The Jasper Local August 15, 2021

ALTERNATIVE +

LOCAL + INDEPENDENT

SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 2021 // ISSUE 194

CHASING WATERFALLS // Jasper climber Sarah Ray making her way out of Ogre Canyon, east of JNP. // CONNOR PASE

thejasperlocal.com

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The Jasper Local // ISSUE 194 // SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 2021

EDITORIAL //

Local Vocal “No comment.” “Can’t speak to that.”

“Waiting on approval for comment.”

Journalists are used to getting the run-around when it comes to asking governments and corporations questions about controversial policies or decisions that affect the public interest. But that doesn’t make the practice right.

The latest cone of silence we’ve been subjected to has been around an extremely contentious plan to harvest mature forest right out from underneath the threatened A La Peche caribou herd, near Highway 40 in the Berland River (Grande Cache) area. After enough pestering, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry finally emailed us their responses to our questions, but once you filter out the bureaucratic baffle-gap and screen the message for selfcongratulatory talking points it’s hard to take the rhetoric for anything more than that: rhetoric.

To extend a little benefit-of-the-doubt, this is a complex issue with multiple stakeholders and I sympathize with a press secretary trying to get approval from his overlords. However, it would be so much easier to cut to the chase and talk directly to the people responsible for the decisions.

At least the GOA called us back, which is something the applicants of this regressive Forest Harvest Plan, West Fraser-Hinton, couldn’t bring themselves to do. It seems to me the company is attempting to do a snatch-andgrab of 3,500 hectares of timber before in-the-works caribou recovery plans can be implemented. If that’s not the case, I’d love to hear it from West Fraser themselves but every phone call and email has gone unanswered.

This company may have the right to harvest their Forest Management Agreement, but do they have the right to wipe out threatened woodland caribou and Athabasca Rainbow Trout habitat? Their silence is telling.

Same goes for another group that, in my previous experience, was pretty good about talking to the press. Jasper’s Planning and Development Advisory Committee recently recommended approving three significant variances for a proposed 144-bed apartment complex on Connaught Drive. Could members of the board tell a newspaper asking on behalf of the very public they purport to represent why they thought those variances should be allowed? No. Why not? Because Parks Canada said so. “That’s the way the cookie crumbles,” PDAC chair John Gamblin told me. Oof. I would argue that’s actually the way democracy crumbles.

When members of a public committee, or a corporation razing crown land timber, or a democratically-elected government won’t speak openly and honestly to the media about their policies and decisions, there’s clearly not enough accountability built into the system.

The thing is, there is, but if you don’t use it, you lose it.

If Albertans want action on issues they care about, it’s apparent they’re going to have to take it themselves.

Write your representatives. They should be asking for our approval, not the other way around.

BOB COVEY // thejasperlocal@gmail.com

Re: Variances approved for large scale apartment complex

While Parks Canada continues to hit Jasper homeowners over the head with regulations in their homes, when it comes to the rich, they bend over and grant them variances the likes of which we’ve never seen.

Truly disgraceful.

This despicable display

by Parks Canada to bend and break their own regulations at the expense of Jasper families, long established residents and long term tenants,

deserves a closer look.

One of the variances granted was a “significant roof height variance.” A “five storey” complex is a significant height increase from code. Other local businesses and homeowners should take note. Can of worms… opened.

The second variance granted is a “21 percent reduction in required parking,” from 159 to 125. Does anyone think that Parks Canada, or

the stakeholders, care that parking will expand onto residential streets?

The third variance is allowing “15 per cent smaller units,” hence the term “microapartments.” Who came up with this term? Was this a term created to allow the variance?

Another question is why the PDAC chair is not allowed to discuss a meeting that was open to members of the // LETTER CONT ON A3

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// LOCAL HEALTHCARE

SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 2021 // ISSUE 194 // The Jasper Local // PAGE A3

POWER MARCH // Jasper nurses were joined by other healthcare unions on Wednesday, August 11 to show solidarity ahead of upcoming contract negotiations. // NICOLE COVEY

Nurses rally ahead of contract talks Nurses are feeling the love from Albertans as they prepare to enter into contract negotiations with the provincial government.

