During her last visit to Jasper, my mom and I were walking down Connaught Drive when she stopped, took a good look around, and remarked to me: “This is just like Banff used to be.”

She should know. As a university student in the 1960s, my mom spent several summers working as a chamber maid at the Banff Springs Hotel.

For a girl who grew up on the Prairies, Banff’s mountain vistas and stunning scenery were a natural draw, and the small-town atmosphere was the perfect place to take it all in. Sure, she worked in a luxury hotel and there was a significant amount of development within the town site even at that time. But the natural beauty was dominant. It all seemed so … unspoiled.

But not anymore.

“I don’t like Banff now,” my mom told me this week. “It’s way, way, way too commercialized. It’s all about the stores and the shops and spending money. There is a point where it’s too much and it ruins everything.”

Jasper, by contrast, still holds that charm for her. The incredible environment that surrounds this place is made accessible and comfortable through the amenities offered in and around town, but the development doesn’t spoil the nature.

Of course, that balance is difficult to maintain. National parks need to walk a fine line when it comes to development versus conservation. And this is why I’ve been struggling to figure out where I stand on the issue of the Glacier Discovery Walk.

On the one hand, the naturalist and adventurer in me is against the project on principle. Erecting an enormous, rusty structure on the side of a mountain just to provide a glimpse of an alpine valley seems, in a sense, grotesque.

Personally, if I want to take a close look at an interesting bit of natural terrain, I’ll lace up my hiking boots or strap on some skis and go see for myself. Taking a bus in order to walk around on a man-made hunk of steel and glass kind of defeats the purpose, in my opinion, since the journey is just as important as the destination. When you earn your access to a remote location through sweat and blisters, the experience of the natural beauty is that much more special.

Another part of me, however, realizes this is an incredibly snobby attitude. Just because I prefer human-powered travel doesn’t mean everybody should. And, more importantly, not everyone is able to. Which brings me back to my mom.

During her last visit to Jasper, she and I also spent an afternoon hiking along Maligne Canyon. Now, my mom is pretty fit for a 67-year-old, but if it weren’t for the development in that area, I’m not sure we would have ventured out there. Without the concrete steps and handrails on the steeper sections of the trail, it would have been too risky, given her injured knee.

Yet, we were able to have a wonderful experience at this amazing place thanks to the engineers who went ahead and developed a parking lot, a paved path and safety features along the canyon’s edge. In this sense, human development didn’t spoil the enjoyment of nature’s beauty, it facilitated it.

And so, I figured, couldn’t the Glacier Discovery Walk accomplish the same thing? After all, one of the stated goals of the development is to open up “the grandeur of the glacier experience” to a wider group of people. Who am I to deny that experience to someone like, say, my mom?

So I asked her that question, and was a little surprised by her response.

“There are certain things that the ordinary person is not going to be able to enjoy,” she said. “But that’s OK. It can’t be accessible to everybody.”

Walking over Sunwapta Valley on a glass-bottomed skywalk might provide a momentary thrill, one she might not otherwise be able to enjoy, but my mom felt strongly that this type of project would be wrong for Jasper National Park. And I am now inclined to agree.

I had been having some trouble deliniating exactly where that fine line between development and conservation stands, but my mom brought it into sharp focus. The difference between the development at Maligne Canyon and the proposal for Sunwapta Valley, she pointed out, is that the former blends in to the natural environment while the latter sticks out like a sore thumb. As a result, the attraction tends to become the feat of human engineering rather than the beauty of nature. 

That certainly seems to be the case when you read any of the national and international coverage of the Glacier Discovery Walk’s recent archictectural design award, much of which lauds the ingenuity of man while only mentioning the wonder of the natural world in passing.

As my mom put it: “That’s fine if you want to celebrate architecture, but that’s not what a national park should be celebrating. I love beautiful architecture but it has its place in a different setting. It doesn’t fit with what’s here.”

A wise woman, my mother.

DISCLAIMER: The Last Word is an opinion column, it is meant to provoke thought and debate. As such, any opinions written here are the writer’s own and do not reflect the viewpoint of any other Fitzhugh staff member or the directors of the Jasper Media Group Inc.