Gregory is dead. Long live Gregory

Guest columnist: Joe Urie

“News is history shot on the wing. The huntsmen from the Fourth Estate seek to bag only the peacock or the eagle of the swifting day.” –Gene Fowler.

The news, as it were, was shot through the wing, straight to the heart of the matter, and just like that, ‘Gregory” the Peacock was history. 

In the digital age, news is swifter than the day, as was the vitriol that surrounded the report of Gregory’s demise. It was more invasive than the reality of the bird’s arrival here. 

Let it go people. While your anger is understood, it is misguided and misdirected. 

I mean, I get it. It seemed a magical moment, didn’t it? But the truth is, it wasn’t magic at all. It was only sleight of hand. 

In a post-COVID-restrictions world, we found ourselves looking for something beautiful. Something we could rally around. We had seen and heard a lot of ugliness over the last couple of years and we wanted to believe in beautiful things again. Beauty without consequence. And when Gregory arrived unexpectedly, we thought we had found it. So we rallied around the idea the bird represented.

For a moment or two, our hands and our hearts were joined. That, to me, was the beautiful part. But it didn’t take long for reality to pull back the curtain, revealing that the little man pulling the levers was no wizard at all. We needed a fairy tale ending and we grew angry when we were denied it. We wanted the moment and the memory of it to remain shiny, just like Gregory’s own plumage.

The truth is (and we knew this), the bird didn’t belong. Its arrival here was nothing more than human folly. It wasn’t some oddity of migration, nor was it some climate refugee. Gregory is, after all, the national bird of India. 

I was dismayed to see the communal ire pointed so nastily towards those folks whose job it is to mind the mandates of the national park. Good, talented people attempted, for the better part of a week, to wrangle this wily, winged, free spirit. What else, exactly, were they supposed to do? How long should they have kept at it? How many resources should have been exhausted? A peacock may be pretty, but in our ecological integrity context, it’s a pest. Yet armchair experts were quick to dispense advice on how to corral it, and even quicker to dismiss those trying their best as lacking empathy, energy or intellect. Tranquilizing an avian? That’s not actually a thing. Netting it? Hooking it? Trapping it? These aren’t ideas unique to Facebook. In the end, the peafowl’s destruction was unfortunate, but it was a logical and logistical decision made by people with good intentions—people who, just like the rest of us onlookers, wanted to believe in magic as well.

To those raging against the Parks Canada machine: Where is this outrage when CN spills grain on the railway tracks, resulting in dozens of animal deaths— animals that are native to this place—every year?

Where is this outrage when a speeding transport truck strikes a mother grizzly, leaving her young cub to fend for itself? Grizzlies are, after all, not only native to these valleys, but have little room left elsewhere to exist, due to the unsustainable size of the human footprint. 

I like your passion, Jasper. Passion is important. It can be a useful weapon. In fact, channelled properly, that passion could even help produce the fairy tale ending we are all looking for. Perhaps we can redirect that passion towards a worthy cause, and so that the death of his beauty will not be in vain, let’s call this worthy cause The Gregory Offensive.

If you agree that the destruction of Jasper’s bears, wolves, deer, elk, moose, coyote, cougars and lynx along our transportation corridors is senseless and severe, avoidable and infuriating, write an email to federal leaders demanding a reduction of speed on the Yellowhead highway through Jasper National Park. Explain that this action is not only absolutely necessary in reducing the rate of animal mortality, it will also lend to the national park experience, which was the original intent of the road. You can also explain how this action will reduce carbon emissions (a federal mandate) and how it is a far-cheaper option than twinning the highway and that project’s requisite fencing and underpass/overpass construction. With reasonable speed limits in place, the Canadian taxpayer would save billions at the cost of only a dozen or so extra minutes of trucking time through JNP’s high-impact areas—a levy that the transportation industry should, at this point, be more than willing to incur (and if they don’t like the speed through Jasper, they can always head to Banff).

While you’re ramping up your Gregory Offensive, you might also demand that the feds require CN and CP Railways to either fix their leaking grain cars or purchase new ones. Strongly suggest these corporations no longer be allowed to pull cars that spill their loads and tell them to slow down the trains while they’re at it.

You can direct you ire towards the current heads of these portfolios (amongst others): Alan Fehr, Park Superintendent JNP; Omar Alghabra, Federal Minister of Transport; Gerald Soroka, MP for Yellowhead; Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change (Parks Canada is in this portfolio); and Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada.

When it is at its best, the human experience is a thing of great beauty. But it’s not the only experience. It’s time to get over ourselves. It’s time to think outside the box. But…it is also time to get back in the circle. 

Now, if you want to learn about real magic, come back again, take a seat around my fire, and I’ll tell you about the time the Crested Cara-Cara came to town.

Joe Urie // info@thejasperlocal.com