Jasper's fire has turned personal history into ash

The photos of the devastating fire in the townsite of Jasper are a gut punch. That’s the shocking present — the homes ablaze, the Anglican church with its blackened steeple reaching into the smoke-filled sky — and it’s unbearable.

But right now, it’s images of the past that are responsible for the tightness in my throat, the sick feeling in my stomach, and the tears. Those past images are captured in the black-and-white photos from my childhood, when I visited the Jasper Park Lodge over many summers to stay with family, who worked as staff at the grand railway hotel, and who actually lived within that fabled landscape.

We called them Auntie Pat and Uncle Bill, though my aunt was actually my dad’s first cousin, closely connected to him and to us within a large, loving and tight-knit Faulder family that has deep roots in Jasper. Uncle Bill was the head groundskeeper at the JPL for decades when it was owned by the Canadian National Railway, and later, Canadian Pacific Hotels. The family lived in what is today known as the Gardener’s Cabin. Now, it’s a posh retreat for guests, if it’s even still standing by the time this column is published. Media reports say flames have reached the grounds, but there is no conclusive information as to the Lodge’s condition at the time of this writing.

Back then, the cabin was rustic, and a cramped space for a family of five. As head groundskeeper, my uncle was responsible for the carpet of green grass surrounding the Lodge and for the countless bright red geraniums and other hardy northern annuals and shrubs that tamed the wild beauty of the resort.

Even today, I can’t smell dirt without remembering the feeling of being in the greenhouse, the dark, damp scent of it, the squeak and slam of the screen door that separated the family’s living quarters from the glass-enclosed rows upon rows of sprouting seedlings. It was located near the massive laundry facility of the resort and often the hot smell of clean sheets drying wafted past the gardener’s cabin. Summer and winter, my family drove to the Lodge to visit, to enjoy the national park, and to ski.

Auntie Pat and Uncle Bill had three youngsters, and one of them, Barbie, was exactly my age. She and I roamed free throughout the grounds, playing our imaginary games along the shores of Lac Beauvert. We weren’t allowed in the main building, but we could use the pool, which at that time was located within skittering distance of the turquoise lake. We would alternate between swimming in the pool, and immediately running down to the pier. Then we would dive into the lake itself, thrilling at the skin-tingling contrast between the heated pool and the glacial chill of the water.

The summer I turned 18, my uncle got me a summer job working at a gift shop in the town of Jasper, where I got to know the beer parlour at the landmark Atha-B quite well. My mother before me had also worked in Jasper as a teenager, cleaning hotel rooms in the 1950s. Her black-and-white photos include snaps of Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum, who were filming The River of No Return the summer she was a chambermaid.

These are my memories of the town of Jasper, and of the Lodge, and there are so many more extending to my last trip there a couple of years ago, and the many weeks I spent at the annual food and wine event, Christmas in November, during my tenure as a food writer for the Edmonton Journal. But even as I reach for those memories, hoping, hoping, to build on them again, the present returns.

I talk to my cousin on the phone. She lives in the Edmonton area now, but her son, an expert kayaker who works as a guide in Jasper, has been evacuated. Picking up his 92-year-old grandmother, my Auntie Pat, from her senior’s lodge in the town of Jasper, he is now in the B.C. village of Valemount. The two are trying to make their way to the Edmonton area while skirting highway closures, Auntie Pat’s precious sewing machine in tow.

Just a couple of days earlier, he had been on a Jasper river, in a boat with his girlfriend when it became clear the fire was a dangerous threat. They had parked their two cars at planned in and out points on the river; his car was incinerated, but hers was still there. They managed to escape harm.

I’m not going to pretend my feelings about the devastation in Jasper are a patch on what the evacuated townspeople and those who live in the surrounding communities are feeling. I’m not smelling the smoke, feeling the soot, watching online reports for news about my home.

But like so many Albertans, and others across the country, my past is tied to this park, this town and its historic mountain resort. To see, via Facebook, the town’s landmarks disappearing, and imagine the flames licking at the Jasper Park Lodge lobby itself is like seeing my past crumble into ash. I want desperately to speak to my mom and dad about the fire, about our family. But they both died in 2023.

I know what my dad would say, though, if he was here. I would be crying. He would listen, give me a hug. Then he would remind me that, in 1952, the main lodge building was destroyed by fire, only to be rebuilt in 1953. He would not say I shouldn’t worry, that it will all be okay. He wasn’t a Pollyanna kind of guy. But we would be together in hope.