Local healthcare workers received applause, cheers and car-honks as they marched through the streets of Jasper August 11, demonstrating to their employer that they won’t stand for proposed roll backs they say will make their job less safe, less valued and less likely to attract new team members.

“There’s a long history of

being understaffed and going through the pandemic has made things much worse,” said Jasper’s Rachel Gaudry, president of the United Nurses of Alberta, Local 75.

Gaudry said healthcare centres across the province are struggling to keep beds open.

“Nurses are burnt out, they’re leaving the profession and there aren’t enough nurses to do the job,” she said.

Negotiations with the government are imminent.

The province’s opening position is to roll back

wages by what amounts to five per cent. Gaudry said the rallies across the province on August 11 shows nurses are prepared to fight back.

“It was a good morale boost,” she said. “It shows we can come together, organize and stand up for what needs to be done.”

Gaudry urged Jasperites to call or write their MLA (Martin Long) or the Health Minister (Tyler Shandro) to demonstrate their support for Alberta nurses.

BOB COVEY // thejasperlocal@gmail.com

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// LETTER CONT. FROM A2

public? “PDAC chairperson John Gamblin said he is not allowed to discuss the details of the (public) meeting with the media.” I don’t understand John. Please, do tell.

The stakeholder, Mr. Bowen, comes right out and says that he doesn’t give a hoot about parking in Jasper. “Parking anywhere in Jasper is a nightmare,” he was quoted. The lack of self-awareness in Mr Bowen’s statement is startling. If he is the developer’s spokesperson, he certainly isn’t doing his fellow stakeholders

any favours.

apartment complex.

But here’s the thing: The most important stakeholders in this town, young families, have been ignored by Parks Canada for decades. Because Parks stopped issuing tourist-rental licenses, many young families can no longer rent tourist rooms to help pay off their mortgages. Young families require affordable housing and families who wait on a Co-Op housing list for years are told to be patient. And yet Parks Canada approves a 144 “micro”

Here’s a suggestion, Parks Canada. How about turning that Megaplex Apartment grift into BUILDING MORE COOPS so families have a chance to own their own home and live in this beautiful town?

And finally, kudos to Helen Schwarz for fighting back. Tip of the hat to you.

Sincerely, - Jim Mannella, Jasper

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The Jasper Local // ISSUE 194 // SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 2021

LOCAL ENVIRONMENT

Clearcutting plans threaten winter range of A La Peche caribou A Hinton-based logging company is planning to clearcut critical habitat of threatened caribou and through its inaction on promised subregional plans, the Alberta government is standing idly by.

Forestry could not respond to emailed questions in time for our print deadline. Their response will be reported in our online version of this story.

A recent Forest Harvest Plan (FHP) submitted by the Edson and Hinton Woodlands Division of West Fraser threatens the winter range of the A La Peche caribou herd. According to West Fraser’s plans, 54 planned cutblocks exist fully or overlap partially within caribou zones.

West Fraser Forest Planners also did not return calls or emails.

Conservation groups including the Alberta Wilderness Association are asking the Government of Alberta to defer new cutblocks in the six per cent of West Fraser’s tenure that fall within this critical habitat.

“You’d be hard pressed to think of a worse place to clearcut in Alberta right now,” said Carolyn Campbell, AWA’s conservation director.

The area in question is adjacent to Highway 40, near the Wilmore Wilderness Park border and abutting a tributary of the Berland River. The mature forest to be razed is not only critical habitat for the threatened A La Peche southern mountain caribou population but shelters a key spawning stream for endangered Athabasca Rainbow Trout.

