A Russian group developing a nature park came to Jasper over the weekend to pick up tips as part of a tour of Alberta’s Rocky Mountains.

It’s always refreshing to be in the presence of foreigners, who may dress or speak differently, but who deep down are just the same as any of us.

It’s a potent reminder that things go on not only outside the Jasper bubble, but also outside Alberta and outside this country.

And we can be proud that they’ve come so far to learn about our park, what goes on here and why it all works so well.

Jasper Jr./Sr. High School is a hot spot for international students, who attend to get a taste of Canadian culture. This is fantastic not only for them but also for their classmates, our local students, who gain the opportunity to learn first-hand about distant places.

We should embrace these foreign visitors, as learning and teaching about cultures and people, is never a waste of time.

What will it take to get you to go?

The Jasper Community Plan Working Group is bending over backwards trying to figure out what Jasperites think about the future of this town. Not only are they coming up with a bunch of new ideas for meetings and workshops, but they’re also taking suggestions heard at those events and applying them to future sessions.

(Most recently, they heard that residents want more information, so they’re putting off upcoming events until that information can be prepared.)

But for some reason, that’s not encouraging any more people to come out.

The trouble is, it’s the same core group of 50 or so people who attend these things, and whose input is theoretically shaping plans for the years to come.

So the feedback from the events also comes from these people, but it doesn’t suggest in any way how to get more residents to spend some time offering up ideas.

For the sake of the Working Group, a collective of volunteers who are taking this process to heart, the Fitzhugh encourages those readers to write in and tell what it would take to get them out to a Community Sustainability Plan input session.

This information may be useful not only to the Working Group, but also to those residents who consistently attend the events and are shouldering more than their fair share of the effort.