Jasper is celebrating 16 days of activism that began on Nov. 24, with Canadian HIV/AIDS Awareness Days. 

The first of two awareness weeks ends on Dec. 1, which marks World AIDS Day, and continues with Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Awareness Week from Dec. 2 to 5. 

Andrea Watson, executive director of HIV West Yellowhead, said this is the third year that HIV West Yellowhead has participated in the awareness week.

Local businesses are asked to participate by creating red-themed displays in their windows, and having cut-outs of the AIDS awareness ribbon. The displays will be up on one of Jasper’s busiest shopping days of the year – Moonlight Madness. 

“The red theme actually goes nice with Christmas,” Watson said. 

In 2010, there is still a stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS, and many people with the disease are discriminated against. 

“HIV is a disease that people are often scared to talk about,” Watson said. 

A common thought is that people with the disease have earned it somehow, but Watson said nothing could be further from the truth. 

“Regardless of how they contracted it... they need access to care and support,” she said. “Nobody deserves this disease.”

In addition to deserving support, people deserve access to prevention education. 

HIV West Yellowhead does just that, serving Jasper, Hinton, Edson and Whitecourt. Watson was in Edmonton from Nov. 15 to 19 to attend a conference on HIV/AIDS. 

Mark Grandel, who lives with the disease and attended the Edmonton conference on behalf of AIDS Calgary, said awareness weeks are important to help get rid of discrimination and mis-information. 

“(It’s) to reinforce the reality that HIV has not been cured,” he said. “It’s still trapped in stigma.”

HIV/AIDS has received negative coverage in the media lately with the recent charges laid against people who did not expose their HIV status to sexual partners. 

Grandel said we must acknowledge those who have been lost to the disease, and move forward.

“If you don’t know where we came from, you don’t know where you’re going,” he said. 

For Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Awareness Week, Watson is setting up information boards at the region’s Friendship Centres, and will be speaking at local schools. She is hosting nine presentations throughout the week on “HIV 101” that will provide kids with basic knowledge on HIV/AIDS and how it is transmitted.