I can imagine the uproar if the federal government had approved large scale logging in Jasper National Park. A similar initiative to clear out dead and dying hemlock in Vancouver’s Stanley Park has been met with protests and a lawsuit from environmental activists. They insist it’s better to leave the trees to decay in place rather than “artificially disturb” the natural setting. They don’t seem to perceive the consequences of a forest fire occurring in Stanley Park, itself at the heart of some of Canada’s most densely populated and expensive urban environment. At best, a fire in Stanley Park could seriously damage a public treasure. At worst, it could be a catastrophe impacting a hundred thousand people. With the homeless encampments found throughout the park, a fire is also terribly foreseeable. Hopefully the disaster in Jasper gets people to wake up, or at least persuades judges hearing the lawsuit of the merits of the logging.
Great comment. While I agree with the article's tone that the feds are ultimately responsible for doing the wise thing, it's only fair to note (as the article does, too) that the wise thing didn't happen here because it would have been a PR nightmare, most likely starting with the residents of Jasper themselves.
Absolutely fantastic article! Thank you. I am so frustrated with friends focused only on one, simplistic explanation (typically “climate change”). And those that think bringing in other factors is somehow denying climate change. This article recognizes climate change as one, of many, complex contributing factors for this fire.
The devastation at Jasper (and Fort Mac and others) illustrates the complexity of emergency preparedness, the need for risk mitigation measures that can help and the unpredictable nature of events that bring about the disaster. The cruel reality of wild winds coming from a unexpected direction underscores the challenges faced by those in charge to cover all the bases.
The forest management people need to be brought to the forefront and given priority status to reduce the risk for Banff and many other communities who are staring at the same fire risk before it’s too late.
What we’re about to witness from Parks Canada and our federal government will be a butt covering exercise of the first order where they’ll drag out the old malapropism about climate change being responsible. Meanwhile Guilbeault will be musing in the corner about how to tax the CO2 produced from these fires and who should pay. Another classic example of the ineptness of activists when faced with dealing with real world issues as opposed to creating all the fanciful virtue signalling policies that they mistake for reality. Always blame someone or something else and divert any such blame from yourself is their mantra.
I’m good with climate change being partly blamed as long as those who argue that way don’t jump to the conclusion that Alberta or even Canada can make a difference to Canadian forest fires by reducing local CO2 emissions. You know the activists are going to say, “Shut down the oil shale now before the Rockies burn! There’s no time to lose!” Climate change is a global problem made largely in Asia now. If China and India want to burn coal, there’s not much we here can do about it. Beggaring ourselves won’t help.
I think you can argue that we have a moral duty to respond to the problem in tandem with the US and China. And I'd like to see a Carbon Tax go not to rebates, but rather to infrastructure hardening and mitigation. JG
Actually I can, and do, argue that we have no moral duty as a nation to foreigners. Nations have interests, not morals. If it is not in our interest to reduce emissions (because China and India have already said they won't) then we shouldn't be the patsies. It's folly to play a game by the rules when the big players are cheating, (or are saying they make their own rules to suit themselves.) The Paris Accord lets each country decide for itself what its emissions-reduction goals are going to be. China and India and the rest of Asia have decided to cut themselves lots of slack until eventually maybe sometime this century they'll look at cutting down.
China and India have decided it's not in their interests to reduce their standard of living by using less energy from fossil fuels. I don't know how we can "work in tandem" with someone who wants to pull the rope in a different direction. Made-in-Asia climate change is going to be a fact of life. We will need healthy economies if we are going to harden or mitigate anything.
I would ask you if you know if Canada's carbon tax has made any dent in our fossil fuel consumption since the Covid rebound? The economists say that a price on carbon is the most effective way to reduce emissions, but only if demand is elastic and substitutable, which I doubt holds in Canada outside Toronto. I think you will have a difficult political problem telling people you're going to take their carbon-tax rebates away from them and blow it on green industry instead..
"I think you will have a difficult political problem telling people you're going to take their carbon-tax rebates away from them and blow it on green industry instead.."
Where did Jen say the rebate should be "blown on green industry". By saying that its not our duty to reduce emissions you're smart enough to admit that things are changing. Should we not prepare our infrastructure so we dont get caught with our pants down? And should we not be preparing our forests so that, when they inevitably set ablaze dont take down whole towns?
Re-reading what Jen said, I'm not clear how this would avoid being a boondoggle though. There's nothing wrong with the infrastructure (roads, sewers, electricity, piped water etc.) It's that the forests are too easy to set alight and too hard to put them out. How exactly would you "prepare" our forests? If you mean a clear-cut fire break around each little town, I can see that would be do-able, if (big if) the locals didn't squawk that it would drive away the tourists. Do you think it would take all the carbon tax revenue from the whole country to do that though? I can imagine that a government bureaucracy and greedy contractors who had that much money to spend would find a way to blow through it all.
My bet is nothing much will be done. Just like we aren't really doing anything to get ready for the next pandemic, even though we earnestly promised ourselves that we would get on it right away, just as soon as, uh, I don't know, when we get around to it.
I had family members that lived in Jasper and Banff for about 25 years while employed by the federal government. Western Canada's park superintendents and chief wardens used to be people that had trained at Lethbridge Community College, worked their way up through the wardens ranks, patrolled in the back-country, and spent their entire adult lives living in the parks.
At least four decades ago, bilingualism became a priority, and the wardens I speak of started to disappear. More and more decisions were made in Gatineau QC and only people that would carry out the bosses' directions ended up in management.