“There shouldn’t be logging in that small part of West Fraser’s Forest

The harvest plan was brought to the AWA’s attention by two concerned trappers in the area. Speaking to The Jasper Local, Darcy Handy said he sounded the alarm not only because the proposed clearcut is in important habitat but because NOW YOU SEE THEM...// A La Peche caribou in the middle of a 2013 clearcut. This threatened herd winters in rangelands currently being submitted for harvest. // JOHN E MARRIOTT the practice completely undermines Alberta’s government in lieu of facing a habitat own efforts to protect caribou from protection order from the federal predators. The province’s 16-years“You’d be hard pressed to think government, are due this year. Logging and-counting predator management of a worse place to clearcut in 3,500 hectares of mature forest here strategy is itself a controversial, Alberta right now.” rather than elsewhere in the FMA problematic policy which leaves an before those plans come into effect will entire ecosystem of wildlife by-kill in Management Agreement (FMA) compromise efforts to plan for caribou its wake as strychnine-laced wolf bait until we’ve figured out a clear path recovery, Campbell said. sites are scavenged by wolverines, lynx, for caribou’s survival and recovery,” “We were counting on the range ravens and even grizzly bears. Handy Campbell said. plans to deliver on the integrated land has seen the local wildlife population The Alberta government has promised use that would assure survival and around his historic trapper’s cabin to create and implement subregional recovery of this species, as well as the wiped out because of the strychnine land use plans for areas where the A livelihoods of communities,” Campbell policy, so when he saw the proposal La Peche and Little Smoky caribou said. to harvest mature forest only two herds call home. Those plans, which The Ministry of Agriculture and // STORY CONTINUES ON NEXT PAGE // were agreed to by the provincial

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SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 2021 // ISSUE 194 // The Jasper Local // PAGE B2

LOCAL ENVIRONMENT

Concerned trappers sound the alarm on province’s conservation hypocrisy // STORY CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE //

kilometres from known bait-sites, he felt compelled to speak up.

“It flies in the face of reason,” Handy said. “They’ve been doing these lastresort efforts to save the herd, why approve clearcutting an area of this magnitude?”

The logging will compromise other expensive caribou recovery work, such as reclaiming seismic lines and access roads. Fellow trapper Shane Ramstead, who before retirement worked as an Alberta fish and wildlife officer for 37 years, said he and Handy aren’t eco-warriors, they simply want to see an end to such bungled forest management.

“We don’t have an axe to grind, we’re just looking for a common sense, balanced approach,” said Ramstead, who in 2017 was recognized as the North American Wildlife Officer of the Year.

2017 was also the year that the province laid out a vision for protecting caribou in Alberta, including a commitment to create integrated land-use plans that would not only bear in mind the needs of caribou but also help industry seeking regulatory certainty plan their future activities.

With the exception of two draft subregional plans in Alberta’s farnorth, however, those plans still haven’t been created and the AWA says

time is running out for Alberta’s caribou. The A La Peche move into Jasper National Park and Wilmore in the summer, but in the winter, they migrate to public lands in the Grande Cache area.

“These lands have been exploited by forestry and energy, it’s not right for us to wipe these caribou out because of poorlymanaged cumulative impacts,” Campbell said.

It’s not like Alberta doesn’t have direction on these plans.

A 2016 document released by the Government of Canada provides guidance to provinces in the development of range plans for caribou recovery. One of the document’s goals is to ensure a minimum of 65 per cent undisturbed habitat. As of 2017, however, only 12 per cent of the A La Peche caribou’s winter habitat was undisturbed, and industrial activities have continued. West Fraser’s plans to log right up to the boundary of Wilmore Wilderness Park would reduce that percentage even further.

“This herd is the most threatened woodland caribou herd in the country,” Ramstead said. “This should be the last one you log.”

BOB COVEY // thejasperlocal@gmail.com

Map detailing imminent proposed cutblocks in Berland River/Moon Creek area. // SUPPLIED BY ALBERTA WILDERNESS ASSOCIATION

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The Jasper Local // ISSUE 194 // SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 2021

STORY BY BOB COVEY // PHOTOS BY KODIAK MORASKY

Hunkered down on a flat rock high above Dolomite Pass in Banff National Park, I dig through my pack and locate my cheap pair of Bushnells.

