Jasper seniors faced with losing their dedicated lounge space are not taking the prospect sitting down.
As post-wildfire recovery work in Jasper ramps up and the Jasper Recovery Coordination Centre shores up resources to assist in Jasper’s anticipated years-long rebuilding process, local officials are looking for any available office space to house the extra personnel.
As a potentially tidy solution to the problem, they’ve identified the Jasper Seniors Lounge in the Jasper Activity Centre.
“The idea of how to fit these new people into our operation is a challenge,” said Director of Community Development, Christopher Read.
Read told more than two dozen local seniors gathered elbow to elbow in the very room in question that Jasper’s upper administrators see the space as “prime real estate” which would work well for the town’s current, post-wildfire, administrative functions. He tried to gauge from the group a sense of whether local seniors would be amenable to having their Seniors Society space temporarily set up in a different location—municipal or otherwise.
“If this space was not available to you, what would you need to make your community group function?” Read asked, listing several spaces that could potentially accommodate a community group: the upper curling lounge and the council chambers in the basement of the Jasper Municipal Library, for example.
Some local seniors questioned why the JRCC weren’t themselves looking to those spaces to expand, instead of putting the burden on the seniors to move.
“Instead of looking at it from the perspective of us leaving, what about you utilizing those other spaces?” said Jasperite Linda Morgan.
Read said the curling lounge and offices wouldn’t be compatible flex spaces; he said other community facilities are being explored.
“We are in a place where we don’t have enough [space] and we have to figure out how to maximize use through flexible, shared spaces,” he said.
Since allocating dedicated space for local seniors in the mid-1970s, this is not the first time the municipality has asked the Jasper Seniors for their lounge. Earlier requests were rebuffed, but in 2024, as the town’s wildfire recovery operations have Jasper’s facilities “bursting at the seams” with employees, the issue has become more urgent.
And because the Seniors Society don’t have a lease—and the evacuation in July precluded one from being signed—many seniors are worried that the town will “punt them,” as several members expressed.
“It’s a very big hurdle you’re asking for,” former school trustee Betsy DeClercq said. “There’s no other spot we could come up with that we can use just for ourselves.”
Read was adamant he wanted to come to “an 80 percent solution” for all parties. He offered to facilitate a workshop that would help identify the seniors’ needs and make any transition “as win-win as possible.”
But Senior Society chair Janis Marks summed up the position of many when she suggested that “What we need is what we have: a place that’s ours.”
Jasper Seniors will present to Jasper Municipal Council today (Tuesday, October 8). Download the Jasper Local App so you don’t miss the latest coverage on this developing story.
Bob Covey // bob@thejasperlocal.com