Let's see what happens in Jasper and especially Banff. I believe BNP superintendent Sal Rasheed headed up Waterton during the Kenow Fire, has spent time in Jasper conservation and field units, and I think also has experience with the Parks Canada national fire program. I wonder what he's thinking right about now. (I bet he wouldn't even be able to tell us what his personal opinion is.)
Just for those who don't know, Parks Canada is a bureaucracy like no other. Removing even a single dead tree from leased Parks land can be a permitting nightmare. Let's not forget that in 2013 the Lake Louise Ski Area was fined $2.1 million dollars for ACCIDENTALLY cutting down THIRTY EIGHT whitebark pines.
The arsonist in the room is the fact that you have a “National” park run from a couple of thousand miles away by a bunch of overpaid bureaucrats who aro too busy worrying about their next French proficiency tests to care about what is said by a bunch of maudit Anglos who actually know what is happening and what to do about it. A good first step is to transfer these parks (back?) to Provincial Jurisdiction to be run by people who actually live in the area. This might actually help Alberta - one of the few remaining freedom-loving areas of Canada - move closer towards self determination.
Freedom-loving Alberta made big cuts to it's firefighting budget over the last decade or so. Both Conservative and NDP governments did it. Why they thought that was a place for savings when the world is getting hotter is is good question.
My point is that overpaid and out-of-touch bureaucrats are not limited to Ottawa.
But aren't we learning that trying to fight forest fires is pointless? Either the forest needs to burn to regenerate itself,.. OR ... you can't control these fires once they get started. (or both are true.) So wouldn't it make sense to cut the budget for fighting forest fires if fighting them is counterproductive? It's hard to argue that we shouldn't try to suppress fires but then turn around and say we have to protect the fire-fighting budget.
The National Park was in the Feds jurisdiction as stated in the article. I’m not a fan of the UCP but the provincial fire fighting budget cut is a red herring
An excellent piece, Jen, thank you. I get it now. Incompetence reigns again. Such a tragedy, even moreso when it was preventable with skilled forest management.
Thanks Jen. Outstanding. I am sick and tired of not being able to breathe every summer with these Ottawa bureaucrats fiddling whilst Rome burns. Now people are losing their home and businesses . Where is Catherine now? Falling upwards into the UN. Where is the Green Jesus? He actually had the temerity to state that his plan worked! The humbis of the Trudeau government is beyond the pale.
There are as of today 461 forest fires burning in BC and Alberta. To suggest that not being able to breathe due to fire smoke is due solely to federal bureaucrats ignores the reality of where most of the smoke comes from which is provincially managed forests.
Of the 461 you mention, only 114 are in Alberta - and the Alberta Wildfire Dashboard highlights only four (4) wildfires "of note" at the moment.
Yes, BC has a massive forest management issue. Alberta could do better as well.
But the largest issue in Jasper was that the feds refused to allow logging to deal with all the dead trees. The prescribed burns they did covered less than 1% of the area which needed mitigation.
My comment was to address the notion that federal bureaucrats are solely responsible for fire smoke being experienced in Alberta. A totally different question than commenting on responsibility for the Jasper fire. While there are currently only 4 wildfires "of note" in Alberta, since January 1, 2024 in the Forest Protection Area of Alberta, there have been 977 wildfires burning a total of 550,176 hectares. And smoke routinely crosses the Continental Divide into Alberta from BC.
Sadly given the trend of the past few years, the prospect of smoke free summer skies in the future does not seem likely.
It was ever thus. The photographs that Nick Morant took of and for the Canadian Pacific Railway in the Rockies and along Lake Superior over a long career often suffered from fine particle smoke in the air in summer. His winter photos just snap by comparison. He was active between the 1930s and the 1980s, So wildfire smoke blowing over Kicking Horse Pass is not a new phenomenon.
I just have to say I’m thrilled that so many readers, judging from the Likes I’ve been getting, are aware of Mr. Morant and his work over his long career with CP. He is a Canadian icon with a hundred great stories to tell chronicling our times on film. I suppose he is better known in the West where all those great “train in the mountains” photos are waiting to be snapped but he did some work in Quebec and here in Ontario. Some of his photos taken on CPR branch lines aroused so much interest locally that when the company tried to cancel these money-losing routes later the push-back was intense. Mr. Morant stuck to the main line after that. I wish I had met him.
Eastern readers may not be aware that the S-Curve along the Bow Valley just east of Lake Louise station where he took so many photos is known on maps as Morant’s Curve. You can see it from the old 1A back road across the river from Highway 1.
That, the feds can't fix. Native Canadians know the solution to this, and used it for years before white people came and told them they know better...and it worked out as it usually does. Forests are meant to burn. And with things getting hotter and drier, they're going to even more often. But if you think this is bad, wait until Muskoka which hasn't burned since around 1900 has a hot dry summer. Dougie has gutted Ontario's firefighting. If one gets started with a big wind, it's gone, and only Mother Nature will be able to stop it.
The indigenous people couldn’t do anything if a forest fire started. It’s not because they wisely knew to let it burn. They had no choice but to let it burn and stay out of the way.
No, they couldn't. Apparently, we aren't much better. The difference is they would have burned off the dead stuff in small chunks years before. Forests are meant to burn; circle of life stuff. When they don't, the fuel just keeps building up, and you get one of these, or what California is dealing with now. And they didn't build many permanent settlements either which made movement the expectation. There is ample proof their ideas work far better than ours.
Agree that suppressing fires Smokey-the-Bear style and probably decades before that hasn’t worked out so well. And if the forest was naturally patchy, with savannah between it, I can see those being natural firebreaks. Burn the grass first. Then burn a patch of forest with deadwood in it and it probably won’t leap the burned off grassland.
