Jasperites encouraged to attend wildfire resilience event
A live music event, a rally cry, a celebration of resilience, a reckoning.
An artist’s statement on a changing climate, a gathering of community, an album release night, a fundraiser.
Call it what you will, A Jam for Jasper will be reverberating over the iconic grounds at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel Saturday, May 31, and organizers are putting a special invitation out to Jasperites to join the party.
“We want to get as many people from Jasper in the room as we can,” said Scott Diehl, a Bow Valley singer/songwriter who is known on stage as Digital Hobo.
Digital Hobo and the Climate Changers will headline the music, but the event is intended to be a deeper dive into the learning opportunities which forested communities can glean from the catastrophic wildfire which burned Jasper last July.
“I think it’s important we have Jasper and Banff people in the same room, talking not at a scientific level, but at a people-who-live-in-these-communities level,” said Diehl, a former mechanical engineer who has found his voice onstage as an advocate for the people and ecosystems impacted by climate change.
Diehl’s convictions come from experience: he was in Canmore during the catastrophic floods there in 2013, and has family and friends in Honolulu and L.A.—both of which burned in the context of a warming, drying climate.
“If we look at six degrees within our networks, many of us know people affected by climate change,” he said.
However, Diehl said, it was the Jasper wildfire in July of 2024 which has put the issue front and centre for many Rockies residents.
“For many people that was the first time they looked a climate change refugee in the face and say ‘hey, I know you,’” Diehl said. “It was an introduction to what climate change looks like in our towns.”
One person who has had a close up look at the Jasper wildfire disaster is Banff Springs hotel manager, Richard Cooper. Cooper spent 15 years in Jasper and was the director of operations at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge last July when the community was evacuated. He said the Jam for Jasper event is deeply personal for him.
“I think it’s really important we learn from Jasper’s experience and build our resilient future together,” Cooper said on the Digital Hobo’s social media channel.
In the tradition of Woody Guthrie and other balladeers whose art focuses on social change, as the Digital Hobo, Diehl sings what many others are not willing to say.
Such as: “people believe the climate science, yet they don’t associate their own habits with the wider phenomenon.”
To break through the disconnect—the disavowal that happens when people’s beliefs don’t line up with their actions—Diehl wants to inspire audiences with songs of hope and social change.
And as for his own inspiration, the father of two kids in their 20s has his future great grandchildren to thank.
“This album [Climate Stories] was created out of concern for my grandchildren’s future,” he says.
Saturday’s Jam For Jasper was similarly conceived with a lasting legacy in mind. Diehl and the event’s marquee partners—Fairmont Banff Springs and the Biosphere Institute of the Bow Valley—will host a panel discussion that focusses on what the Bow Valley can learn from Jasper’s wildfire experience. Audeince members will hear from Town of Banff Fire Chief Keri Martens, MLA Sara Elmeligi, and Jasper wildfire refugee Ryan Bray.
“Jasper has much to teach us and Ryan has an impactful story,” Diehl said
Following the discussion, Biosphere will make available a “What we Heard” document to residents, local FireSmart Champions, and local emergency services leaders.
“Adaptation to wildfire is a process that will take decades,” Diehl said. “Hopefully this is one of the first steps to make it happen.”
On Saturday Diehl wants Rockies residents to take that step together.
The Jam for Jasper takes place at 7 p.m. on Saturday, May 31 at the Fairmont Banff Springs Conference Centre Theatre. Free entry for Jasperites. Get your tickets here.
Bob Covey // bob@thejasperlocal.com
