The Current - Rebuilding Jasper: A year after the devastating wildfires

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

A year after the devastating wildfires in Jasper, Alberta, the community is continuing to rebuild and making its way back into town. We speak with a business owner who’s reopening her restaurant — and discuss what the recovery looks like for the residents of Jasper, as well as how the community can thrive again.

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wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is the Current Podcast. It was a year ago this afternoon that the first reports came. A wildfire was burning northeast of Jasper National Park. Within 40 minutes, three more were burning and growing fast. They merged and began raging out of control. A moving monster, a wall of flames, some as high as 50 meters. And then a storm of embers began raining onto the town.

We were really hit off the bat, I bet you, within that first 20 minutes of the ember shower we'd probably seen 20 to 30 structure fires start simultaneously, right? So it really kind of overwhelmed the crews right off the bat where we were just going from house to house and trying to put out as many as we can. But as we put them out by the time they moved on to the next property, we were actually seeing those structures kind of reignite. That is Matthew Conte, Jasper's fire chief. He gave a news conference yesterday in what was once a residential neighborhood. Nothing remains now. This past year has been a painful one for many people in Jasper. Conte was among those whose homes were lost to the fire. So was the town's mayor, Richard Ireland. At a news conference yesterday, he promised that the community would thrive again.

We are all learning to live in this new Jasper. A Jasper At a news conference yesterday, he promised that the community would thrive again. As Jasper continues on the long road to recovery, local businesses and restaurants are reopening. Ashley Cleaver joins me now. She's co-owner of the Raven Bistro. Ashley, thanks for being with us. Good morning. Good morning.

I know every day of the past year must have been difficult, but today, especially on this one year anniversary, how are you doing? It's just all very surreal. like time passes and there's monuments, but this last year kind of every day has been so different and unexpected from anything that we would have planned for or hoped for. How would you describe the mood in your town? It's challenging. People are tired. Like it's, it's a real conscious decision to set up a life in Jasper.

It's a very beautiful, very remote community. And then so much of this has been beyond our control. I think that everyone's positive and still here for the right reasons, but it's definitely tiring seeing how much is out of your control and how slow the progress is moving and kind of every day when you speak with someone you start to comprehend a different angle that you hadn't considered before that's heartbreaking. Yeah, we can all imagine or understand perhaps the sort of visible challenges, the rebuilding, I can't imagine or understand perhaps the sort of visible challenges, the rebuilding, putting up a house, reopening a restaurant, but it's those invisible ways that the mayor referred to that you've just talked about that is that extra layer that makes it so hard, huh?

Definitely, definitely. And every person in the community is affected. So it's not like just one person is struggling. Every person has their day-to-day life things going on and then this whole massive added layer that they're trying to navigate. Every person will have their own individual story about their experience with the wildfire. What was yours? You had just opened a second restaurant when the fire hit.

Yes. So our second restaurant, the Peacock Cork and Fork, had been open for I think 42 days. And that building was badly damaged by the fire. So my husband and I and our entire team at both restaurants were running at full capacity and the Peacock was a real passion creative project. capacity and the peacock was a real passion creative project and it was devastating to see Yeah, it just Be completely taken away. It's so It's gone. Yeah, it's gone the Raven Survived what but what was involved in getting it back up and running?

Yeah, so when we were first allowed back into town in August, we were relieved to see that the building appeared to be fine. And then we the work started with insurance and restoration companies. And sadly, a lot of people in Jasper have learned that just because you have insurance, which is kind of what I would have thought before the fire, that doesn't necessarily mean that you have the protection that you think that you would. So the restoration companies step in and they take over the cleaning and getting everything organized and we were told it would be two more weeks every week from about September 15th and we had to fight very hard in order to be open by

December 22nd and that process was just excruciating having so much out of our control to get the building up and running again. Do you ever wonder whether it was worth the trouble? Oh, 100%. I mean, it's this is our life. This is our livelihood. We have our own little community that we've built within the Raven Bistro. We have our own little family. So many people pour their heart and souls into that experience. And I just, yeah, it was essential to us to get going not only for ourselves, but for the community.

