The sky was mauve, a pale bluish purple. A colour you only see in winter. Mauve, the colour of cold. This was the night the temperature was forecast to hit minus 30 degrees Celsius.  As we struggled up from the valley the forecast seemed spot on.     I caught the smell of woodsmoke and figured our b...

Jasper students helped ensure that No Stone was Left Alone in Jasper’s cemetery recently. On November 7, with the help of Jasper’s Royal Canadian Legion, more than three dozen young people from Jasper Jr./Sr. High School helped keep alive the memories of men and women who served their country in uni...

A new exhibition in the Jasper Yellowhead Museum and Archives (JYMA) details the complex history of the Ukrainian diaspora living in Jasper. Ukrainians in Jasper: Past and Present, is a reflection on the circle of life, shared history, and cultural and community values of Ukrainians in Jasper. The w...

Hopping from rock to rock, our laden backpacks jostling uncomfortably, the trail finally disappeared in a backwater channel of Jasper National Park’s Whirlpool River.  We gave up trying to keep our feet dry and simply waded in. On the Athabasca Pass Trail in Jasper National Park. // Tania Millen Sud...

Skiers, horseback riders and hikers lose out; backcountry lodges forced into disrepair Riding across Maccarib Pass into the Tonquin Valley feels like passing through a mist-filled portal into Narnia, a magical place populated by mythical creatures, including grizzly bears, wolverines and endangered ...

This story originally appeared in the March 1, 2020 edition of The Jasper Local . Author’s note: If any names have been changed, it’s to spare the blushes of Jasper’s stolid citizens. Those who dream by night . . . wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous...

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation is still being studied, but high water events in the Rockies offer clues Medicine Lake has breached its banks for the fourth year in a row. To visitors, the event is an interesting but perhaps unremarkable sight on their tour of many Rockies waterbodies. To kayakers i...

Forest grove transplanting project uncovers relics of human settlement in community greenspace Jasperites came together to transplant a forest grove on Jasper’s storied Snapes Hill May 14, while at the same time, clues of the area’s human history were excavated by the town’s very own mayor. Communit...

Scottish weather greeted early-season golfers but a week after opening day (which was May 7), members and guests saw that last winter’s insulating snowfall has helped make course conditions at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge Golf Course as good as they’ve been in decades. Ranked consistently as Numbe...

A local resident wants to revitalize an overlooked part of Jasper’s history. More than a century after the steel ties of the Grand Truck Pacific Railway were spiked into the valley bottom west of Jasper, Danny Frechette wants to celebrate the most historic piece of land in the Jasper townsite: Snape...

Dwain Wacko remembers clearly his father cleaning out the “clinkers”—the parts of the coal that won’t burn—from the old boilers of the original Chaba Theatre. The memory stretches back 69 years, but it’s there. It was 1953, and Wacko was three-years-old. It’s his first memory of The Chaba Theatre—it...

When Len Morissette was given the chance to produce and direct a documentary that would tell the complicated, calamitous story of the Aseniwuche Winewak Nation (AWN), he had a variety of reactions. “I was honoured, but I was also scared,” the 43-year-old Grande Prairie-based filmmaker said. Tasked w...

How can we recognize you if we don’t know who you are? This was the message received by members of the Aseniwuche Winewak Nation (AWN) when they began to engage with the Government of Canada to press their rights as a First Nations people. This was a bitter irony, given that the Indigenous communiti...

Kendra Neef often finds herself exploring little-known corners of Jasper National Park. “I’m always keeping my eye out for cool stuff,” the local wildlife guide and photographer said. On April 15, very soon after the ice came off of Talbot Lake in the east end of Jasper National Park, Neef’s eye spi...

Harry R.J. Home, who passed away at age 86-years-old on March 30, 2020, knew what he wanted to do with his life from the time he was five years old. Infatuated with steam engines since his father let him hop aboard one near his childhood home of Hanna, Alberta, Home was an icon of railroading in Jas...

Tom Peterson, who was born in Jasper in 1930, amassed a vast knowledge of fur-trading, aboriginal peoples of the area, and the changing relationships between the upper Athabasca River region and the people who lived there. Tom Peterson overlooking the Saskatchewan Glacier. Peterson’s vast knowledge ...

If you search for Jasper in Google Maps’ Street View and zoom in on Patricia Circle you can still see the boards at Patricia Circle Rink, or Pat Circle, as it is known colloquially. Although it’s gone now, the tiny outdoor rink had been around for many decades. If they could talk, the disassembled b...

Discovered insignia recalls renowned WWII regiment From time to time, events unfold that remind us that Jasper only feels like a bubble. That we are, and have long been, inextricably connected to the wider world. Recently, of course, the event in question has been the COVID-19 pandemic. But on a hik...

After 31 years, Jasper park warden signs off One of the last of the “old wardens” has hung up his Stetson. Three decades ago, when A.L. Horton was a 25-year-old prairie boy looking for a job to compliment his conservation enforcement diploma, the son of a newspaperman from Vegreville, Alberta, didn’...

Jasper’s Harry Home has been an icon of railroading in Jasper. Now the octogenarian wants to revive his 75-year old 6060 Steam Engine as a heritage tourism attraction. May 1, 2019 // The Jasper Local archives Harry Home wants to rekindle a fire that’s been extinguished for far too long. The 85-year-...