Chomping a sandwich and glassing the surrounding mountains, I see scramblers making their way up nearby Cirque Peak. A group of backpackers tramp through the meadows, their hiking poles clicking on the trail.

Somewhere in the rubble below me, picas sound their urgent alarms and overhead, clouds are piling up. Just when the cumuli threaten to darken, however, the clouds move on, allowing scattershot beams of sunlight to burn through and highlight my destination, 500 metres or so down a glacier-scraped slope.

Long and narrow, nestled beneath the rugged crags of Dolomite Peak, I’ve been dreaming about Katherine Lake since last week, when I hastily cobbled together plans to visit the area with a group of people I’d never met before.

The internet’s fickleness didn’t disappoint, for despite the grand ambitions of those showing interest in coming along, I am by myself today. That’s ok. As I scan the shoreline intently, I soon find what I’m after. Few things are more promising to a person alone in the backcountry

This year, however, Helen Lake is devoid of rise ripples.

In August of 2020, Parks Canada biologists used a fishspecific toxicant called rotenone to rid Helen Lake of brook trout, an effort to reverse the now-out-of-vogue fish stocking programs of decades past and subsequently reintroduce genetically-pure, native species to connecting streams. Some anglers call the fish kill blasphemy, a righteous and exorbitant initiative that deprives anglers of an experience that helps foster national park stewardship.

BNP aquatics specialist Shelley Humphries, on the other hand, calls it restoration.

“Westslope cutthroat are probably occupying less than 10 per cent of their historic distribution,” Humphries said in an interview with The Jasper Local last year.

Hybridization with introduced fish, along with being outcompeted, has depleted the westslope gene pool.

For the most part, stocked rainbow trout are doing the hybridizing in the Bow River drainage but there’s another culprit that, after seven decades of spawning in Canada’s mountain parks, has mixed with the natives: the Yellowstone cutthroat.

Yellowstone cutthroat are prized as gamefish. Because they feed primarily on insects as adults (unlike brown trout, for example, which are more piscivorous), they are

Calgary angler Kodiak Morasky also got to Katherine Lake before the fish kill. // SUPPLIED

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“Westslope cutthroat are probably occupying less than 10 per cent of their historic distribution.”

with a fishing rod than the tell-tale rings of fish rising.

The sun glints off the expanding ripples and I wink back.

Shouldering my pack, I practically sprint to the lake.

Last summer, I could have gone through a similar routine while peering down at this popular trail’s namesake.

If there were insects hatching or being blown onto the surface of Helen Lake, surely I could have spotted the odd rise of an Eastern Brook Trout, a red and green-speckled non-native sportfish beloved by anglers over for its beauty, fighting strength and willingness to take a lure or fly.

particularly sporting for fly anglers. And as I had just witnessed through my binoculars, Katherine Lake was full of them.

As I stare intently at my casted-out fly, its yellow fibres barely discernible in the glare of the midday sun, I raise more than a couple eyebrows among the Gortex-clad family hiking out of the Dolomite Valley. Soon enough, however, the presentation is raising the interest of an even more colourful character; the dark snout of a cutthroat pierces the surface of the water. In my excitement I strike too early and miss the take. A curse word echoes around the natural amphitheatre and I see the pre-teen hiker heading up the boot-beaten path crane his neck in wonder. Had he stuck around, he might have seen the next fish stick to my tiny hook. No matter, it’s just myself and the cutties today. Normally if I have the honour of landing such a special fish in such a special place I’d go through a ritual of thanks before releasing it back to its

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Last angler on Katherine Lake Stocked fish poisoned to protect native trout in Banff’s high alpine Story by Bob Covey // Photos by Kodiak Morasky

aqueous home. Since Parks Canada staff will be here tomorrow with their rotenone, however, I use my hiking pole to bonk the 16-inch trout between the eyes.

“It’s either today or tomorrow, fella,” I mumble before wrapping it in wet grass.

