Brewster Travel Canada has completed and released its environmental assessment for the proposed Glacier Discovery Walk, and the public has until mid-December to provide feedback.

There will be a public forum to discuss the assessment and the project Dec. 6 at the Jasper Activity Centre.

For feedback to be taken into consideration by the park superintendent, all comments and concerns must be submitted in writing to Jasper National Park by Dec. 16.

Once the public review period is complete, Parks Canada will then determine whether or not the project can move forward to the permitting and approval stages.

The Glacier Discovery Walk was designed by Sturgess Architecture, based out of Calgary. The design, which won an international architectural award last month, is for a 400-metre interpretative boardwalk, with a glass-floored observation platform suspended 30 metres out over the Sunwapta Valley. 

Brewster is proposing the walkway be built at the Tangle Ridge Viewpoint on the Icefields Parkway, where there is currently a 500-metre long pull-out on the west side of the parkway. 

As the area sits now, visitors can park their cars in one of the 60-odd stalls to then get a view of the crest of Tangle Ridge.

Brewster wants to remove that parking and have visitors instead take a free, 6.5-kilometre bus ride from the Glacier Discovery Centre to Tangle Ridge. From there, visitors would have the option to observe the landscape from a free public viewpoint, or they could purchase an admission ticket for an interpretative walk along The Discovery Trail, ultimately ending up on 400-metre walkway overlooking the Sunwapta Valley.

Jill Seaton, chair of the Jasper Environmental Association, has been raising concerns about the project since it was proposed earlier this year.

“It’s setting a very dangerous precedent,” she said last week. “If they’re (Parks Canada) going to allow this, then what else are they going to allow down that spectacular highway, which brings people from all over the world?”

Seaton said a national park should be left as natural as possible.

“Is this putting nature first, which is what Parks Canada is meant to be doing? I don’t think it is,” she said. “National Parks are three per cent of Canada. Let’s keep them wild, for heaven’s sakes. The rest of Canada can have these kinds of things.”

Although the discovery walk, if constructed, won’t be natural, it will be built with materials and design techniques that will help it blend into the natural environment, according to a Brewster fact sheet.

It also won’t be visible from the Icefields Parkway, since the Glacier Discovery Walk will sit below the level of the highway.

Dave McKenna, vice president of hotels and attractions for Brewster, said the idea behind the discovery walk is to provide visitors with an interpretative tour that teaches them about glaciology.

“The most compelling thing that we’re trying to show is that glaciers are in retreat,” he said. “We wanted to be able to give people the perspective of the size, scope and scale of glaciers because nothing in glaciology happens on a small scale.”

Copies of the environmental assessment can be viewed at the Jasper National Park Administration Office, the municipal library and at the Glacier Discovery Walk website: glacierdiscoverywalk.com/downloads.