JASPER – Meg Markulin was 38 weeks pregnant and expecting to give birth any day when the wildfires began burning through Jasper National Park last summer.
Because she had a two-strand umbilical cord rather than the usual three blood vessels, there were concerns about her going into labour.
“They had monitoring here at the hospital, and during one of the sessions I was doing, which was the Thursday before we got evacuated, I was having contractions, and his heart rate had dropped,” Markulin said. “They were a bit concerned, so they told me just to take it easy and to stay cold.”
Markulin was told to return to the hospital if she experienced contractions again. She originally intended to give birth in Hinton with its larger health-care centre, but fate had different plans.
On July 22, Markulin was in her home's basement and keeping the windows open to beat the heat. She spent the day napping and reading and had a friend over for coffee before her partner Terry Chauncey, who is the head chef at Terra, came home and cooked burgers for dinner.
Markulin remembered a powerful gust of wind that knocked over items and forced them to close all the windows. As she prepared to get ready for bed, she saw how stormy it was outside.
It wasn’t until her sister called that she realized something was wrong.
“I just remember talking to her, I was just like, ‘OK, we’ll get everything ready just in case. I’m sure it’ll be fine, though,’ and then I looked outside, and I was like, ‘Oh, never mind. There’s ash falling,’” she said.
The couple soon learned about the two fires that had started near town, and not taking any chances, they decided to leave even before the evacuation order. Chauncey went to fuel up their vehicle at the busy station, while Markulin began packing.
“I just remember running around the house,” she said. “We have cat, so I was getting her litter box and her food, but all the windows were shut, so I was just overheating, and there was a point where I grabbed canned tuna, ramen and a steak knife and a can opener, and then after that I was just like, ‘I can’t do anymore.’”
With to-go bags with clothes already in the car, the couple set out to stay with Markulin’s sister in Kelowna, B.C. As they left, Markulin kept telling herself they would only be gone for the weekend.
“I was panicking a bit, so I was just trying to stay positive,” she said. “There was a point during the summer before this happened, I made a joke. It was, ‘I’m going to end up giving birth on the side of the highway because there’s going to be a fire.’ And then I was just like, ‘Oh, I should have bit my tongue.’”
On the drive, the couple were joking to ease the tension, and Markulin checked in on her friends to make sure everyone was safe, learning how lucky they were to have left early and avoided traffic. They also had to deal with their stressed-out cat, which doesn’t travel well.
Markulin and Chauncey arrived in Kelowna the next morning and spent the next day relaxing. On July 24, they started receiving news about buildings on fire in Jasper. With the very real possibility that the entire town would soon be destroyed, they discussed starting over in Kelowna.
On July 25, they went to the hospital in the morning because Markulin was feeling crampy and was worried about the umbilical cord. They briefly left but soon had to return when her contractions began.
Despite worries about how the umbilical cord would handle contractions, Markulin was safely able to give birth to Atticus Wren Chauncey, who weighed six pounds, two ounces.
While fire destroyed nearly a third of the town, Markulin’s home was among those that were spared. She attributed this to the massive sprinkler system on a neighbour’s house that may have saved the block.
Once the town reopened in mid-August, Chauncey went ahead to check on the house. The young family was soon all in Jasper but had to bounce around for a while until their place was cleaned, and because the bathroom window had been left open, their nursery needed to be replaced.
Markulin was saddened that many of her friends had lost their homes and would likely never be able to return to Jasper.
“It was just a bit heartbreaking there, and I was all excited to walk around town and show off the baby, and just not being able to do some of that or see neighbours … it was a bit sad,” she said.
Markulin is hoping to return to work at Jasper Law once daycare opens in August. She described the last nine months since the wildfire as “weird,” noting that there was still a cloud over Jasper, and when going on walks with her friend, she always makes sure to avoid the burnt areas.
Nonetheless, she was grateful to firefighters for saving 70 per cent of the townsite and was optimistic about the community’s ability to recover.
“Jasper is Jasper,” she said. “I find everybody’s rather resilient. We’re a pretty strong community, so I’m hoping that once all this settles, we can start getting back into the groove and maybe grow a little as a community because we’ve learned so much just from this evacuation.”
