The clean-up trip down the Athabasca River was a journey of discovery for Chuck Cantlie. He and his collection crew of Devin Butt and Kelly-Anne Bennett picked up compressors, engine blocks, beer cans and a bed spring as they rafted down the river from Old Fort Point towards Twelve-Mile Bridge Tuesday (April 25).

“We could literally put a car together,” Cantlie said.

The group took to the water for the second year running in order to beautify the banks in time for summer.

“There’s nothing worse that paddling down a pristine river and seeing garbage everywhere,” said Cantlie, who as a river guide encourages his clients to pick up after themselves.

While the river clean-up isn’t an Earth Day event per se, it was about the only thing happening in Jasper on or around Earth Day, April 22, which has been a fixture on the environmental calendar for well over a decade. But while the day once meant large-scale events ranging from community clean-ups to awareness activities, the focus on the day seems to have waned in recent years. Nicole Ward, the environmental stewardship coordinator for the municipality and Parks Canada, said that greater knowledge of the basics of environmentalism might be one explanation.

“It’s that the environmental ethic is so ingrained in people now. When Earth Day started it was all about the fundamenals, the three Rs, but especially in Jasper people are very environmentally aware,” she said. “Maybe it is becoming less of an event that it was before.”

Ward’s energies have been focused on preparing for Environment Week instead. The organizing committee for the week has already met and plans are taking shape for June.

“The collaboration is really great with the schools and with Parks,” Ward said. “I just have put a lot of emphasis on Environment Week because year to year it continues to grow and gain momentum.”

Jasper is hardly alone in shifting focus from Earth Day towards other environmental events and special occasions at other times of the year. From Boston, Massachusetts to Victoria, B.C. a chorus of commentators have been asking what’s happened to a day that was once so central to the campaign for greater environmental awareness.

Sometimes, one local source said, it’s simply a matter of having to choose.

“There are so many weeks and days etc. that we should get involved in, and our resources are limited, so it’s just a matter of picking a few,” said Gloria Keyes-Brady of Parks Canada. The agency is heavily involved with the local version of Environment Week, and focuses a lot of attention on Parks Day, which happens on July 15 every year.

While most of the events for Environment Week have yet to be confirmed, Ward said that the week will be launched with a screening of Being Caribou, the film about Karsten Heuer and Leanne Allison’s trek with the Porcupine Caribou in Yukon and Alaska.