Jasper’s mayor is number one. Richard Ireland has been voted Best Municipal Elected Official in political watcher Dave Cournoyer’s Best of Alberta Politics 2024 Survey . Cournoyer publishes the DaveBerta substack , where he writes and podcasts about Alberta politics and elections. “The annual survey...

Dear Premier Smith, MLA Long, the Hinton Medical Clinic, and fellow Albertans: I am reaching out through this open letter to shed light on the urgent healthcare issues affecting our community in Hinton, Alberta. Over the past two years, I have personally tried eight times to schedule a doctor’s appo...

Is Alberta’s Minister of Forestry and Parks camouflaging the hunting of “problem” grizzly bears as a wildlife safety measure? Back in June, Minister Todd Loewen, a renowned big game hunter and shareholder in a Valleyview-based outfitting business, signed a ministerial order that, to this retired bio...

Record dryness, extreme heat, high winds, and a lightning storm. This summer in Jasper National Park, all of the ingredients of a recipe for disaster were in place. Now, two and a half months after that disaster came to pass, another set of circumstances— misinformation, toxic politics and facts-sta...

Jasper is at a crossroads. Like its residents, legislators in Ottawa must come together today to expedite Jasper’s rebuild “Will there just be crumbs, dad?” We were driving back to Jasper—for the first time since the fire. We were passing through the community’s west gate, trying to prepare the kids...

Jasper’s mayor is pushing back on prevailing narratives that suggest the municipality’s transit system has been rushed, town capital costs are out of control and Jasper’s financial capacity is at its breaking point. As he does every spring, on May 8, Mayor Richard Ireland took the stage at the Jaspe...

Changes will send chills through municipal councils and create a lot of grief for MLAs  It has been very interesting to watch over the past week how Premier  Danielle Smith ’s United Conservative Party government has unrolled its suite of changes to municipal governance and local election laws, and ...

Alberta Health Services and the Hinton Healthcare Centre are letting the public know of temporary acute bed shortages in the facility. Six of 23 acute care inpatient beds have been closed since March 15, according to the AHS website. The bed closures, which are anticipated to last until April 3, are...

Province wants to double tourism revenue by 2035; visiting officials recognize tourism-community challenges Premier Danielle Smith was in Jasper this week to announce a new provincial tourism strategy and on St. Valentine’s Day had adoring words for Jasper’s welcoming nature. “Jasper and Banff are t...

More than two dozen students walked out of school on Wednesday, February 7 in protest of the Alberta government’s proposed new policies around trans youth. The demonstration also included parents and allies of the LGBTQ2+ community. The group gathered to show solidarity with trans youth in Alberta a...