I suppose much of the forest used to be clear-cut for newsprint for the big American daily papers (and for toilet paper and cheap wrapping paper like brown bags.). Certainly in the Maritimes it was. Every little town had a pulp-and-paper mill with good union jobs. The print versions of those newspapers are largely vanished now and when was the last time you saw a brown paper bag? If the forests aren’t being harvested, I guess they just pile up fuel load. Other than the coastal Douglas fir, much of that inland boreal forest isn’t good for much anymore.
The forests are indeed being harvested. Even overharvested. In Northern BC many mills have closed because there’s no wood left. Most wood is used for lumber for building. The mills sell their scraps to pulp mills for paper (think Amazon packaging).
But I’m just a summer job mill lackie. I’m sure there’s someone on here with more experience to shed some light on it.
I believe most of the old growth was harvested to build the railroad, and all its supporting structures. Clear cuts haven't happened much within the parks, but have decimated the landscape elsewhere.
And a lot of it burned because the slash was left at the side of the tracks to be ignited by sparks and cinders from the steam locomotives, and hot steel wheels on the train cars from braking down long hills. That's why there is so much lodge-pole pine along the route of the CPR and Trans-Canada Highway. The cones germinated from the fires and produced the monoculture we see today, and which is now propagating after every subsequent fire. It is definitely not a "natural" forest even though that's what tourists expect a mountain valley to look like.
But I thought your solution to wildfires was not to fight them because it’s impossible anyway, as this article shows. Then it would make sense not to spend a lot of money paying firefighters to sit around waiting for a forest fire they can’t do anything about. Structure fires, maybe, but that’s the municipality’s job. Is this “Dougie” person someone who runs the municipalities?
Methinks you just have it in for Dougie, whoever he is. (Poor guy.)
Ontario and Quebec had a lot of fires summer 2023. Way north of Muskoka. “Smoke-a-geddon” was in the American TV news for days. I don’t think any towns got burnt.
Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario, who has gutted our firefighting budget. And yes, he's a screen door on a submarine.
The original comment blamed the Feds for smoke from forest fires every year. They cannot be stopped. But it's pretty obvious that there should be supports in place to protect towns and cities. Northern Ontario burns every summer; naturally, and 99% of it is uninhabited so it doesn't matter. Same with Quebec, BC and Alberta. They are monitored but no action is taken. Firefighting is to protect structures. And, as mentioned, if Muskoka ever catches fire, Ontario doesn't have much left to deal with and billions of dollars in cottage real estate will be lost. The idea is to pick fights you have a chance to win. Not enough was done to protect jasper, and they're not out of the woods; no pun intended, yet. Fires in the forest are going to get bigger and stronger. You can't wait until they start to protect communities. They clearly move far too fast.
OK, I get that you don't have a high opinion of the Premier of Ontario. But I don't hear you saying what Ontario should do, or would do if it had a "better" premier. "You can't wait until they start to protect communities" OK. So what should Ontario be doing to protect communities before they start? I'm hearing a certain glibness here of being agin' the government but no actual suggestions. What does "supports in place to protect towns and cities" actually mean? Insurance funds? Fire trucks? Water bombers? Rake the forest? Clear-cut zone around everyone's cottage and every little town as a fire break? (They'll love that!)
You said you can't put these fires out once they start. That seems to be true, and we shouldn't anyway, to respect the natural fire regeneration cycle. So how is it bad policy to reduce the budget for fighting forest fires when it seems, according to you, that trying to fight forest fires is a waste of effort and bad for the forest anyway? Is this a case of whatever the Premier does is wrong because he's the wrong party in office?
exactly. It means that every town or city in the middle of the forest has a 100m wide tree-free zone around the outside of like a "fire-moat". It gives those fighting the blaze a gap so that small jump fires can be caught before they get going. No, they're not attractive. If Muskoka went up, insurance companies might well go under if it's a worst case scenario.
If you're forward thinking, you talk to other provinces and the Feds about pooling a group of water bombers that can be deployed as required and moved around the Eastern half of the country as a minimum, instead of cutting the number of planes you have available. I worked in Sudbury in 1991; 4 hours north of Toronto. We had 20 helicopters and 4 water bombers based there during fire season. They don't have 1/4 of that there now, and fires aren't going to get smaller. No, you can't do that with every cottage/estate up there. So like with health are, you have people on standby; a cost, to respond to something quickly when it inevitably happens. That ability doesn't exist now.
No, that's not what I said. You can put the fires out if you get on them quickly. If the resources aren't available to do that in less than 12 hours, then, they'll burn what they burn; especially if the wind is up.
I hate Doug for a whole lot of reasons. His destruction of Ontario to the benefit of his donors makes him the worst leader we've ever had and it's not even close(and we've had some complete losers). I hope he didn't fully cover his tracks on some of this, and justice finds him soon. It's not about Party, as I have voted for 4 different ones in the last 20 years. It's about one guy.
"We had 20 helicopters and 4 water bombers based there during fire season." This is false. There may have been that many aircraft on fires in the NE Region for a small part of 1991, but there was never that many based in the Region. The compliment was 3 bombers and 4 helicopters. The rest were short term hire for ongoing fires.
The arrogance of Ottawa towards the western provinces continues to amaze. Failure of Guilbeault to accept his admission of ignorance and negligence as essential parts of the scope of his mandate amazes as well. Lytton BC remains a ghost town with only the memories of community. Jasper has a world-known status so will likely be given the boost needed for rebuilding where structures are lost. Have Trudeau and Guilbeault deigned to visit Jasper to witness the devastation? To shake hands with Fire Crews? to empathize with Mayor and those evacuated?
