“Everything’s connected—the oceans, the atmosphere, our glaciers, our rivers.”

Bob Sandford

Despite its name, Our Vanishing Glaciers, an exhibition about water security and climate change and which is currently showing at the Jasper Yellowhead Museum and Archives (JYMA), is about hope.

The exhibition was inspired by the book of the same name by Robert Sandford, one of Canada’s most respected mountain historians and experts on water.

Sandford’s book is about climate change. But rather than trigger a sense of doom for the melting ice masses, the author inspires a sense of awe for what glaciers represent.

“A shudder runs through your soul as you realize, suddenly, what an ice age really means. That is the feeling I want readers to take away from this book,” he said. 

Through science and art—and thanks to a unique collaboration between Sandford, Mountain Galleries, Guardians of the Ice and the JYMA—such an epiphany is possible without even having to put on crampons or glacier goggles. Our Vanishing Glaciers is still showing at the JYMA’s Showcase Gallery—but after October 2, it…vanishes. 

Nine works were curated by Mountain Galleries owner and arts promoter, Wendy Wacko, for the exhibition. Artist Randy Hayashi’s depiction of the Columbia Icefields is one of them.

Hayashi is honoured to have one of his pieces in the exhibition. He remembers being awed by the scale of the Columbia Icefields when visiting the Athabasca Glacier with his family as a young boy.

“I was enthralled,” Hayashi said. “I was curious, but also a bit scared. I remember all the water rushing down.”

Hayashi’s boyhood concern wasn’t necessarily for the state of the shrinking glaciers, but today, as a professional artist who is drawn to the raw beauty along the Icefields Parkway, he can’t help but notice the rapid changes in the landscapes he’s become used to documenting. One of his favourite places to hike and photograph, and to then later capture with his paintbrush, is Wilcox Pass, near the boundary of Jasper and Banff National Parks.

“I’m drawn to that area,” he said. “It’s got a magnetic pull.”

For visitors and residents interested in the magnitude and the importance of the glaciers along the continental divide, Our Vanishing Glaciers will surely draw them into the Jasper Museum.

The exhibition runs until October 2.

-with files from a 2018 Jasper Local article: A glacial epiphany for the everyman: Sandford wins science writing prize 

Bob Covey // bob@thejasperlocal.com