Sometimes it’s hard to fight a sense of entitlement when it comes to the place where you live. Sometimes, this is completely justified — if perfect strangers decided to put up a parasol and hang out for the afternoon in your backyard, you’d have every right to react and give them the bum’s rush, to use a delightfully antiquated turn of phrase.

As much as some amongst us might consider the entirety of Jasper National Park to be our backyard, it’s quite a stretch to extend the same sense of property to a beach on Lake Edith. No matter where you live in town, or even if you happen to be the proud owner of one of the ramshackle cabins on the lake itself, the beach isn’t your personal domain.

Some good citizens of Jasper removed the sign pictured above from a post near the area known as Dog Beach on Lake Edith last week. The best possible hope for whoever happens to be responsible for this laminated, printed (read: planned, not hasty slapped up) effort is that they were trying to create a second fool’s day to accompany April 1. This would be commendable indeed, since one out of 365 is far too few. Sadly, this impolite rejoinder to anyone who doesn’t happen to be a Jasper resident is likely a serious effort to discourage tourist use of a public site.

The temptation is to simply roll eyes, shrug shoulders or otherwise dismiss this pathetic piece of paper, but leaving it at that would be to ignore the very troubling attitude this sign reveals. Someone out there (perhaps more than one person, too) thinks that they, as Jasperites, have special claim to the beach they determined was for locals only. This is a sense of ownership of the worst kind. 

It’s important for every resident in Jasper to realize that we are privleged to live in a national park, land that by its very definition belongs to all Canadians. If people feel a sense of positive ownership for their favourite places in the park, that’s a good thing, but when that ownership brings with it a desire for exclusivity, or the belief that trail restrictions or park regulations don’t apply to locals, then something has to change.

If a private beach is desired, there are plenty of options available. Many of these locations are home to stunning natural beauty, with none of that tourist riff raff that seems to have despoiled the virgin sands of Dog Beach for at least one local. Should you prefer to remain in Jasper, it’s possible to create a private beach without too much difficulty. Simply construct a sandbox in your yard, add a lawn chair and voila! It has the added benefit of being a locale appropriate to the level of mental maturity displayed by those behind the sign at Lake Edith.