point where it’s ready to go onto JAG’s project wall, where he will work on it until its completion, sometime

near the end of October. Having his process on display to members of the public and other artists doesn’t frighten him at this stage, he said.

Rather, he seeks that feedback to “expand his vocabulary.”

“It’s not so much what you paint but how you paint it,” he said.

In that vein, the experience of watching his project come together will be instructive, but the end result—a piece of art that “sits between the definition of things”—is sure to be fascinating…nuntheless.

BOB COVEY // thejasperlocal@gmail.com

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The Jasper Local // ISSUE 174 // THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2020

FEATURE // LOCAL HISTORY // PHOTOS BY PARKS CANADA

LIFE IS BUT A DREAM:

Reaping the rewards of the magical, mystical Tonquin Vall

BY BOB COVEY

Amethyst Lake occupies a special spot in many an anglers’ dreams.

Guarded by 9,000 foot peaks, a 20km hike and, for most of the fishing season, anyway, legions of murderous mosquitos, simply getting to this jewel of Jasper National Park can be an epic endeavour of logistics, legwork and luck.

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Even if one manages to book the time off, trundle up the rugged Tonquin Valley trail system and put themselves in position to rig BROOKIE OF THE YEAR their rod under // Evan Olthof caught and released this the towering Amethyst Lake brute. // Ramparts, DOUG OLTHOF wicked winds and generally inhospitable mountain weather can quickly cause a fishing trip to go belly up.

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huge rainbow and brook trout, yet the location is remote enough to ensure the quality of fishing remains high,” Ambrosi wrote.

To a die-hard angler, those words are nothing less than hypnotic.

On September 25 I was entranced once again as I ambled alongside the Astoria River, images of tail-walking rainbow trout and bull-dogging brookies dancing through my head.

I had been invited to help mark the

Over the years, I myself have had a handful of expeditions to the Amethyst Lake holy lands, but like most fishing trips which are conceived with images of cloudless skies, waveless waters, ravenous trout and rods bent-double all day, those journeys ultimately failed to live up to my own dilated expectations. Experienced fisherfolk know that success comes with time on the water and for that reason it was probably unrealistic for me, having precious little of that particular asset in that particular corner of the park, to expect the type of orgasmic angling victories exhibited on the covers of Field and Stream—or boasted about on the bench outside Jasper’s local fly shop.

Still, every time I set off under a heavy pack towards the Tonquin Valley, my mind couldn’t help but recall Joey Ambrosi’s description of the fishery in his 2001 guide to Fishing the Canadian Rockies: “The sparkling waters are home to

and at night, after rec and lows of our day, confines of the camp cabins? We would be alerts, appointments of everyday life; our i cleared for figuring o of Amethyst Lake: w how deep to troll them, what areas to focus on and who or what to blame if your bunk mate happens to out-duel you.

MERRILY, MERRIL Mimi Ferron had t most experience a right attitude to fi most fish of the w end. // MITCH HAM

end of a friend’s run as a bachelor, and where better to do so than at the Tonquin Valley Adventures camp, where we could ply ourselves with intoxicating food and drink, have at our disposal a flotilla of rowboats,

If, on Friday, I was worried about a fishl working my way up t trail—the forested co giving way to riversc before revealing a dr

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ley

calling the highs retire to the cozy p’s rustic, restful e far away from the s and obligations itineraries were out the intricacies which lures to use,

r r

Ramparts—I needn’t have been. No sooner had my derby partner and I let out enough line from our shared reel (one of us rowed while the other fished) did the rod start to twitch violently with the unmistakeable tug of a trout.

As we laughed a mixture of joy (him) and relief (myself), we looked across

RAINBOW COUNTRY // Bright and beautiful trout like this one are plentiful at Amethyst Lake. // DOUG OLTHOF

LY...// the and the find the weekAMM

“The sparkling waters are home to huge rainbow and brook trout, yet the location is remote enough to ensure the quality of fishing remains high.”

less weekend while the well-travelled orridor variously capes and rockslides ramatic view of the

the bay to see our friends and fellow anglers also fighting a fish.

The wordless exchange we shared across the water would be the first of many: with a shrug and a smile we all silently agreed that the setting, the company and the sport was nothing short of spectacular, and our only responsibility this trip would

be to soak in every second.

Before dawn that day, while the early risers among us slurped coffee and blinked away the heavy slumber brought on by second helpings of mushroom risotto and two-toomany drams of whiskey, there came a disconcerting sound from outside.

The wind turbine which helps give the lodge its electrical power was suddenly whirring loudly.

As if in confirmation, the trees surrounding the boardwalk were now bowing to the clouds, which raced above. Of all the elements which could sour a fishing trip, strong winds were the most threatening. We could dress for cold and rain, but fighting whitecaps in a small craft on a glacier-fed lake in the middle of alpine wilderness would be exposing ourselves to a risk we weren’t comfortable with—not to mention it would make the requisite on-water gloating and chiding nearly impossible.

Again, however, the stag party gods were looking out for us. As we launched our aluminum boats into Amethyst Lake’s crystalline STAGS, NOT SNAGS// waters, the gales After his bachelor party went so well, Mitch died down. The Hamm is now considerclouds continued ing buying his fiancé a to drift in and fine piece of jewellery: the mighty Five of Diaout, and at one monds. // BOB COVEY point we had snow pellets bouncing off our Goretex jackets, but the waters remained calm.

The eight of us, on the other hand, were anything but, as we spent the next several hours whooping with joy as we brought big, bright, powerful fish to hand in a place described by Russell Thornberry and the late Peter Grimwood as “the greatest trout fishing in Jasper Park.”

Our angling dreams had come true.

BOB COVEY // thejasperlocal@gmail.com

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The Jasper Local // ISSUE 174 // THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2020

LOCAL DINING

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LOCAL WILDLIFE

DON’T PANIC, IT’S ORGANIC // Simultaneously curious, brave and skittish, picas, marmots and pine squirrels are getting it while the getting’s good, these days.// SIMONE HEINRICH

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2020 // ISSUE 174 // The Jasper Local // PAGE B6

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