Happy Environment Week! Oh, and... Happy Senior’s Week, too! Wait a second. Happy Tourism Week!

Confused? If so, you can’t be blamed. You see, starting this Saturday and running all the way through until the following week is a very special and busy time. It’s a chance for everyone to get together and celebrate the environment. And our senior citizens. And the tourism industry. Designated days, weeks and months proliferate throughout the annual calendar, but the coming week seems to stand out as a monument of poor scheduling and the total victory of interest groups over common sense. Three weeks in one! How could anyone keep it straight. Or, at the very least, a straight face. 

Now, here in Jasper there’s little doubt about which special occasion reigns supreme. There are so many activities scheduled for Environment Week that we’ve devoted a two page special section to cover them all (plus an exclusive full page interview with John Acorn, the Nature Nut himself, on page 27). Meanwhile, Tourism Week will pass with a whimper and despite the fact that Jasper can boast an active and inspiring population of senior citizens, no events are planned to mark their week of living in the limelight.

That’s unfortunate, to be frank, and while we’re hardly jumping up and down at the prospect of honouring an entire industry with a special week, tourism is rather important to Jasper, after all. Doesn’t the industry deserve a chance to be recognized for playing that important role? Shouldn’t operators and supporters provide information sessions about the positive difference tourist traffic makes to the lives of Jasperites? Given that the brains behind TIAC (that’s the Tourism Industry Association of Canada to you) decided to put their week in the timeslot already filled by the Government of Canada’s celebration of our natural world, the local Chamber of Commerce didn’t stand a chance in the PR stakes. Local reps have put a smiley face on the matter, saying that it makes good sense to run a week honouring tourism at the same time as the environment is being celebrated. After all, they say, tourism is one of the only industries out there that needs the environment and can complement it. (Environmentalists, start your letter writing... now.) The Chamber folks have a point, but it isn’t the point. Inasmuch that the tourism industry needs a week to be celebrated, it should be scheduled at a time when it can be the true centre of attention, and not a quasi-humourous second thought to the main event. The same goes for Senior’s Week.

Is it that hard to find a space of seven days that is uncluttered by some specific act of recognition? Yes it is, in fact, and that’s ridiculous. A long time ago, someone, somewhere, decided that it would be a good idea to set aside some time to recognize a group or an issue that was being ignored by the masses. Not a bad thought, but the preponderance of special interests and lobby groups seems to have run amok. At this rate, we are just a few years away from having Eurasian Water Milfoil Awareness Week proclaimed in concert with the Month to End the Chewing of Toothpicks in Public.

These two fictional examples aside, most of the causes and efforts being recognized are worthwhile, and therein lies the problem. The tendency to designate a day, week or month (even a year, in the case of the United Nations) leads to serious issues being trivialized and diminished in the public eye. Think of World AIDS Day, or even Environment Week. Why shouldn’t every day be National Aboriginal Day, and every week Senior’s Week? Obviously, there are too many issues to maintain a constant focus on all things at all times, but the alternative is not very appealing. If we can’t control our compulsion to declare a special occasion at every turn, maybe it’s time we started evaluating our infinitesimal attention spans and our need for something different every day.

In fact, let’s declare June 4 to be the Day of... forget it.