It wasn’t until the 1970s that Parks Canada began

to look at trout habitat through a naturalist lens and the fulsome stocking programs of the past became passé. Fish hatcheries in Banff, Jasper and Waterton were decommissioned as the agency wanted to leave waterbodies in their natural state. The problem, of course, was that the damage had been done. Brook trout in particular didn’t get the memo that policy change was afoot. “[Park managers] were definitely trying to leave space for native fish but by the time they made that decision it was kind of too late for some of them,” Humphries said.

Fifty years or so later, depending on your point of view, those wrongs are being righted. On August 9, the day after I landed seven magnificent Yellowstone cutthroat and lost a half dozen more in one of the most spectacular valleys I’ve ever had the pleasure of casting a fly, aquatics specialists were dripping rotenone into Katherine Lake. Rotenone, a toxicant that originates from a tropical bean plant and which indigenous people from French Guiana have traditionally used to harvest fish, doesn’t affect mammals or birds and because its active compound is broken down by sunlight, water and turbulence, it does not remain in the water. Still, to facilitate the restoration operation, Parks Canada closed the Helen Lake/Dolomite Pass area to the public for nearly two weeks (in effect until August 22), enforcing a no-stopping zone at the trailhead and warning that anyone contravening these measures could be hit with a $25,000 fine.

If that seems severe, Parks Canada has said it takes its mandate to protect and restore ecological integrity very seriously. The nostopping zone is in place to ensure road safety around waters that are being neutralized, the agency said in a press release. Park users

familiar with the rotenone process will know that as a result of the neutralizing agent, the affected waters temporarily turn pink—a tourist jam waiting to happen if there ever was one.

As an angler, knowing that Katherine Lake’s Yellowstone cuts are a thing of the past is disheartening, to be sure. I can think of few better ways to introduce my young kids to the richness of the outdoors than by casting to willing fish surrounded by protected wilderness. But then I think of the issues faced by the westslope cutthroat, a species that survived over millennia only to be persecuted to near-extinction in the last 100 years (their current status in Alberta is threatened) by habitat destruction, over-harvesting and mishandling, and I know there’s…(ahem) bigger fish to fry.

Alberta is home to some of the most abundant trout angling opportunities in the world. We can spend a lifetime lamenting the loss of stocked waters in our national parks, but unless we start paying attention to big picture threats such as coal mining, clearcutting and road building for the fossil fuel industry, there will come a day when, no matter how intently we scan the shoreline, no rises will appear.

________________________________ BOB COVEY

// thejasperlocal@gmail.com

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The Jasper Local // ISSUE 194 // SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 2021

LOCAL DEVELOPMENT

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SUNDAY, AUGUST 15, 2021 // ISSUE 194 // The Jasper Local // PAGE B6

LOCAL IN MEMORIUM

Trail-blazing senior was an inspiration to all generations In the hills you may have seen her, But she’s not your normal senior, She’ll ski circles ‘round ’til you don’t know your name.

Old Pat Bell was an engineer, Of perfect wax anytime of year, There she goes just step out of her way.

-From “The Ballad of Old Pat Bell,”

by John Bell (2021) _____________________________________ Iconic athlete, nurse and trail ambassador, Jasper’s Pat Bell passed away peacefully on July 31, 2021. Pat was 95-years-old.

In a community known for its active residents, Pat Bell may well have been Jasper’s cycling, skiing and hiking matriarch, although it’s likely she would have shunned the very idea.

“Lots of people ride their bikes in Jasper,” she said in 2010 when this interviewer asked how the then-84-year-old kept up such a rigorous fitness routine.

Pat Bell was an original. After graduating at the top of her class as a Registered Nurse in 1947, she and her husband Charles eventually made their way to Jasper in 1961.

But married life was not for Pat Bell. In 1969, recently divorced and living by her new mantra “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle,” she discovered a new life in the mountains. Pat soon became a familiar face on the trails and mountain passes in Jasper National Park and next door Mount Robson Provincial Park. She backpacked, camped, hiked and rode her bike in the summer and cross-country skied in the winter.

“I just like to be out there alone,” she said in 2010.

