Park Wardens no more...

I can’t really put a finger on why the loss of three-quarters of our Park Warden force in Canada feels so dismembering to me.  I think it’s because something is fractured. While a few will be identified as Wardens, most just lost their century-old identity. 

I am not a warden, but I have been there to give support to my Warden after he rescued lost children and injured climbers, picked up dead bodies, and consoled families that lost loved ones to these mountains. I have been relieved when he returned from a ten day back-country patrol, finished a day of avalanche control work, fought a forest fire, investigated a possible poaching, or dealt with a bear situation. 

I have also grieved for fellow Wardens who died doing their job.  I’ll never forget our Wardens lined up at a funeral in their dress uniforms, holding their iconic felt Stetsons to their chests. You could look at those uniformed men and women, and even in their sorrow, know that the memory and spirit of their fallen Warden was honoured. 

I know from living with my Warden for his 20 years of Parks Canada service, that he is not just law enforcement, a gun and a bullet proof vest. He is a law enforcer, and a rescuer, and park protector. My warden, and all that followed in Parks Canada’s amazing 99 year proud tradition are the sum of all of those roles. Now stripped of their uniforms, their badges and their name, they will continue to protect the people and the parks. I just wish they could do it with the same wholeness and sense of identity.

Kirsten Schmitten,
Jasper, AB

Looking at racism in Jasper

When I leaf through photo albums, I’m always startled to recall where I was born and raised: a town full of mountains, rivers, lakes – the sort of magical places that most people only glimpse on postcards. Though I divide my time between New York and California now, it’s not always easy to return to Jasper – even in my imagination, for there are pictures I don’t like to recall, much less think about.

Snapshot #1

One of my earliest memories: It is the middle of the night, and a jagged rock flies through our window like a bat with pointed wings – breaking the glass and yanking us from our dreams. In the morning, my parents silently clean up the mess.

Snapshot #2

It is the middle of winter, and the outside of our house has been covered in macaroni. My father walks to one window and begins scraping. I want to put my hands over my ears because of the clawing sounds he is making, which reverberate up and down our street. His breath rises and sinks in the cold air as he tries to get it off. As I watch him, I marvel at how hatred can be nurtured and boiled in the middle of the night, pots and pots of it, then thrown into the wind – how it can stick to you, marking you forever.

Snapshot #3

I still have a star-shaped scar on my left knee from falling after being pushed by a drunken classmate at a bush party one night. “March, ni----!” she tells me as I lead her though tangled bushes. “March!”

Snapshot #4

Flash forward: I am 28 and visiting Jasper for the first time in years. I stay at a bed and breakfast outside of town, for I feel as awkward and ugly as I did when I was a child. When I return to New York, it occurs to me that even when I visit the place where I grew up, I don’t feel like I belong. I am, after so many years, still a woman in hiding.

Snapshot #5

She tells me that the kids in my class want me to play with them on the outskirts of the soccer field. Excited and nervous, I follow her – the girl who sits behind me in homeroom. Unsmiling, she holds tightly to my arm. In a matter of minutes, I am surrounded and hands are pressing down on my shoulders. At first I think it’s a game so I push back – try to stand even as they want me to sit. Finally someone laughs and kicks me in the back of the knees. I land on the ground and the kids scatter. I get up slowly, only to discover that I am sitting on a pile of dog sh--. When I go inside, I tell my teacher who does not even look up from her desk when she says, “Natasha, nobody likes a tattletale.”

Snapshot #6

Our high school has been vandalized. A certain group of boys have spray painted all sorts of slogans over the brick walls, and the school officials are outraged. I wander outside and stare up at the vandals’ work. Across the bricks, someone has spray-painted the words?“abolish racism”?in red letters. When the brick wall is redone and the spray paint is gone, I trace the places where those words were with my fingers. I pray for our school to be vandalized again and again.

