Wildfire Archives - Alberta Views

Wildfire in the Bow Valley

Adrienne Mason — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 17:00:01 +0000

Across the valley, on the slopes of the Colin Range, Jasper National Park is burning—and my boyfriend is helping to ignite it. Using a torch dripping a flaming mixture of diesel and gasoline, he and his park warden colleagues set a line of fire that’s snaking up the slope.

I’m watching from a pullout down on the Yellowhead Highway. As a young keener with a summer job as a park interpreter, I’m tasked with explaining to people why a national park is purposely lighting its much-beloved forests on fire. Visitors are confused, sometimes angry, almost always annoyed that the smoke now swelling up the slope in menacing black plumes threatens to ruin their holiday.

It’s May 1989 and this purpose-lit fire—a carefully planned prescribed burn—is an early effort by Canada’s national parks to bring wildfire back into a landscape where for over a century it’s been largely banished. Fire is as natural as wind and rain across most of Canada’s forests, which have evolved to be recycled and renewed by periodic burns. Trees such as lodgepole pine, for instance, require heat to melt the resin that tightly binds the scales of their cones, releasing the seeds inside.

Since the 1980s, Jasper National Park has been a leader in reintroducing fire and in acknowledging that fires are necessary—and inevitable. It’s a challenging choreography, since what can renew can also destroy. In addition to letting some wildfires safely burn and lighting others purposely to reduce fuels and break up similarly aged stands of densely packed trees, Parks Canada has been actively mitigating wildfire risk around the built environment. They have created fire breaks, thinned and limbed trees, and removed deadfall and woody debris. During my time in Jasper in the late 1980s, for instance, Parks Canada cut trees on the Pyramid Bench behind the townsite, hauling the logs out by horse and snowmobile.

In July 2024, over 35 years after the Colin Range prescribed burn, my then-boyfriend-now-husband and I watched—from a distance and through digital screens—as Jasper burned again. On the evening of July 22, in the forest alongside the Jasper–Banff Parkway about 22 kilometres south of town, lightning struck three times in three minutes. Fire hazard was extreme, following a month-long drought and with temperatures reaching 38°C. Within 10 minutes fire had reached the crowns, rendering it virtually unfightable. Gusts of wind as strong as 87 kilometres per hour energized the blazes, and they soon merged into one fire and advanced north up the valley. In the end, the inferno covered about 33,000 hectares—about 40 per cent the size of Calgary—and destroyed 358 structures in the Jasper townsite.

I’m tasked with explaining to people why a national park is purposely lighting its much-beloved forests on fire.

The Jasper wildfire held national and international attention—for a while. Almost two years on, other news floods the airwaves, even as our fire risk persists. In 2025 more than 6,000 wildfires burned across this country, making it Canada’s second-worst wildfire season. (Only 2023, the year before Jasper, was worse.) The threat continues to resonate, however, south of Jasper, in the Bow Valley. If a wildfire could so quickly reach one mountain town, despite decades of preparedness on the ground, could it do the same in Banff?

For Marie-Pierre Rogeau, there’s no question. She is a Banff resident and wildfire research scientist who for over 30 years has studied Alberta’s fire history, including that of Jasper and Banff national parks. “We’ve gone so far without having any fire at all,” she says. “[It] isn’t just a probability; it’s a 100 per cent chance.”

Rogeau’s fire history studies, along with those of Cliff White—a leader in fire management, both regionally and nationally, now retired from Parks Canada—show that until around the 1880s, forests and grasslands in the Bow Valley burned about every 20 to 200 years, depending in part on the elevation. The valley bottom burned regularly. Intervals were longer on cooler, moister slopes.

