As the sun slowly sets on another Friday afternoon, twelve new friends who came from around the globe sit by a glowing campfire at the Palisades Education Centre just east of Jasper.

Laughing and sharing stories of the week gone by, the twelve new Canadians – some who’ve been here for just two months – reflected on a week they had spent (many for the first time) in Jasper National Park (JNP). The group was in JNP for the New Canadian Youth Program, a joint strategy between Parks Canada and Outward Bound, to help connect youth with the natural landscape while learning more about what it means to be Canadian.

Sitting alongside them was JNP’s superintendent, Greg Fenton, his wife Libby Weir, and the teenagers guardians for the week – Nicki Mosley and Coralee Raynar, from Outward Bound, Jeannie D’Antonio, stewardship education co-ordinator for JNP and James Bartram, stewardship education project lead for JNP, and Richard Horn.

An agreement seemed to be reached that canoeing on Lake Edith, followed by a refreshing swim, on a sunny afternoon was the highlight of the trip.

“Canoeing’s fun,” said 16 year-old Sadichchha Shrestha from Nepal, “I was the one who kept yelling stroke every time until my voice ran out.”

For Daniella Hurtado, 17, from Ecuador, who may have been on a winning team (depending who you ask) canoeing was also a great new experience.
“This was my first time and it was amazing,” she said, “it was pretty easy.”

For Natasha Plakhotnyk, though, who turned 16 on Thursday the highlight was being presented with a birthday cake at the peak of the Cavell Meadows Trail. The sheer delight of sharing her birthday with a backdrop of rolling mountains, and eleven of her newest friends, described no better than the cheshire cat grin streaked across her face.

According to Fenton, who was on hand to present the adolescents with year-long family passes for all the national parks and historical sites on the last night of their stay, the week also aimed to give the teenagers “the bug.”

“We wanted to give you a flavour or a taste of some of the great nature that we have in Canada...We wanted you to experience a little tiny bit of a very large park, as a means of enticing you to come back,” he said.

The teenagers must have caught the bug, as most left with plans to bring their family and friends back to Jasper or Banff National Park.

“It’s opened my eyes to hobbies and Canadian pastimes and I would always recommend coming back,” said Hurtado, who left her home country a year and a half ago.

One hobby she really enjoyed was rock climbing, where the new friends had to trust each other as they climbed up and rapelled down Morro Flats just east of Jasper.

“It was very hard, and I kept trying different parts and I couldn’t climb. Then, finally, I got to the top,” she said with a big smile on her face. “Wow, I was so proud of myself for doing that.”

While getting up was hard for Hurtado, rappelling down was the hardest part for Mexican Jair Ochoa, 16, who was also really excited to see a white-tailed deer after their visit to Maligne Lake on Friday.

For Israeli Michaell Zhuouitsky, 16, the rock climbing was more a personal challenge to test his new friends.

“The rock climbing was on the third day, so by three days you have to gain trust so fast. It was a good challenging experience,” he said.

“It was a lot of trust and I doubt that we’ll ever forget that because that’s probably the most trust I’ve had in people in such a short period of time,” said Shrestha.

For Bartram, who hopes this is the first of many New Canadian Youth Programs to be held in Jasper, the week was a success because not only did the twelve new Canadians learn to trust each other but they came to forge ongoing relationships with the facilitators.

“They feel like they’re part of their family,” he said.

The week also aimed to help the young immigrants to deal with deeper issues of belonging, sense of place, environmental stewardship and community leadership that were discussed throughout the week as groups and individually.

For Hurtado and Shrestha, the ‘solo’ was one of the most challenging activities for the week. Each participant spent about 45 minutes alone on the Edith Cavell Meadows Trail writing themselves a letter which they shared with the rest of the group and will be mailed to them in six months time.
“The solo time was pretty special, all of us had our own little time,” said Shrestha.

“It was probably the most challenging because you were like ‘okay what are you going to say to yourself in six months?’ You have to know yourself before you write to yourself in the future, so it’s ‘okay lets think about this.’, she added.

Hurtado, who shared her solo around the campfire on Friday night, wrote about her experience in the program – how she had been conquering mountains and could now see the other side.

Bartram predicted the five days of activities which included a boat cruise on Maligne, hikes of Cavell Meadows Trail and Maligne Canyon, canoeing, rock climbing and camping at Snaring Campground for two nights, would have cost about $10,000.

This pilot program, as he called it, was funded by the Calgary Foundation. Hopefully, he said, the program will start running in a variety of national parks with an ongoing partnership between Parks Canada and Outward Bound.