Snapshot #7

I go to watch my brother play hockey against a team from Edson. At some point, in the middle of the game, an Indian boy from the other team skates onto the rink, his brown skin a sharp contrast against the white of the ice. All of the people from the Jasper side begin chanting, “Paki, go home! Paki, go home!” The boy skates on, and I seek my brother’s eyes across the ice. He does not look up at me. He does not dare.

Snapshot #8

When my friends call my home, they think it’s okay to imitate my mother’s accent. “She’s so cute,” they tell me. “She’s adorable.” I don’t tell them that my mother has worked hard her entire life, that she speaks four languages, that she was once a teacher and an accountant, that she’s as smart as a whip. Instead, I let them speak of her as though she is a little doll – quaint and childlike. At home, I cut up my own betrayal into little pieces and pocket them. I don’t take them out again for years.

Snapshot #9

I return to do a reading in Jasper. It’s been years since I’ve been home. Ten years since I moved to New York. In that time, I’ve taught undergraduate students about writing and Asian literature, survived September 11th, and have had my share of adventures. I have lived a life so different from what I knew in Jasper that my past often seems a dream place – something as forgettable as the other side of the world. Yet in spite of all this, I find myself unable to open my mouth to begin reading from an essay I’ve written about growing up here. It is as if I am twelve again, five again, three again. It is as if snapshots of life in Jasper – the not so pretty ones – are parading past my face, past everyone’s faces. Some of my old English teachers are in the audience; some of my old neighbors are there too, and I am mortified by my tears. But when I look up, they are nodding encouragingly, and I go on. At the end, after everyone is gone, I look up at the sky and think that perhaps change has come to Jasper. That perhaps it is okay to be different in this place; in fact, it’s some kind of wonderful.

Snapshot #10:

Two days ago I receive an e-mail from an old friend. She tells me about an incident in Jasper. She tells me that she can’t believe it’s happening all over again. I recall the various shades of skin I saw in Jasper during my last visit, and it occurs to me that perhaps there are people there who might feel the same sort of isolation we did growing up. I also recall the kind faces of my friends and former teachers, and I know there are people in town who would be outraged by racism – or saddened by it. I even think of some of the rednecks I grew up with, boys who now regret what they did. I remember myself as a young girl and a young woman – swallowing all of that hatred, internalizing it, making it her own. I think of all of us as capable of making mistakes – but just as capable of making things right again. I think of the many times I have remained silent, or someone else has remained silent in the face of somebody else’s pain. My friend urges me to write something. Say something. So I do.

Snapshot #11

Insert different picture here. Make it beautiful and welcoming. Make it new. 

Natasha Singh,
New York, former Jasper resident

Reply to Shannon Wall’s letter (14 May 2009)

As someone who is from a country which uses land management techniques like ‘firestick farming’ or prescribed burning (Yes, Australia), I’m not sure as to why a local Jasperite would have an issue with Parks Canada clearing the surrounding area. Heaven forbid, some smoke in the area annoyed a few (repeat- ONLY a few) people around town, but yes, it is a price that has to be paid to successfully protect the Jasper townsite from forest fires during the summer months.

Shannon, I’m sure you are an avid enough reader of the Fitzhugh to realize that there was more than ample warning for you to prepare yourself (or stay inside for the time) with the ‘Forest Smart/ Fire Smart’ posts every week that informed you of the burning to occur- throughout the whole winter and posted around town.

It is unfortunate that the forest fires near Edmonton occurred with so much damage caused; had there been better land management practices in those areas, the towns within may have come out on the better side.

Here is something for all to think about- Instead of condemning practices from Parks Canada for their ways of managing the land, the flora and fauna, and the park in general, maybe you should embrace these- Imagine there were a forest fire that threatened Jasper townsite- if you lost your house because of it, I’m sure you would be writing in complaining that ‘PC did not do enough to prevent it’. The simple truth is- if you do not like dealing with Parks Canada, then move out of Jasper. You live IN a National Park.

Natalie Chester