Jasper is grieving. But my community will survive the fire

Megan Warren is a writer from Jasper.

Open this photo in gallery:

The threat of wildfire has long been on Jasper’s radar. Like most of Western Canada, our summer is a time of great joy and great anxiety. Hiking season, smoke season, beach season, be-ready-to-flee season. The town is surrounded by forest, much of it dead and dry from the pine beetle epidemic. Fires can pop up anywhere, hot and fast. Knowing this, we hoped for the best and prepared for the worst. We packed our go-bags, learned the evacuation plan, FireSmarted our homes, kept an eye on the provincial wildfire map. We’ve been preparing for wildfires for a long time. But nothing could have prepared us to watch it happen.

I didn’t believe that the fire, which started July 19, would reach town. I’m in Montreal this summer, one of only two summers I’ve spent away from Jasper, but I have witnessed Jasper National Park fires before. To me, the town seemed impenetrable. As my friends packed up and fled, sat bumper-to-bumper overnight in a 25,000-person evacuation, I believed that everyone would be home in a few days. Fire crews would rope the flames under control and the forest would get a good burn. For the forest, fires are an opportunity to renew. It would come back lush and biodiverse, I imagined, with purple fireweed standing stark against charred bark, just like the burn area from the 2015 Excelsior fire. Fireweed is the first flower to come in after a burn, the true meaning of rising from the ashes. I was looking forward to that.

Wednesday changed everything. Footage came in devastating spurts, then a steady stream. The gas station blew up. A beloved cafe was completely engulfed. Cabin Creek, a beautiful, winding residential neighbourhood, is now flattened. Streets where my childhood friends grew up have holes where houses used to be. Only the basements are left. Cement front steps now lead to nothing, stone foundations hold ash where families lived only days ago. The western side of town was destroyed in flames that raged up to 120 metres high.

On Facebook, Jasperites share photos and videos, anxiously searching for their homes among the wreckage. It’s a blessing and curse to have social media and to be able to drown in updates. With the community scattered, at least it’s a place where we can be together, hope together, worry together, make sure everyone is taken care of.

Gutted. That’s the word, for both the town and the people who love it. When I saw the evacuation order, I wanted to be with my community. I know I’m very lucky – people have lost their possessions, homes, and businesses, or may still. I was safe in my Montreal apartment, sheltering from a light drizzle. But the helplessness of watching my hometown burn through my phone screen is indescribable. I am enmeshed enough in Jasper to recognize every barren street but too far away to shelter my displaced friends.

All I can do is ask how they’re doing when I already know the answer. After a long and stressful evacuation, locals are in the same position as I am, watching online as a place they love falls apart. Except, of course, for the firefighters, first responders, and incident command personnel who stayed behind to protect what they could. Watching them, we are so proud, so grateful, and so scared for their lives.

Kelly Cryderman: It’s not just a vast forest burning – Jasper is one of the most beautiful spots on the planet

Jasper is a special place. It’s an odd experience, living in a place with so few residents and so many people who feel it is a part of them. I worked in the information centre for six summers, and my favourite visitors were the recreators. People who come with black-and-white photos of themselves in their mother’s arms at Maligne Lake, or smile-lined seniors on their 50th anniversary, come to recreate their wedding photos. It’s a beautiful thing to share such a deep love of place with so many people. Rare. At the same time, with around 4,500 locals, nearly everyone knows nearly everyone. Jasper is where I got to be a child and learned to be an adult, a role that, there, means taking care of each other. In 2022, a wildfire east of town caused a 10-day power outage in most of Jasper. Glenda Macdowell of Glenda the Great Catering cooked and served three meals a day, for free. When the power came back, they kept serving free soup every weekday until Monday’s evacuation, two years after the last fire. Right now, when the town is empty and the fire is continuing, Glenda is still going into Jasper every day to cook for the firefighters. People help each other there, both in and out of disaster.

The day the fire reached town, an artist named Liz Toohey-Wiese posted a photo of a sign she made for a burn area near the B.C.-Yukon border. It read: “Forced Into a Great and Difficult Transformation.”

Jasper is grieving right now. Nobody has died in this fire, thank goodness, but the community no longer exists like it did before – it has been violently transformed in a way that none of us could have imagined. But Jasper’s community is strong. They will carry each other through this, even when they have to be apart. For now, we still don’t know what will be waiting when people return. What I do know is that my community, so full of love for their home and their people, will survive. Like fireweed, home will rise from the ashes. It has to.