Did they visit Lytton? Do they now monitor progress on rebuilding?
This government manages their photo ops carefully. Perhaps their gallery should show empty frames where their missing visits to suffering Canadians should have been displayed.
They do not meet expectations for minimal performance. Cherry picking the fun-filled to respond to do not count. Celine Dion did not need your attention, guys, Jasper and Lytton do.
We know Trudeau avoids the heat (of debate with Truckers, Caucus, pissed off Canadians), so the fires en route to responsibility in Jasper from Tofino are not possible to contemplate. Poor PM!
What everybody is too polite to say about Lytton is that it’s probably not worth rebuilding. The primary industry was forestry and it’s gone. The village had been losing population over time, dropping 15% between the 2016 census and the 2021 census before the fire. Replacing all that infrastructure from scratch is a lot of money to spend for a place that’s probably never going to rebound to even its previous diminished size.
Your statistics are irrefutable. The historical losses are not replaceable. Friends who lived there for 50+ years and did not lose their home are finally moving to Chilliwack this fall because they miss living in a community to which they both, outside of forestry, contributed a great deal.
I’m not sure if it’s the BC government or the feds but someone’s certainly bogged down the rebuild of Lytton with archaeological assessments which hasn’t helped progress. Jasper will likely have that to look forward to as well perhaps
Actually, it seems like the most likely culprit is that nobody wanted to log all the deadwood around Jasper. Credit to the article for pointing out that everyone takes at least some blame for this reticence: the feds didn't want the optics of logging a national park and the residents of Jasper didn't want to live in the middle of a thousand acres of clearcut pine stumps.
Parks Canada doesn't really want you to come and visit. Look at the stuffed animals in the visitor centre, walk up the trail at Johnson Canyon, take the shuttle bus to Lake Louise.
If you're really adventurous, try to get a permit to camp at Lake O'Hara or hike the Rockwall.
Meanwhile hiking trails are de-commissioned, bridges are removed, large parts of the back country are off limits to people.
Parks Canada's climate action plan consists of keeping people out and switching government vehicles to electric. Too bad there are all these tourists to deal with. Why can't they just stay home?
It seems like an attitude founded in a very naive sort of environmentalism. This will hopefully provide some impetus to change (and if it doesn't, skyrocketing insurance costs sure will - it's increasingly impossible to even obtain home insurance in the most hurricane-ravaged sections of the Gulf Coast, for example).
So are insurance rates, and the unstoppable force (old people love beaches) is beginning to run up against the immovable object (insurance companies hate losses).
The cleared areas would be meadows, that's what boreal forest regen looks like. The real problem is climate doomism and how it steers people away from responsible land management. Rather they make up fairy tales about forests saving the planet. By leaving park forests unmanaged for decades, they destroyed 1/3 of Jasper. How brave.
Having known some people involved in fire management in the mountain parks, there is a big elephant in the room no one wants to acknowledge for why authorities didn’t do what they knew had to be done: NIMBYism from residents, in particular the business community. Few people wanted their mountain views smoked out and signs of mechanical tree removal on the hillsides, especially those foreign tourists paying big bucks to see clear mountain vistas and virgin forests. But government types learned long ago not to publicly say the voters are wrong (Hello Mr. Prentice, RIP).
Often when government doesn’t do what it knows it should, look to who is pressuring them not to follow through.
To hear politicians saying they're pleased only 30% of the town was lost is, IMHO, proof that politicians can't take responsibility for anything. I do know, based on the now invisible Spiral Tunnels, that Parks Canada has no interest in cutting any trees; even for their own tourist sites. That no lessons were learned from Ft McMurray, (and not doubt, COVID) is almost not a surprise. I guess the challenge they have now is to decide; for Jasper and a host of other communities that are vulnerable, what is more important; attempting basic fire break safety, or park aesthetics(like maybe a 150 metre wide field of wildflowers devoid of trees. I don't know if that would have been a solution here, but lines of defence seem to make sense when you're being attacked). This fire isn't close to being out, and it's supposed to get hot again. What happens when one heads for Banff?
The exact same scenario is playing out in Banff. Experts are sending up red flags about the thick, dead, dry forests around Banff. Parks Canada CEO overtly rejects the “premise” that they put nature before people’s safety. Minister Gillbert sits there looking like he suffers from automatism. Lotsa meetings, lotsa employees, lotsa inaction.
I can imagine the uproar if the federal government had approved large scale logging in Jasper National Park. A similar initiative to clear out dead and dying hemlock in Vancouver’s Stanley Park has been met with protests and a lawsuit from environmental activists. They insist it’s better to leave the trees to decay in place rather than “artificially disturb” the natural setting. They don’t seem to perceive the consequences of a forest fire occurring in Stanley Park, itself at the heart of some of Canada’s most densely populated and expensive urban environment. At best, a fire in Stanley Park could seriously damage a public treasure. At worst, it could be a catastrophe impacting a hundred thousand people. With the homeless encampments found throughout the park, a fire is also terribly foreseeable. Hopefully the disaster in Jasper gets people to wake up, or at least persuades judges hearing the lawsuit of the merits of the logging.
Great comment. While I agree with the article's tone that the feds are ultimately responsible for doing the wise thing, it's only fair to note (as the article does, too) that the wise thing didn't happen here because it would have been a PR nightmare, most likely starting with the residents of Jasper themselves.