While lightning did ignite wildfires, this wasn’t as prevalent as is often assumed. A band roughly 20 kilometres wide on the east side of the Continental Divide, including the Bow Valley, is in a “lightning strike shadow.” Instead, human-lit fires were prevalent land-management tools. They were part of the “seasonal rounds” as Indigenous people moved across their territories to hunt and gather, explains White. “[The strategy was] to burn early and burn often,” he says. Regular, low-intensity fires, usually ignited during the spring or fall, were used to herd bison or other wildlife, renew grazing meadows and berry patches, open areas for easier travel, and for dozens of other applications.

The fires created a medley of habitats with different species and ages across the landscape. Natural fires—often igniting during the hotter days of summer—might then burn less intensely, since fuel hadn’t accumulated. Trees with multiple fire scars, for instance, reveal they’d seen many fires but none severe enough to kill them.

Colonization doused the flames. Settlers used fire initially to clear the land, and construction of the national railway sparked the occasional blaze. But once crops were planted, fences were built, homes and businesses became permanent settlements and forests started to be seen as a resource to extract, fire was deemed a menace. With the creation of Banff National Park in 1885, Indigenous cultural fire was banned.

Fire threatened “pristine wilderness.” Fire detection and suppression became a primary duty of the national park warden service, which was established in 1909. The men hired as fire and game wardens rose to the task and fanned out across parks to help protect the forests and “their primeval charms.”

“Culturally, we flipped so fast,” says White. In just a century, after generations of living with wildfire, humans effectively took it away. In a study of wildland fires in Banff National Park, White tracked their decline. In the decade 1880 to 1889, an estimated 37,050 hectares burned; by 1980 to 1989, it was down to zero.

Now, after more than a century of fire suppression—compounded by more droughts and erratic weather thanks to climate change—fire is back with a vengeance.

Instead of burning in a patchwork landscape with varying levels of flammability—grasslands and open meadows, willow fields, stands of leafy green aspen and balsam poplar, clusters of lodgepole pine or Douglas fir—21st-century fires feed off densely packed, fuel-rich forests dominated by 125–175-year-old lodgepole pine primed to burn.

This is what happened in the forest around Jasper. Hot and dry conditions; a continuous source of fuel, including mountain-pine-beetle-killed trees; rapid ignition; and strong convective winds sent the fire into the crowns, where it spread rapidly tree to tree. The fire generated its own weather, including tornado-like winds of nearly 200 kilometres an hour, in places ripping centuries-old Douglas firs out by their roots and levelling the forest, wrenching metal fire grates and bear-proof garbage cans from their concrete pads and even levitating a 3,000-kilogram construction waste bin and tossing it into the Athabasca River. Instead of a mixed-severity fire with the flames moving between the ground and crowns—calming down in places, flaring up in others, burning with varying intensities throughout—fires like Jasper’s level the forest, replacing entire stands, in places incinerating the soil and exposing bedrock.

Today, we’re in a worst-case scenario, says White. After removing human-caused fires, “Now we’re walking into climate change.”

“Fire has a way,” says Rogeau. “It’s like a wick. It will find whatever path… can burn.” The challenge for communities built in the middle of fire-shaped landscapes—such as the Bow Valley towns of Lake Louise, Banff and Canmore—is to employ strategies that trim the wicks and reduce the pathways.

But how do you fireproof a valley?

For one, you can fight fire with fire. About 75 years after the creation of the Park Warden Service, which had so effectively removed fire from wildlands, it was also park wardens who started bringing fire back. Cliff White helped write Banff National Park’s fire management plan and was on the ground at the park’s first prescribed burn, three hectares in size, near Two Jack Canal in 1983. Since then, the park has burned about 31,000 hectares.

One of the largest burns was in the Fairholme Range in 2003. It was a gutsy move. The prescribed fire was on the eastern edge of the national park, near the highway and between Banff and Canmore. Ecologically, the fire aimed to restore the historic landscape by reducing dense lodgepole pine growth and expanding meadows, and to get ahead of a beetle infestation. It also provided protection for Harvie Heights, a small cluster of homes on the park boundary. The project took years to plan and included an extensive fuel break about 500 hectares in size—larger than the Banff townsite. Within the burn, the forest was thinned and grasses and understory—including highly volatile juniper—were burned off.

