Together with a mountain of work by golf course staff, the 2024 Jasper wildfire has revealed an architectural gem as it was originally envisioned

For SCOREGolf Magazine editor Jason Logan, the 14th hole at the Fairmont Jasper Park Golf Course is not just his favourite golf hole in Canada. 

It’s his favourite place in Canada.

“Anytime I step on 14 I take time to appreciate where I am in life,” Logan said. 

Logan’s affection for the Jasper Park course goes back to 2004, when he first played a junket that consisted of top level Rocky Mountains tracks, including the Fairmont Banff Springs.

“I love Banff, but I fell in love with Jasper,” he recalled.

Logan said between the mountain setting and the thoughtful ebb and flow of challenging but playable holes, for his money Jasper is “the best in the country and it’s not even close.”

His fellow editors agree: Jasper Park has for years ranked in SCOREGolf’s top public courses in Canada, and is consistently in the top three of the country’s best resort courses, according to the magazine. The ranking takes into account a slew of criteria, but the most heavily weighted indicator is simply how fun a course is to play.

“Anybody who’s ever played Jasper knows it’s a blast from start to finish,” Logan said.

However, before he teed up in 2025, during Jasper Park’s 100th anniversary, Logan admitted he was anxious about how the renowned Stanley Thompson track fared in the fire. He knew it wouldn’t be the same, but could it still hold the same place in his heart?

The short answer? Appreciating the renovated, renewed course was a tap-in.

“Yes, there are scorched trees in many places and initially your eyes are drawn to them with sadness,” Logan wrote on social media. “But as you play the course they provide a sort-of enchanted forest look and a great colour contrast to the more exposed rock, golden fescue and great, green turf of Stanley Thompson’s amazing holes.”

Getting the golf course in such incredible shape was no walk in the park. More than 90 percent of the trees were burned. About 7,000 burned, fallen and still-standing trees had to be removed to make getting around the golf course safe. Greens were damaged—from fallen timber, burning embers, a non-insulating, shallow snow pack, and wildlife urine. Course infrastructure—bathrooms, refreshment stations and the members’ banquet area—was lost. The entire fleet of maintenance equipment had to be replaced. The irrigation system was severely compromised. And the massive engineering complex and adjacent maintenance shed, containing an archive of historic blueprints and an armoury of specialized tools, were both erased. 

That was what Head Superintendent Glen Griffis and his team were contending with when they arrived back in Jasper last August.

Three hundred and forty four days after the fire, on July 1, 2025, longtime Jasper fire chief Greg Van Tighem took the honourary first swing on the newly-opened course. Van Tighem, who helped protect structures at the Fairmont JPL until it was no longer safe to do so, piped his ball right down the middle of the fairway.

“That was a miracle,” he joked.

To some, getting the golf course ready for play was likewise miraculous. For Griffis, however, it was methodical. Moreover, the unprecedented endeavour represented a major opportunity to create a golf experience much like Thompson originally envisioned. As such, with guidance from renowned golf course historian, architect and Thomson devotee, Ian Andrew, Griffis and his team expanded greens to reclaim historical pin positions; restored bunkers to their original design; and, with help from the fire, opened up the golf course to reveal breathtaking vistas.

“It’s a once-in-a-century opportunity to experience this architectural gem as it was originally envisioned,” Griffis has said.

For Logan, who, as a writer, soaks up golf course lore at every opportunity, basking in Jasper Park’s living history was another way to appreciate the what’s-old-is-new-again aesthetic. Standing over his ball on the par three seventh, he discovered a fresh beauty from not only the exposed topography and terrain features, but from the newly-opened path to the green for his shot.

“It’s such a better hole for the trees coming down,” Logan said. “Where it used to be choked with trees, now it’s opened up so much, it’s such a fantastic look.”

And what of Hole 14, the tee box he called his favourite place in Canada? Perhaps the most-photographed par four in Canada and a hole requiring a semi-blind tee-shot and an uphill approach to a sloping green?

“That hasn’t changed at all,” he said. “I arrived in Jasper knowing it was my favourite course in Canada and left there knowing it still is.”

Bob Covey // bob@thejasperlocal.com