Gotta keep the National Park looking like how DT Torontinians expect it to look
Absolutely fantastic article! Thank you. I am so frustrated with friends focused only on one, simplistic explanation (typically “climate change”). And those that think bringing in other factors is somehow denying climate change. This article recognizes climate change as one, of many, complex contributing factors for this fire.
Thank you!
The devastation at Jasper (and Fort Mac and others) illustrates the complexity of emergency preparedness, the need for risk mitigation measures that can help and the unpredictable nature of events that bring about the disaster. The cruel reality of wild winds coming from a unexpected direction underscores the challenges faced by those in charge to cover all the bases.
The forest management people need to be brought to the forefront and given priority status to reduce the risk for Banff and many other communities who are staring at the same fire risk before it’s too late.
What we’re about to witness from Parks Canada and our federal government will be a butt covering exercise of the first order where they’ll drag out the old malapropism about climate change being responsible. Meanwhile Guilbeault will be musing in the corner about how to tax the CO2 produced from these fires and who should pay. Another classic example of the ineptness of activists when faced with dealing with real world issues as opposed to creating all the fanciful virtue signalling policies that they mistake for reality. Always blame someone or something else and divert any such blame from yourself is their mantra.
Climate change is absolutely an aggravating factor. Otherwise, yes. JG
It’s being portrayed as the sole factor responsible which is not correct.
I’m good with climate change being partly blamed as long as those who argue that way don’t jump to the conclusion that Alberta or even Canada can make a difference to Canadian forest fires by reducing local CO2 emissions. You know the activists are going to say, “Shut down the oil shale now before the Rockies burn! There’s no time to lose!” Climate change is a global problem made largely in Asia now. If China and India want to burn coal, there’s not much we here can do about it. Beggaring ourselves won’t help.
I think you can argue that we have a moral duty to respond to the problem in tandem with the US and China. And I'd like to see a Carbon Tax go not to rebates, but rather to infrastructure hardening and mitigation. JG
Actually I can, and do, argue that we have no moral duty as a nation to foreigners. Nations have interests, not morals. If it is not in our interest to reduce emissions (because China and India have already said they won't) then we shouldn't be the patsies. It's folly to play a game by the rules when the big players are cheating, (or are saying they make their own rules to suit themselves.) The Paris Accord lets each country decide for itself what its emissions-reduction goals are going to be. China and India and the rest of Asia have decided to cut themselves lots of slack until eventually maybe sometime this century they'll look at cutting down.
China and India have decided it's not in their interests to reduce their standard of living by using less energy from fossil fuels. I don't know how we can "work in tandem" with someone who wants to pull the rope in a different direction. Made-in-Asia climate change is going to be a fact of life. We will need healthy economies if we are going to harden or mitigate anything.
I would ask you if you know if Canada's carbon tax has made any dent in our fossil fuel consumption since the Covid rebound? The economists say that a price on carbon is the most effective way to reduce emissions, but only if demand is elastic and substitutable, which I doubt holds in Canada outside Toronto. I think you will have a difficult political problem telling people you're going to take their carbon-tax rebates away from them and blow it on green industry instead..
"I think you will have a difficult political problem telling people you're going to take their carbon-tax rebates away from them and blow it on green industry instead.."
Where did Jen say the rebate should be "blown on green industry". By saying that its not our duty to reduce emissions you're smart enough to admit that things are changing. Should we not prepare our infrastructure so we dont get caught with our pants down? And should we not be preparing our forests so that, when they inevitably set ablaze dont take down whole towns?
OK, my bad. I'm sorry. Thanks for noticing.
Re-reading what Jen said, I'm not clear how this would avoid being a boondoggle though. There's nothing wrong with the infrastructure (roads, sewers, electricity, piped water etc.) It's that the forests are too easy to set alight and too hard to put them out. How exactly would you "prepare" our forests? If you mean a clear-cut fire break around each little town, I can see that would be do-able, if (big if) the locals didn't squawk that it would drive away the tourists. Do you think it would take all the carbon tax revenue from the whole country to do that though? I can imagine that a government bureaucracy and greedy contractors who had that much money to spend would find a way to blow through it all.
My bet is nothing much will be done. Just like we aren't really doing anything to get ready for the next pandemic, even though we earnestly promised ourselves that we would get on it right away, just as soon as, uh, I don't know, when we get around to it.
I had family members that lived in Jasper and Banff for about 25 years while employed by the federal government. Western Canada's park superintendents and chief wardens used to be people that had trained at Lethbridge Community College, worked their way up through the wardens ranks, patrolled in the back-country, and spent their entire adult lives living in the parks.
At least four decades ago, bilingualism became a priority, and the wardens I speak of started to disappear. More and more decisions were made in Gatineau QC and only people that would carry out the bosses' directions ended up in management.
Let's see what happens in Jasper and especially Banff. I believe BNP superintendent Sal Rasheed headed up Waterton during the Kenow Fire, has spent time in Jasper conservation and field units, and I think also has experience with the Parks Canada national fire program. I wonder what he's thinking right about now. (I bet he wouldn't even be able to tell us what his personal opinion is.)
Just for those who don't know, Parks Canada is a bureaucracy like no other. Removing even a single dead tree from leased Parks land can be a permitting nightmare. Let's not forget that in 2013 the Lake Louise Ski Area was fined $2.1 million dollars for ACCIDENTALLY cutting down THIRTY EIGHT whitebark pines.
Lake Louise deserved that fine, and then some. They even plead guilty. If you're running a commercial business in a national park, you can't just send a couple flunkies with chainsaws out to let er rip, which is basically what they did. They appealed the penalty and it was thrown out: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/lake-louise-ski-resort-loses-appeal-2m-fine-cutting-endangered-trees-1.5660262
Clarity. Thank you.