The Fairholme Fire was a success. For White, it stands as a great example of how agencies and communities can work together to both restore fire-dependent ecosystems and protect communities.

But 23 years later, there’s still so much work to be done. As we walk the fuel break in October 2025—now a field of dry, golden grass and post-fire regrowth of shoulder-high lodgepole pines studded with large old-growth Douglas firs that were protected—White explains that prescribed fires aren’t just “one and done.” Follow-up burns remove the charred wood and dense stands of pine that regenerate in the fire’s wake. “The first [fire] is interesting,” he says. “But it’s the second one that’s really something.” Burning sooner, and with some regularity, maintains a break’s functionality. The longer you wait, the more challenging the job, says White. “If you wait 30 or 40 years, it will be huge.”

Parks Canada has had a reburn of Fairholme on the books as a priority for years, but, to date, it hasn’t occurred. The agency’s communications team says only that “the project is currently under expansive planning and will proceed once conditions are met.”

Despite the success of the initial Fairholme fire and a management plan that supports burning, prescribed fires haven’t been used extensively in the front country of the national park in recent years. A small area was burned near the Banff airport in 2022 and another nearer to town in 2023—controversially so, as it escaped containment—but other than that, there hasn’t been a prescribed fire in the Bow Valley since 2014.

With prescribed fire seemingly on the back burner, another tool has rolled into the valley to help reduce fuel and “cool” the landscape, one that not long ago would have seemed incongruent with the philosophy of parks: logging equipment.

Above the Lake Louise village, Parks Canada is constructing a community fire guard. Averaging 400 to 500 metres wide, the guard stretches from behind the Chateau Lake Louise down to the village and across the highway to the parking lot of Lake Louise ski hill. The lake on one side of the valley and the tree-free alpine of Whitehorn Mountain on the other anchor the guard with two fire-resistant landscape features.

In the upper section of the guard, completed in the winter of 2024–25, a lone tree stands in a snow-covered clearcut. Left as a bird perch and habitat for cavity nesters, the snag is a sign that logging—or mechanical tree removal, as the agency prefers to call it—within a national park comes with a particular set of rules.

Shelley Tamelin, the wildfire risk reduction project manager for Lake Louise as well as for Yoho and Kootenay national parks, explains the strict parameters for the company contracted to do the work—everything from leaving wildlife trees and buffers around wetlands to working only when the ground is frozen. Roads are carefully planned, constructed and mitigated, and contractors are required to place spill trays under equipment that’s not in use, to catch fuel or oil drips.

Despite their name, fuel breaks or fire guards can’t be counted on to suddenly stop a fire. “The guard gives our operations folks a place to work,” says Tamelin. This can mean laying down sprinkler lines to wet the forest or assets such as critical infrastructure, or lighting a fire in the direction of the approaching fire, consuming the fuel in the process.

The Lake Louise Community Fire Guard is just one of several along the Bow Valley within the confines of Banff National Park. In addition to the guards already built, “risk-reduction projects” involving forest thinning and log hauling were completed over the winter of 2025–26 on Tunnel Mountain and the Spray Valley–Middle Springs area near the Banff townsite as well as in multiple smaller sites within a 15-kilometre radius of the townsite.

Jasper’s wildfire held national and international attention for a while. Now other news floods the airwaves.

Farther down the valley, the Town of Canmore, Municipal District of Bighorn and the Kananaskis Improvement District are building the Bow Valley Community Fireguard. Construction started in winter 2024, with support through the Forest Resource Improvement Association of Alberta Community Fire Guard Program. When completed, the guard will surround Canmore, the Canmore Nordic Centre Provincial Park and the communities within the Municipal District of Bighorn, including Harvie Heights and Deadman’s Flats. The program has had full co-operation from the province to allow logging within provincial parks.

