Beautiful Jasper

It’s a town we fell in love with when we first came here in 2014.. that town is Jasper. 

Jasper feels like a good friend to us now, one of those friends you don’t see for years but, when you meet again, it’s like you’ve never been apart. 

It’s a lot less touristy than Banff and has a real community feel to it. 

It feels much less commercially driven than Banff, and that’s just how we like it. 

Jasper is also home to the best Pizza place in the rockies and quite probably the best beer - oddly enough called Jasper the Bear by Jasper Brewing Co. 

We’ve been down to Annette Lake for an evening picnic. I think the mosquitoes also thought it was a picnic with me as the main course, but I don’t mind that much as long as we all get something to eat. it was an absolutely beautiful night and we watched the sun go down over the mountains. 

One thing we have noticed on this visit is the amount of haze which is generally due to the smoke of the surrounding wildfires, it’s a real worry.

We went up the Jasper Sky Tram to the top of Whistlers Mountain and the visibility was very poor, but it’s absolutely nothing compared to what other towns with wildfires are currently going through. Our Sky Tram guide was saying the smoke and haze would sometimes happen only a few times every 10 years but now it’s more like every summer season where the visibility is poor due to surrounding wildfires. 

It is advised to get a bottle of water at the top as you can become more dehydrated due to the smoke, it can also be really bad if you have any lung disease or asthma.. team that with altitude sickness and you could get yourself into a bit of bother. Luckily we were both ok apart from going slightly light headed.

The Two Brothers Totem Pole is a kind of welcome to Jasper Totem Pole, it was erected in 2011 and replaced the Jasper Raven Totem Pole, which stood there for 94 years. Sadly it had to be removed in 2009 due to deterioration and it was repatriated back to the Haida Nation.

There is a story behind it that is associated with Two Brothers: Long ago, two brothers from Haida Gwaii were possessed by a curiosity to see the mountains. They made the journey over the water to the mainland and then travelled inland for days until they came to the Rockies. One brother returned home having satisfied his curiosity, but the other brother decided to stay in the mountains. Years passed, and the brother who had returned often wondered about his brother who had stayed behind in the mountains. Deciding to go and look for him, he journeyed back to the place where they had last been together, and there, in the exact spot where they had stood, was a house.

The man called out "Anyone home?" and a woman's voice answered, "Yes, come in."  The mountain brother had died, but standing there was his daughter, the Island brother's niece.

Now, some  First Nations in the Jasper area wondered why a totem pole from a thousand kilometres away was being put up, when there is nothing to represent the local native traditions.  Chief Nathan Matthew of the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council says his nation is much closer to the park, which they consider their traditional territory.

"We don't want to disrespect the Haida and their art, but…it's a little bit ironic they would have something like the Haida, significantly and prominently represented in Jasper, when they have no representation of other First Nations whose traditional territory Jasper Park is in," he said.

Matthew says this pole may be beautiful, but totem poles aren't even a tradition among First Nations in the Jasper area.

Parks Canada says the totem pole is not an inappropriate cultural icon, but rather a gift between aboriginal people.

My views on this don’t count for much, I guess, but as a visitor to Jasper it would have been nice to see something traditional by the local First Nations as that would have had more meaning and spoke to me more about local First Nation traditions than any cultural landmark. 

But moving on swiftly, we’ve had some great bear encounters over the years, even this time round a mummy bear and little cub crossing the road right in front of us was a very special moment .. I’m not sure we will top that to be honest. 

It was our last full day in Jasper yesterday and we were up very early as Suz has tweeked her back a little so she arranged an appointment with a chiropractor/physiotherapist just in town. On our way about 8.30am all of a sudden a huge black bear runs out from someone’s back garden right in front of us closely followed by two Parks Canada Wardens. No idea what was going on but I expect the bear was up to mischief. What a crazy, amazingly beautiful place Jasper is. 

We also have some new additions to our own little family…two black bears and one brown bear but these are more cuddly than the real thing.  You can’t leave Jasper without a new addition to the family.

We shall return at some point I expect.