The arsonist in the room is the fact that you have a “National” park run from a couple of thousand miles away by a bunch of overpaid bureaucrats who aro too busy worrying about their next French proficiency tests to care about what is said by a bunch of maudit Anglos who actually know what is happening and what to do about it. A good first step is to transfer these parks (back?) to Provincial Jurisdiction to be run by people who actually live in the area. This might actually help Alberta - one of the few remaining freedom-loving areas of Canada - move closer towards self determination.
Freedom-loving Alberta made big cuts to it's firefighting budget over the last decade or so. Both Conservative and NDP governments did it. Why they thought that was a place for savings when the world is getting hotter is is good question.
My point is that overpaid and out-of-touch bureaucrats are not limited to Ottawa.
But aren't we learning that trying to fight forest fires is pointless? Either the forest needs to burn to regenerate itself,.. OR ... you can't control these fires once they get started. (or both are true.) So wouldn't it make sense to cut the budget for fighting forest fires if fighting them is counterproductive? It's hard to argue that we shouldn't try to suppress fires but then turn around and say we have to protect the fire-fighting budget.
The National Park was in the Feds jurisdiction as stated in the article. I’m not a fan of the UCP but the provincial fire fighting budget cut is a red herring
The mountain National Parks are all older than the provinces. They've always been federal crown land that was never transferred to a province.
Articles like this are why I subscribe. Really excellent work, Jen.
An excellent piece, Jen, thank you. I get it now. Incompetence reigns again. Such a tragedy, even moreso when it was preventable with skilled forest management.
Thanks Jen. Outstanding. I am sick and tired of not being able to breathe every summer with these Ottawa bureaucrats fiddling whilst Rome burns. Now people are losing their home and businesses . Where is Catherine now? Falling upwards into the UN. Where is the Green Jesus? He actually had the temerity to state that his plan worked! The humbis of the Trudeau government is beyond the pale.
There are as of today 461 forest fires burning in BC and Alberta. To suggest that not being able to breathe due to fire smoke is due solely to federal bureaucrats ignores the reality of where most of the smoke comes from which is provincially managed forests.
Of the 461 you mention, only 114 are in Alberta - and the Alberta Wildfire Dashboard highlights only four (4) wildfires "of note" at the moment.
Yes, BC has a massive forest management issue. Alberta could do better as well.
But the largest issue in Jasper was that the feds refused to allow logging to deal with all the dead trees. The prescribed burns they did covered less than 1% of the area which needed mitigation.
So YES, this was a FEDERAL failure.
My comment was to address the notion that federal bureaucrats are solely responsible for fire smoke being experienced in Alberta. A totally different question than commenting on responsibility for the Jasper fire. While there are currently only 4 wildfires "of note" in Alberta, since January 1, 2024 in the Forest Protection Area of Alberta, there have been 977 wildfires burning a total of 550,176 hectares. And smoke routinely crosses the Continental Divide into Alberta from BC.
Sadly given the trend of the past few years, the prospect of smoke free summer skies in the future does not seem likely.
It was ever thus. The photographs that Nick Morant took of and for the Canadian Pacific Railway in the Rockies and along Lake Superior over a long career often suffered from fine particle smoke in the air in summer. His winter photos just snap by comparison. He was active between the 1930s and the 1980s, So wildfire smoke blowing over Kicking Horse Pass is not a new phenomenon.
I just have to say I’m thrilled that so many readers, judging from the Likes I’ve been getting, are aware of Mr. Morant and his work over his long career with CP. He is a Canadian icon with a hundred great stories to tell chronicling our times on film. I suppose he is better known in the West where all those great “train in the mountains” photos are waiting to be snapped but he did some work in Quebec and here in Ontario. Some of his photos taken on CPR branch lines aroused so much interest locally that when the company tried to cancel these money-losing routes later the push-back was intense. Mr. Morant stuck to the main line after that. I wish I had met him.
Eastern readers may not be aware that the S-Curve along the Bow Valley just east of Lake Louise station where he took so many photos is known on maps as Morant’s Curve. You can see it from the old 1A back road across the river from Highway 1.
More frequent lower intensity fires. Part of the natural cycle.
That, the feds can't fix. Native Canadians know the solution to this, and used it for years before white people came and told them they know better...and it worked out as it usually does. Forests are meant to burn. And with things getting hotter and drier, they're going to even more often. But if you think this is bad, wait until Muskoka which hasn't burned since around 1900 has a hot dry summer. Dougie has gutted Ontario's firefighting. If one gets started with a big wind, it's gone, and only Mother Nature will be able to stop it.
The indigenous people couldn’t do anything if a forest fire started. It’s not because they wisely knew to let it burn. They had no choice but to let it burn and stay out of the way.
No, they couldn't. Apparently, we aren't much better. The difference is they would have burned off the dead stuff in small chunks years before. Forests are meant to burn; circle of life stuff. When they don't, the fuel just keeps building up, and you get one of these, or what California is dealing with now. And they didn't build many permanent settlements either which made movement the expectation. There is ample proof their ideas work far better than ours.
Agree that suppressing fires Smokey-the-Bear style and probably decades before that hasn’t worked out so well. And if the forest was naturally patchy, with savannah between it, I can see those being natural firebreaks. Burn the grass first. Then burn a patch of forest with deadwood in it and it probably won’t leap the burned off grassland.
