Parks Canada has approved variances for a 144-unit apartment complex at the south entrance of Jasper, 801 Connaught Drive. After their July 17 meeting, Jasper’s Planning and Development Advisory Committee (PDAC) recommended, and the park superintendent subsequently approved, the granting of three va...

March 15, 2021 A proposal for a paid parking pilot project was seen as too tentative by Jasper municipal council and administration was sent back to the drawing board March 9. Newly minted CAO Bill Given admitted the scheme was conservative by design but suggested the plan would garner important dat...

Mayor Richard Ireland in the 2017 Tour of Hope. // JASPER LOCAL FILE PHOTO Richard Ireland will run for Mayor in Jasper again.  The only Mayor that the community has ever known filed his nomination papers yesterday, July 29.  The decision to offer his services as mayor for the seventh time was based...

UPDATE: On June 1, council passed second and third reading on a bylaw to set the tax ratio at 5:1 A move to reduce Jasper’s commercial/residential tax ratio has Jasper council split. Introduced during discussion of Jasper’s required tax rate bylaw for 2021, the idea of reducing the tax burden from n...

Two climbers are dead after an avalanche on Mount Andromeda on Sunday, May 30. Parks Canada confirmed the deaths today (Sunday, May 30). Spokesperson Steve Young said EMS ambulances, STARS air ambulance and Alpine helicopters responded to an accident at around 8:30 a.m. Two strike teams from Jasper ...

Most of us had a favourite teacher from school. I had a few. Mrs. Royer, in elementary school, was warm, accessible and caring. She treated all of her students equally, and I’ll never forget how hard she laughed at Grade 6 camp when my friend jumped out of his sleeping bag in his undies while she tr...

A freshwater ecologist specializing in Alberta’s native fish says a recently-issued Critical Habitat Order to protect Bull Trout in Alberta does not actually protect critical habitat or Bull Trout. David Mayhood is a director of the Timberwolf Wilderness Society , based in Pincher Creek, Alberta. Ma...

After whittling down yet another amended budget put forward by municipal administrators; after cutting and/or reallocating money for social and emergency services; and after once again postponing action on perilously underfunded municipal reserves, Jasper Municipal Council has passed a 2021 operatio...

Jasper’s Jakub Sebela wasn’t always interested in woodworking. When he was young, growing up in a tiny town in the foothills of the Czech Republic, Sebela wanted to be a mechanic. He thought woodworking was too messy. “I wanted to be clean,” the 32-year-old said. “I didn’t like the dust.” But his pa...

Jasperites are writing to their elected officials to express their dissatisfaction with the Alberta government’s proposed draft K-6 school curriculum. When Cristin Murphy first saw the newly released draft in early April, she was, like many of her friends and colleagues, surprised at not only what w...

Jasper municipal councillors were grinding out the details on a potential new skatepark location and administration was trying to keep the conversation on the rails as comments bordered on the blunt side March 23. At council’s most recent committee of the whole meeting the town’s director of operati...

From a young age, Emilie Langley had a penchant for needlework. Sewing lessons as a teenager put her ahead of the curve; Langley would finish her home-economics assignments much faster than the rest of the students. “I think that upset the teacher,” Langley said with a laugh. In college, Langley rem...

You know that dream where you’re sitting in your old high school classroom and you’ve got a test in front of you but you haven’t studied and you don’t remember seeing any of the course material before and the test is actually in hieroglyphics and—oh no—you’re not wearing any pants? I hate that dream...

Jasper municipal councillors were grinding out the details on a potential new skatepark location and administration was trying to keep the conversation on the rails as comments bordered on the blunt side March 23. At council’s most recent committee of the whole meeting the town’s director of operati...

Under a cloudless, sun-drenched sky and framed by glaciated peaks in every direction, on March 10 a small group of skiers and snowboarders slid into Marmot Basin history . Taking in the new vantage point. // B COVEY For years—decades, even—local riders had looked up to the highest point at Marmot Ba...

Author, conservationist and former superintendent of Banff National Park, Kevin Van Tighem, wants Albertans to reimagine themselves. At a time when social, economic and environmental changes confront and confound Alberta,Van Tighem, a fourth-generation Albertan, says we need better ways of rememberi...

A local writer and science communicator is taking a deep-dive into the growing world of podcasting. Jasper’s Niki Wilson is bringing her inquisitive nature, vast knowledge of Rocky Mountain biology and love of a good pine marten story to a new podcast series called Anthropomania . Jasper’s Niki Wils...

Lynn and Andrew Wannop were not the first to find out that the Municipality of Jasper had some news to share with them. “I was in a meeting with our school coordinator,” Lynn said. “All of a sudden my phone started going crazy.” Lynn’s friends were blowing up her phone because they had just watched ...

After 10 years, dozens of markets, thousands of pounds of vegetables and tractor-loads of hard work, the Jasper Local Food Society is enjoying the fruits of its labours. However, even the most productive soil needs to be regularly replenished. “We’re hoping we can recruit some new board members,” pr...

Who opposes the province’s decision to allow open-pit coal mining in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains? Basically everyone. So suggests Edmonton-based writer and political watcher, Dave Cournoyer ( daveberta.ca ). Cournoyer lists ranchers, farmers, environmental organizations and recreational groups among t...