JASPER – One year following the Jasper wildfire, residents came together to reflect and express themselves in a new exhibit at the Jasper Art Gallery.
Voices from Jasper is part of a broader program called Stories of Resilience, the signature program of the Resilience Institute, a national charity that works to minimize suffering caused by climate impacts.
“The whole program is really about amplifying the community voices and exploring what it really means to be resilient in a changing climate,” said Brooklyn Rushton, strategic adaptation fellow with the Resilience Institute. “We’ve done it in communities before a disaster happens as well as after. It’s always a very community-centred approach to the program.”
Starting February, a group of 10 Jasper residents participated in reflective workshops to discuss the meaning of resilience, the changing climate and how one tells their story about going through such a disaster.
Three themes emerged through this process. “Uprooted” deals with the raw moments of the evacuation, “reckoning” is about returning to town and trying to navigate the grief and loss, and “renewal” explores what people have learned and reflects on the whole experience.
“When the program starts, people don’t even know what they want to write about, because everything is so evolving and dynamic in people’s lives, especially in the middle of the winter,” Rushton said.
The Resilience Institute worked with local artists to commission pieces for the show, particularly praising Greg Deagle, the president of the Jasper Artists Guild, who curated the exhibition and contributed watercolour paintings made with pine soot from the fire.
The exhibition includes visual art pieces, photographs and pieces of writing.
“All the participants also recorded their stories from their own voice, so if people go into the exhibition, they can actually listen to the stories from the voices of the participants themselves and have a bit of more immersive auditory experience,” Rushton said.
Over 100 people attended the opening reception on July 25. The exhibition will remain open until Aug. 16, a date that commemorates the community’s return after evacuation.
“I hope the community sees the exhibition as their own, as a place to connect and reflect on their own experience,” Rushton said. “And I also hope it inspires them to tell their own stories. Everyone has their own story to tell going through this whole experience.”
She added this exhibition would give visitors to Jasper the chance to take in these stories and help them understand what it was like for the community to go through this disaster.
The Voices from Jasper edition was undertaken in collaboration with the Jasper Art Gallery and is part of a national partnership with the Canadian Red Cross called the Roots for Resilience.
Those interested in exploring all the stories from Jasper can find them online.