I suppose much of the forest used to be clear-cut for newsprint for the big American daily papers (and for toilet paper and cheap wrapping paper like brown bags.). Certainly in the Maritimes it was. Every little town had a pulp-and-paper mill with good union jobs. The print versions of those newspapers are largely vanished now and when was the last time you saw a brown paper bag? If the forests aren’t being harvested, I guess they just pile up fuel load. Other than the coastal Douglas fir, much of that inland boreal forest isn’t good for much anymore.
Things change.
The forests are indeed being harvested. Even overharvested. In Northern BC many mills have closed because there’s no wood left. Most wood is used for lumber for building. The mills sell their scraps to pulp mills for paper (think Amazon packaging).
But I’m just a summer job mill lackie. I’m sure there’s someone on here with more experience to shed some light on it.
I believe most of the old growth was harvested to build the railroad, and all its supporting structures. Clear cuts haven't happened much within the parks, but have decimated the landscape elsewhere.
And a lot of it burned because the slash was left at the side of the tracks to be ignited by sparks and cinders from the steam locomotives, and hot steel wheels on the train cars from braking down long hills. That's why there is so much lodge-pole pine along the route of the CPR and Trans-Canada Highway. The cones germinated from the fires and produced the monoculture we see today, and which is now propagating after every subsequent fire. It is definitely not a "natural" forest even though that's what tourists expect a mountain valley to look like.
Who is “Dougie”??
But I thought your solution to wildfires was not to fight them because it’s impossible anyway, as this article shows. Then it would make sense not to spend a lot of money paying firefighters to sit around waiting for a forest fire they can’t do anything about. Structure fires, maybe, but that’s the municipality’s job. Is this “Dougie” person someone who runs the municipalities?
Methinks you just have it in for Dougie, whoever he is. (Poor guy.)
Ontario and Quebec had a lot of fires summer 2023. Way north of Muskoka. “Smoke-a-geddon” was in the American TV news for days. I don’t think any towns got burnt.
Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario, who has gutted our firefighting budget. And yes, he's a screen door on a submarine.
The original comment blamed the Feds for smoke from forest fires every year. They cannot be stopped. But it's pretty obvious that there should be supports in place to protect towns and cities. Northern Ontario burns every summer; naturally, and 99% of it is uninhabited so it doesn't matter. Same with Quebec, BC and Alberta. They are monitored but no action is taken. Firefighting is to protect structures. And, as mentioned, if Muskoka ever catches fire, Ontario doesn't have much left to deal with and billions of dollars in cottage real estate will be lost. The idea is to pick fights you have a chance to win. Not enough was done to protect jasper, and they're not out of the woods; no pun intended, yet. Fires in the forest are going to get bigger and stronger. You can't wait until they start to protect communities. They clearly move far too fast.
OK, I get that you don't have a high opinion of the Premier of Ontario. But I don't hear you saying what Ontario should do, or would do if it had a "better" premier. "You can't wait until they start to protect communities" OK. So what should Ontario be doing to protect communities before they start? I'm hearing a certain glibness here of being agin' the government but no actual suggestions. What does "supports in place to protect towns and cities" actually mean? Insurance funds? Fire trucks? Water bombers? Rake the forest? Clear-cut zone around everyone's cottage and every little town as a fire break? (They'll love that!)
You said you can't put these fires out once they start. That seems to be true, and we shouldn't anyway, to respect the natural fire regeneration cycle. So how is it bad policy to reduce the budget for fighting forest fires when it seems, according to you, that trying to fight forest fires is a waste of effort and bad for the forest anyway? Is this a case of whatever the Premier does is wrong because he's the wrong party in office?
exactly. It means that every town or city in the middle of the forest has a 100m wide tree-free zone around the outside of like a "fire-moat". It gives those fighting the blaze a gap so that small jump fires can be caught before they get going. No, they're not attractive. If Muskoka went up, insurance companies might well go under if it's a worst case scenario.
If you're forward thinking, you talk to other provinces and the Feds about pooling a group of water bombers that can be deployed as required and moved around the Eastern half of the country as a minimum, instead of cutting the number of planes you have available. I worked in Sudbury in 1991; 4 hours north of Toronto. We had 20 helicopters and 4 water bombers based there during fire season. They don't have 1/4 of that there now, and fires aren't going to get smaller. No, you can't do that with every cottage/estate up there. So like with health are, you have people on standby; a cost, to respond to something quickly when it inevitably happens. That ability doesn't exist now.
No, that's not what I said. You can put the fires out if you get on them quickly. If the resources aren't available to do that in less than 12 hours, then, they'll burn what they burn; especially if the wind is up.
I hate Doug for a whole lot of reasons. His destruction of Ontario to the benefit of his donors makes him the worst leader we've ever had and it's not even close(and we've had some complete losers). I hope he didn't fully cover his tracks on some of this, and justice finds him soon. It's not about Party, as I have voted for 4 different ones in the last 20 years. It's about one guy.
"We had 20 helicopters and 4 water bombers based there during fire season." This is false. There may have been that many aircraft on fires in the NE Region for a small part of 1991, but there was never that many based in the Region. The compliment was 3 bombers and 4 helicopters. The rest were short term hire for ongoing fires.
I believe he's referring to the great Doug Ford - smartest of all the Ford family.
The arrogance of Ottawa towards the western provinces continues to amaze. Failure of Guilbeault to accept his admission of ignorance and negligence as essential parts of the scope of his mandate amazes as well. Lytton BC remains a ghost town with only the memories of community. Jasper has a world-known status so will likely be given the boost needed for rebuilding where structures are lost. Have Trudeau and Guilbeault deigned to visit Jasper to witness the devastation? To shake hands with Fire Crews? to empathize with Mayor and those evacuated?
