The playful bending of personal knowledge, documented history and mythology—kindled from the stories of First Nations cultures he has deep reverence and respect for—informs author Cameron Wilson’s Ancestors: Great Spirit Remembers

A former Jasperite is leaning on his experience as a wilderness explorer, a storyteller and a history buff to launch his debut novel.

Cameron Wilson, who spent 35 years in Jasper, mostly in the ski industry, is exploring a new vocation.

Now, along with, entrepreneur, philanthropist, non-profit director and business owner, Wilson can add author to his resume. 

Wilson has penned Ancestors: Great Spirit Remembers, a book which has at the centre of its story the difficult journey Indigenous families were forced to make after being evicted from the lands now known at Jasper National Park.

Wilson, a father of four, says his great hope with the novel is to inspire young people to want to learn more about the challenges First Nations Peoples faced with the arrival of European settlers.

“It was a collision of cultures,” Wilson said. “They were kicked out, on the pretence they were in the way of progress.”

Wilson’s narrative collides, then colludes, with documented history. His story transforms into a fantastical genre of historical fiction via the trails and portals that his protagonist family finds deep in the Rocky Mountain wilderness.

But the story is based on true events, and Wilson has a strong inclination to imagine—and hope—that wrongs can still be righted.

“This is an expression of my authentic, sincere desire to work towards reconciliation,” Wilson said.

The setting is achingly knowable, yet mysterious—not unlike the backcountry it’s based on. An avid trail runner, Wilson has explored the high ridges and the deep wilderness of the Rocky Mountains. Years ago, when he worked in the Jasper National Park trails office, Wilson remembers visitors inquiring about the forests and valleys north west of Pyramid Mountain. There were no maps at that time.

“We called it the shadow of the unknown,” Wilson remembered.

Being a novelist was an ambition Wilson had harboured for a long time. But he hadn’t written much since he did a stint as a 17-year-old community newspaper reporter in his home town of Dryden, Ontario. Four decades later, in January 2022, the idea for the story struck him like a bolt out of the blue.

“It just hit me. I just started to write,” he said. “I didn’t really know where it was going.”

He’s still on a vision quest. Wilson said the feeling of holding Ancestors, fresh off the printing press, was a feeling not unlike pounding out big traverses in Jasper’s high alpine.

“I’m proud of it,” he said. “I wanted it to be as pure, as honest, as real and genuine as I could possibly make it.”

Bob Covey // bob@thejasperlocal.com