Despite the idea of logging in parks being anathema, White suggests we might need to do even more of it to protect the Bow Valley and the towns and infrastructure within it. He proposes the creation of a not-for-profit society to oversee the ongoing work of maintaining fuel breaks and fuel-reduction programs just beyond community boundaries under the guidance of professional foresters and in concert with community fire departments. Income generated from log sales would go back into the program to maintain it over the long term. In time, he says, these areas could be maintained through periodic burning. Carefully done, this could serve as a prototype for how to both live with wildfire and protect communities from it.

Ultimately, though, efforts to mitigate and hopefully minimize the impact of wildfire on towns like Banff and Canmore lie within those communities themselves. Wildfire will come; there’s no doubt. Fire guards may or may not help slow fires’ approach. And while “fear is a good starter, [it’s] a poor finisher,” White said in a recent presentation. The key for people is to put their fear into action.

The Jasper townsite didn’t burn because a wall of flames surged into town. It ignited after an aerial ember attack. Flaming branches, burning pinecones, moss, bark and other firebrands rained down like an assault of arrows. Wooden rooftops were the first to ignite, then decks, debris-filled eaves, bark mulch, fences, trees. Soon multiple buildings were aflame and the fire was spreading from structure to structure.

Ember showers are one of the most frightening aspects of wildfires. Fuelled by strong winds—fire weather generated by the blaze itself—embers can leap ahead by as much as 17 kilometres. They’re the reason an otherwise natural wildland fire can morph into a disaster. We wouldn’t be talking about the 2024 Jasper fire today if embers hadn’t ignited the town.

In Banff ember showers could come from any direction, but Sulphur Mountain is a commonly cited vector. White often refers to the mountain on the south side of town as “Banff’s volcano.” If fire coming from the Spray Valley breaches Sulphur Mountain, it could volley embers onto the community below.

The threat of ember showers in communities on the edge of wildlands is the impetus behind the FireSmart program. The national initiative gives dozens of actionable steps to reduce the wildfire risk to homes and properties.

Wildfire will come to Banff; there’s no doubt. The key will be for people to put their fear into action before it’s too late.

Chris Worobets has lived at the base of Sulphur Mountain for almost 30 years; the threat of wildfire is quite literally in his backyard. For several years he’s been helping to reduce the wildfire risks in Valleyview, the townhouse development in Banff where he lives. He’s clear-eyed about his chosen home. “We [built] in a forest,” he says. “This isn’t an urban centre.” As such, he sees homeowners as critical partners in fire prevention.

Worobets chairs the FireSmart committee at Valleyview and has been helping with mitigation since 2006, when the townhouse replaced its highly flammable cedar shingle roof. Volunteers have since moved combustible items away from structures, removed and limbed trees, planted low-risk deciduous trees, purchased sprinklers, held work bees to remove debris such as cones and needles and are working on making all decks and outbuildings built to FireSmart standards. It’s a slow process, though, even for a neighbourhood that’s largely onboard with the idea.

The Town of Banff is a booster for the FireSmart program and is implementing the program’s protocols, including tree removal, on municipal property. The town’s full-time FireSmart coordinator, Chris Pottie, provides free FireSmart assessments to homeowners—conducting over 150 in 2025—after which residents can apply to the town for discounted rooftop sprinklers, $1,200 roof-replacement rebates and financial support for coniferous tree removal. Pottie says there was a definite uptick in interest in the FireSmart program after Jasper townsite burned, and in 2025 the rebates were fully utilized.

While this is something, on the ground it means 120 sprinklers installed, 15 roofs replaced and 173 trees removed. Some private citizens do their own hazard reduction work even without the rebates, including Rogeau, who replaced her deck and removed trees. But for a town with almost 3,000 residences, it’s a long way from being well protected from flaming embers.