Did they visit Lytton? Do they now monitor progress on rebuilding?
This government manages their photo ops carefully. Perhaps their gallery should show empty frames where their missing visits to suffering Canadians should have been displayed.
They do not meet expectations for minimal performance. Cherry picking the fun-filled to respond to do not count. Celine Dion did not need your attention, guys, Jasper and Lytton do.
You make a great point. Where are the ministers responsible? Where is our Prime Minister? Tofino is only 40 or 50 fires west of Jasper.
We know Trudeau avoids the heat (of debate with Truckers, Caucus, pissed off Canadians), so the fires en route to responsibility in Jasper from Tofino are not possible to contemplate. Poor PM!
What everybody is too polite to say about Lytton is that it’s probably not worth rebuilding. The primary industry was forestry and it’s gone. The village had been losing population over time, dropping 15% between the 2016 census and the 2021 census before the fire. Replacing all that infrastructure from scratch is a lot of money to spend for a place that’s probably never going to rebound to even its previous diminished size.
Your statistics are irrefutable. The historical losses are not replaceable. Friends who lived there for 50+ years and did not lose their home are finally moving to Chilliwack this fall because they miss living in a community to which they both, outside of forestry, contributed a great deal.
Lytton is an example of learned helplessness. Nothing will ever be rebuilt there. Besides, it might disturb ancient artifacts.
I’m not sure if it’s the BC government or the feds but someone’s certainly bogged down the rebuild of Lytton with archaeological assessments which hasn’t helped progress. Jasper will likely have that to look forward to as well perhaps
It's way before Steve got the job....he's just another pylon on a chair.
The climate doomism mentality at Environment Canada is responsible for this preventable tragedy.
Actually, it seems like the most likely culprit is that nobody wanted to log all the deadwood around Jasper. Credit to the article for pointing out that everyone takes at least some blame for this reticence: the feds didn't want the optics of logging a national park and the residents of Jasper didn't want to live in the middle of a thousand acres of clearcut pine stumps.
There was a logging company based in Hinton who approached Parks Canada about removing the dead trees. Their offer was rebuffed.
Parks Canada had ZERO interest in allowing loggers into the Park.
Parks Canada won't cut trees. Enjoy the vista at the Spiral Tunnels as you hear the trains go by. You can't really see them now.
Parks Canada doesn't really want you to come and visit. Look at the stuffed animals in the visitor centre, walk up the trail at Johnson Canyon, take the shuttle bus to Lake Louise.
If you're really adventurous, try to get a permit to camp at Lake O'Hara or hike the Rockwall.
Meanwhile hiking trails are de-commissioned, bridges are removed, large parts of the back country are off limits to people.
Parks Canada's climate action plan consists of keeping people out and switching government vehicles to electric. Too bad there are all these tourists to deal with. Why can't they just stay home?
It seems like an attitude founded in a very naive sort of environmentalism. This will hopefully provide some impetus to change (and if it doesn't, skyrocketing insurance costs sure will - it's increasingly impossible to even obtain home insurance in the most hurricane-ravaged sections of the Gulf Coast, for example).
The American South, including hurricane prone States, are growing.
So are insurance rates, and the unstoppable force (old people love beaches) is beginning to run up against the immovable object (insurance companies hate losses).
https://financialpost.com/fp-finance/insurance/florida-snowbird-haven-high-home-insurance-rates-driving-away-buyers
Actually Canfor did some logging as fuel management for Parks Canada. Maybe not enough and this fire came from the south, but the treatment was widely regarded at the time as a pretty good prescription. https://treefrogcreative.ca/canfor-partnered-with-parks-canada-for-wildfire-risk-reduction-mechanical-harvesting-a-proven-success/
The cleared areas would be meadows, that's what boreal forest regen looks like. The real problem is climate doomism and how it steers people away from responsible land management. Rather they make up fairy tales about forests saving the planet. By leaving park forests unmanaged for decades, they destroyed 1/3 of Jasper. How brave.
Having known some people involved in fire management in the mountain parks, there is a big elephant in the room no one wants to acknowledge for why authorities didn’t do what they knew had to be done: NIMBYism from residents, in particular the business community. Few people wanted their mountain views smoked out and signs of mechanical tree removal on the hillsides, especially those foreign tourists paying big bucks to see clear mountain vistas and virgin forests. But government types learned long ago not to publicly say the voters are wrong (Hello Mr. Prentice, RIP).
Often when government doesn’t do what it knows it should, look to who is pressuring them not to follow through.
“The government remains committed to” and “The government has plans to” are basically code for fuck off and don’t ask any more questions.
To hear politicians saying they're pleased only 30% of the town was lost is, IMHO, proof that politicians can't take responsibility for anything. I do know, based on the now invisible Spiral Tunnels, that Parks Canada has no interest in cutting any trees; even for their own tourist sites. That no lessons were learned from Ft McMurray, (and not doubt, COVID) is almost not a surprise. I guess the challenge they have now is to decide; for Jasper and a host of other communities that are vulnerable, what is more important; attempting basic fire break safety, or park aesthetics(like maybe a 150 metre wide field of wildflowers devoid of trees. I don't know if that would have been a solution here, but lines of defence seem to make sense when you're being attacked). This fire isn't close to being out, and it's supposed to get hot again. What happens when one heads for Banff?
The exact same scenario is playing out in Banff. Experts are sending up red flags about the thick, dead, dry forests around Banff. Parks Canada CEO overtly rejects the “premise” that they put nature before people’s safety. Minister Gillbert sits there looking like he suffers from automatism. Lotsa meetings, lotsa employees, lotsa inaction.