Every time something reopened in the last year, it's been a little celebration, which has been pretty magical to be a part of. And so some people still aren't able to return. There's not enough housing. Their houses no longer exist. The tourists are also back. We're into the summer and tour season. What has this summer tourism season been like thus far? You can feel that town is a bit quieter, but I also find that that's a bit of a blessing. Jasper is so popular because it's such a magical little spot, but the capacity of the residents

just isn't here right now. So everyone is, we're putting on a smile, we're kind of limping along, we're so incredibly grateful for everyone that's come. But physically, there isn't capacity for residents. So we were at 0% vacancy, we were lacking houses before the fire, and now we have so many people that are displaced. But we're so grateful for the guests that have come back and been empathetic to what's

going on and seeing what's going on and then still noticing that so much of Jasper that people come here for is here. Like the trails are here, the mountains are here, the community feel to an outsider, I think you wouldn't really notice any difference. And so given what you said that people are still displaced and you know people who still can't come back in, some people have moved on, some people want to come back and just can't. How are you feeling about how the town's recovery is going? It's heartbreaking, but to be expected. I mean, we're so remote and there was so the extent of the damage is massive, but I think

that outsiders don't necessarily understand that if this fire hit in a city, you could then move to the next neighborhood over the next community over, whereas in Jasper, there is nowhere for those people to go. So I'm very proud of how the municipality and Parks Canada have navigated and supported residents and really stayed focused on the fact that this is a crisis and this is people's lives. So yeah, it's tough. The report the town commissioned on the wildfires been making headlines. It was released last week.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has said the town should apologize for this report because she says it unfairly blames the province for its response a year ago. What would you like to see politicians focus on right now? What should be at the top of the to-do list right now? The people. Let's look at the people and the big picture. This isn't about one person. This is about a community that is so important to the fabric of Alberta. Let's focus on what is best for the community and put personal interests and images and egos aside and come together to do what is best and makes most sense and collaborate to try to, well, just to support and to help us heal. I'm glad you're doing well, Ashley.

I'm glad your restaurant is back up and running. Thank you for being with us. Appreciate it. No, thank you. Bye now. Bye now. Ashley Cleaver is a co-owner of The Raven Bistro in Jasper, Alberta. Hey, I'm Jill Deacon and I'm excited to share my new podcast with you. of the Raven Bistro in Jasper, Alberta. I realized I haven't dealt with anything. My family's motto was, I'm not going to be able to handle that.

Listen and subscribe to A Love Affair with the Unknown wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Tuesday. In the past year, Lori Daniels has been to Jasper several times. She's been doing research into what happened and what we can all learn from it. Lori is the Kerner Chair in Wildfire Coexistence at the University of British Columbia. She's in Vancouver. Laurie, good morning. Good morning, Kia.

At the beginning of the show, I did sort of like try to paint a picture of what that fire was like as it ripped through Jasper, but remind us the power of this fire. How did it grow into such a massive blaze? Oh, so fire in Jasper was burning under such extreme fire weather conditions. It was hot, hot and dry last summer. Temperatures were well over 30 degrees for several days. The relative humidity was very low.

And when those lightning strikes occurred and started the fires, it was very windy. So the fires began to take off. They immediately became crown fires up in the treetops, spreading treetop to treetop. And as you described, they move so quickly, merging. I think in the first 24 hours, it grew to 6,000 hectares and just continued with the wind over several days and having such devastating effects with the wind over several days and having such devastating effects in the forest. And then as it approached the community, having to evacuate the entire community in the night and then leaving the impacts with 30% of the community being burned. – There's been hot, hot weather in several parts of our country this summer and wildfires,

as you well know. I don't want to compare wildfires because I think they're a bit like comparing your children. They're each unique and have their own personalities. But just generally, how did sort of the Jasper fire stack up against, I don't know, your quote unquote average wildfire? Yeah, it's shocking in many ways. It was so intense. Some of the parts of the park where we've been able to visit and do Some of the parts of the park where we've been able to visit and do some of the reconnaissance and look at the impacts of the fire, we've seen that it was so windy at the time of the fire that not only did the trees burn, but

they blew down. So today when you see parts of the fire, all of the trees are horizontal on the ground, their roots are ripped up, and even the ground is burned to rock. It's some of the most intense evidence of fire and very extreme or severe fire impacts that I've seen. And I've seen a lot of fires in Western Canada over the last decade. You were doing research on this particular fire. What are you trying to figure out? Well, I've been working in Jasper for about 15 or more years. Our regional studies were to try to understand how fire works in the ecosystem, how it works historically. We use

tree rings and fire scars embedded in the trees to understand past fire events, their timing, their intensity and severity. And our projects today are going back into the park and asking the question, you know, how severe was the fire? What were the impacts on the trees and the ground? And figuring out as well the proactive management that Parks Canada had done, sending out the forest, reducing fuel loads, restoring forest structures to the best of their ability, undoing a century of fire exclusion and fire suppression to try to get the ecosystem back into a resilient state, especially in the conditions that we see

with climate change, impacting extreme weather, creating insect outbreaks that are exceeding things that we have seen in the past. So our research is really asking the critical question, how effective was that proactive management? How well did it help to create defensible space around the community and support those wildfire and structural firefighting efforts as the fire spread towards town and critical infrastructure? So let's talk a little bit more about that forest management approach. Explain to us what kinds of forest management practices were being used in Jasper,