Effectively fireproofing a community requires widespread buy-in from residents, something that can be a hard sell in places famed for their natural beauty. And it’s frustrating to spend time, money and effort fireproofing your property if your neighbour does nothing. To date, the “stick” used by municipalities like Banff is more like a pool noodle—focusing on education and nudging people into doing the right thing.

The approach is toughening, though. Any new construction in Canmore and Banff is subject to building and landscaping requirements that mitigate risk from wildfires, including use of Class A roofing materials, which have the highest fire resistance. And Banff revised its community standards bylaw to mandate the removal of fire hazards such as dead trees, long grass, bark mulch and other combustibles within 10 metres of structures. In the end, insurance companies may provide the incentive that inspires action. Claims from wildfires are increasing, insurance premiums are rising, and money talks. Co-operators, for instance, offers a discount in Canada for FireSmart-certified properties.

Even though the loudest narrative coming out of the 2024 Jasper fire is that one-third of the community burned, it’s important to emphasize that two-thirds of it didn’t, including the critical infrastructure such as wastewater treatment needed for the town to function and rebuild. An extensive Natural Resources Canada report detailing the event acknowledged that more than 20 years of hazard-reduction treatment by Parks Canada around the townsite had moderated fire behaviour. It specifically noted that the town had made more fuel mitigation efforts than any other Canadian community under threat of wildland fire. (Although the report specifically mentions Parks Canada, FireSmart measures have been ongoing for over two decades.) These treatments helped reduce fire intensity in parts of town, knocking it out of the crowns and onto the ground, where it was easier to fight, ultimately reducing the spread of embers and saving structures.

The resounding message to be learned in Banff from understanding the history and role of fire on the landscape, and from the analysis that has come out of Jasper, is that the world of today isn’t the world of a century ago—or even 20 years ago. Wildfire suppression has only made our forests more combustible. Now, with the climate warming and becoming less predictable, fire seasons are longer and fires are more intense and harder to control. The risk to Banff is urgent.

Fire historian Stephen Pyne has coined a term for our era: the Pyrocene. “We’ve made an alliance with fire,” he writes. “It took us to the top of the food chain and now threatens to unhinge the planet.”

Adrienne Mason is a former Jasper National Park interpreter and now a full-time science writer and editor living in Tofino.

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Should Canada Cap Oil and Gas Emissions?

Aly Hyder Ali and Heather Exner-Pirot — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 10:00:34 +0000

Aly Hyder Ali says YES

Program Manager, Oil and Gas, at Environmental Defence

Canada is running out of time to meet its climate goals, and the biggest obstacle standing in the way is unchecked pollution from the oil and gas industry. Despite being responsible for nearly a third of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), the oil and gas industry has made little effort to meaningfully reduce its carbon footprint. While other sectors have reduced theirs, oil and gas emissions have risen by roughly 80 per cent since 1990. The solution is clear: Canada needs a strong, enforceable emissions cap on the oil and gas industry—one that ensures real reductions, not more delay.

The global energy transition is accelerating. According to the International Energy Agency, demand for oil and gas will peak this decade, then decline. Other countries are ramping up investments in renewables, electric vehicles and clean technology. If Canada continues to lean on an emissions-intensive, high-cost, fossil-based economy, we’ll be left behind. An emissions cap would send a clear message that we’re serious about transitioning to a clean, future-ready economy. It would drive innovation, create opportunities in renewable energy and reduce the risk of stranded assets.

But this isn’t just about future markets; it’s about protecting Canadians right now. Pollution from fossil fuels is linked to thousands of deaths each year and contributes to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Communities near oil and gas facilities face higher risks of exposure to toxic pollutants. Wildfires, droughts and floods—driven by rising temperatures—have become a costly reality across Canada. Cutting oil and gas emissions is a direct investment in public health and safety.