She wasn’t always alone, of course. Many Jasperites have fond memories of hiking with Pat, but her

NOT YOUR AVERAGE SENIOR// Pat Bell coming back from another big ride in 2015. // BOB COVEY - JASPER LOCAL FILE PHOTO

frequent solo trips were what turned the heads of so many fellow trail users, particularly because her advancing years never slowed her down.

“In your declining years you have to keep moving,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what you do,

but keep moving.”

Pat Bell kept moving. Maligne Lake and the Bald Hills; Mount Edith Cavell and the Cavell Meadows. Skyline Trail. The Tonquin Valley.

Mount Robson. Berg Lake. These were the places where she was in her rhythm. As she got older, Pat put down the heavy pack in favour of her road bike, often cycling to Athabasca Falls (a 70km out-and-back), where she’d be spotted eating her lunch.

“Biking is just such a nice way to get exercise,” she said.

Pat Bell explored the world outside of Jasper in her early retirement years, ski touring in Norway, hiking in Nepal, touring the Galapagos Islands and visiting Peru’s Machu Picchu. Off the trail she could be found at the Jasper-Yellowhead Museum and Archives, where she dedicated herself to preserving local history.

News of Pat Bell’s passing has travelled quickly through the community of Jasper and hundreds of those who have been touched by her spirit have reached out to express their sympathies to the Bell family. Adjectives such as “vibrant,” “inspiring,” “tenacious,” “adventurous” and “legendary” are being used to describe Pat. She is being called a role model, a treasure, a foundation and a source of Jasper pride.

In 2010, after biking to the west gate and back, Pat was asked if she ever concerns herself with having an accident, a too-close wildlife encounter or equipment issues while out adventuring by herself. In her forthright, fiery fashion, Pat dismissed the idea.

“If you start worrying about it, you won’t go,” she said.

Pat always went. And now she’s gone again.

Happy Trails, Pat Bell.

BOB COVEY // thejasperlocal@gmail.com

ay - !

D t 7 Firs mber te Sep

WE’VE GOT THIS! Jasper Elementary School (JK-6) French Immersion (FRIM) & English Programs Principal: Eric Bouchard ............780.852.4447 Jasper Junior/Senior High School (7-12) French Immersion (FRIM) & English Programs/ Virtual Options Principal: Mark Crozier ..............780.852.3316

QUESTIONS OFTEN ASKED ABOUT THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL Q. When are schools open in August to register my children?

A. Families can register online for school on the website at any time.

As of Monday, August 23rd, school staff are also ready to assist.

Q. What special services are provided by GYPSD? A. GYPSD’s inclusive education system builds upon students’ strengths to achieve their fullest potential using targeted and specialized supports to meet their individual needs. Families should contact their school principal to learn more.

Q. Does GYPSD offer Alternative Programming?

A. Yes. Through Campus GYPSD, you can access Learn-at-Home Distance Education, Parent-led Home Education, or Hybrid programming options. Speak to your principal!

Q. Do we need to still self-screen for health symptoms every day?

A. Although it is not mandatory, we ask that all staff, children/students, visitors, and volunteers who will access the school for work or education, to self-screen for symptoms each day before they leave for school if they are not feeling well. This helps to keep everyone healthy and well! If they answer yes to any of the questions, they are asked to stay at home until they are feeling better.

EARLY LEARNING OPTIONS AT GYPSD GYPSD is proud to offer a diverse range of play-based learning options for children to thrive and grow in a nurturing and welcoming environment. Each school offers unique programs for 3 1/2 to 5 year olds; from part-time to full-time options.

Spaces are limited and available on a first-come, first-serve basis.

NEW! For the 2021/2022 school year, the Municipality of

Jasper and GYPSD is proud to offer before and after school care at Jasper Elementary - please contact the school for more information.

Education Services Centre 3656 1st Avenue, Edson AB T7E 1S8 Phone (780) 723.4471 or Toll Free at 1 (800) 723.2564 Visit us at www.gypsd.ca or Like us on facebook.com/gypsd