inside the National Park, before this fire last year. Yeah, it's a great question. And I'll start by saying that we have to be ecosystem specific. In Canada, we have such diverse forest types as you go from the West Coast to the East Coast and up North that we have to understand the ecosystem and how fire functions in it, and then choose proactive management strategies that suit the ecosystem and suit the type of fire

that might impact there. In Jasper National Park, in much of the park, especially the Valley Bottoms and the Athabasca Valley surrounding Jasper itself, we know that historically there were surface fires that burned, started by both lightning and indigenous fire stewardship, that would clear the understory and burn through the understory, maintaining more open forests and patchy forests, some places broadleaf forests, some places open grasslands and meadows.

But in absence of fire, because we've tried so hard to control fire thinking that was the good thing to do in the forest, we've actually had more and more trees encroach and in particular the needle leaf trees, the pines and the spruces and the firs grow into the forest making it more dense and susceptible to fire. So for 20 years Parks Canada Canada, recognizing that change, had been doing proactive management to restore and to mitigate the amount of fuels. They'd been thinning the forest from below,

leaving the biggest trees to be shade trees, but taking out the understory trees that were increasing the density and the fuel loads, and cleaning up the dead trees that had fallen to the ground, especially after the mountain pine beetle impacts. You know, you can't do that everywhere because the landscape is so big, but they were very strategic about doing those treatments around the municipality, around the campgrounds, towards Jasper Park Lodge, and some of the other communities. And we're seeing when we go out into the forest, we can see where the forest change or the fire change

from being a crown fire spreading tree top to tree top, where it dropped down to the ground and was lower intensity burning through the surface, but leaving the needles still on the trees, showing that the treatments worked. It created lower intensity fire that helped the firefighters to redirect and control the fire right around the community, which is why 70% of Jasper community, their critical infrastructure, like their drinking water supplies and water treatment plant survived

the fire. Yeah. We often focus on the 30%, don't we? And don't remember that the 70% that was saved. Well, the 70% that was saved and the 70% that was saved and the miracle that Jasper was evacuated, normally there's three highways that lead to the community of Jasper.

Two had been cut off by fire. Only one was still accessible last summer. The entire community was evacuated to the west and to British Columbia. There was no fatalities. The firefighters, the emergency response was really quite miraculous. When I compare it to places south of us in the United States or places in Europe where we've had sadly tens, hundreds of people die in these types of fires, I really have to commend the

emergency response in Jasper. I want to play a bit of tape. This is David Argument, a resource conservation manager with Parks Canada, and he was commenting on how the fire in Jasper behaved. He was doing this yesterday at a press conference marking the anniversary. The circumstances of last summer's fire were a result of unprecedented weather conditions in the month of July. We did have a lot of fire risk reduction work in the landscape prior to last summer's fire, but the month of July last year was simply off the charts in terms of the hot, dry weather, and it would be difficult for any amount

of wildfire risk reduction work on the landscape to have fully prevented the events of last summer. So, Lori Daniels, we know the climate crisis are making wildfires worse. We also know that the weather can play a role, of course. When you're dealing with a fire of the kind of intensity we saw in Jasper, how much impact can prevention really have?

Oh, critically important. I mean, all of us, we know from the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction that for every dollar that we spend in advance during the proactive measures to prevent impacts like flooding and fire and others, we are gaining, you know, $5 in return in order to be able to reduce the impacts of the fire, to have our communities, our infrastructure, our ecosystems prepared. Even now, the insurable losses in Jasper are somewhere up in the over $800 million

in terms of the costs of the impacts. And yet, could you imagine if it was four times that because the entire community had burned? The types of actions that we're taking absolutely count. And make the critical thing, I think, to understand is all that proactive management isn't meant to stop a fire or to prevent extreme fires from occurring, but it prepares us when the virtually unstoppable fires that are exceeding our modern technology hit our towns and communities. So those treatments create the defensible space that are needed to protect homes.

So anything from homeowner fire smart, making and maintaining our homes so that they are resistant to fire, not fireproof, but resistant to fire and working around communities that are in fire prone environments. really Jasper was not an anomaly. We're seeing it over and over again. 2025 is another record fire season as was 2024 and 2023 across our entire nation. Extreme wildfires are fueled by climate change. They're burning in disrupted and altered landscapes all across Canada with tremendous impacts. So those transformative actions, those urgent actions that we need that adapt to climate change,

but also prepare us for these climate driven wildfires are incredibly important. Laurie, it's been really important to hear voices like yours and I thank you for joining us today. Appreciate it. Thank you very much, Pia. Laurie Daniels is the Kerner Chair in Wildfire Coexistence at UBC. You've been listening to The Current Podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.

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