Then there’s the climate responsibility. Canada can’t meet its GHG emissions reduction targets without addressing its largest source of pollution: the oil and gas industry. Voluntary measures from the sector have been largely non-existent. Companies have spent millions of dollars to talk a good game, but data tells us a different story. Investments in decarbonization remain a fraction of what’s needed, while capital spending continues to expand fossil fuel operations. Meanwhile, oil and gas companies in Canada are actively lobbying against climate regulations, all while recording massive profits.

A cap isn’t about punishing the oil and gas industry. It’s about fairness and responsibility and building the kind of nation we want to be. We need to invest in a healthier, sustainable future, not cling to outdated, polluting systems that benefit the few at the cost of the many. Every sector must do its part. Canadian households are already adapting to reduce their carbon footprint. It’s time Canada’s biggest polluters followed suit to help build a stronger, cleaner and more equitable country.

We can’t afford more delays. This is a pivotal moment for climate leadership and for real nation-building. For the health of our economy, our environment and future generations, it is time to make the emissions cap a reality.

heather exner-pirot says no

Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Director of Natural Resources, Energy and Environment

Greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change, and it’s in our self-interest to reduce them. By doing so we would also improve air and water quality. I’m for reducing emissions. But the question is whether Canada should cap oil and gas emissions. I say no, and the main reason is that oil and gas isn’t under Canada’s jurisdiction; it’s under Alberta’s.

Section 92A(1) of the Constitution Act affirms that provinces have the “exclusive” ability to make laws for the “development, conservation and management” of non-renewable natural resources. This was tested with the Supreme Court’s October 2023 ruling in Reference re: Impact Assessment Act. The majority identified that the federal government’s broad scope of “effects within federal jurisdiction” under the IAA would allow them to deny projects solely based on their GHG emissions. They determined that this eroded the balance inherent in the Canadian federal state and was unconstitutional.

Indeed, Alberta has already exercised its jurisdiction on this issue and does have a cap on its oil sands emissions. It passed legislation in 2017, under the Notley government, and limits total oil sands emissions to 100 megatonnes (MT) annually. Currently the oil sands emit about 80.1 MT, and there is no foreseeable future where they would exceed that cap. Emissions intensity—the amount of CO₂e per barrel produced—has declined in the oil sands for six straight years.

So, Canada has no jurisdiction to cap oil and gas emissions, and Alberta has already capped its oil sands emissions. This should be the end of the debate. It’s not, however, because the federal government has expressed its intention to impose an emissions cap on Canadian oil and gas and has proposed draft regulations to that effect. These would be a disaster on every front: economically, politically, legally and technically.

It would be hard to imagine a more expensive or divisive policy. The regulations are a relic of Trudeau-era ideology rejected in the 2025 election. They wouldn’t just cut emissions but would cut production too: of oil sands oil, conventional oil, natural gas and liquids such as propane. They would result in less investment, fewer jobs, a diminishment of royalties and corporate taxes, no new LNG terminals, no new pipelines, no Atlantic offshore development and no new export markets. Just the threat of them has already harmed the economy.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer determined that the cost of the emissions cap to Canada’s GDP would be $20.5-billion by 2032 and that the cap would cut 7.1 megatonnes of GHGs. That’s an implied carbon price of $2,887 per tonne. Prime minister Mark Carney “axed” the consumer carbon tax of $80 per tonne. If our goal is to cut emissions, it could be done more cheaply by means other than an oil and gas emissions cap.

Canadians want to build infrastructure, grow the economy and diversify trade. No policy threatens this more than the proposed emissions cap does. It needs to be quashed, for good.

Aly Hyder Ali responds to Heather Exner-Pirot

Heather Exner-Pirot argues that Canada should not cap oil and gas emissions, citing constitutional overreach, economic harm and lack of necessity. But closer scrutiny shows these claims don’t hold. The oil and gas sector is Canada’s largest source of climate pollution, its voluntary emissions reduction methods have failed, and a federal cap is both legally justified and economically necessary.

Exner-Pirot references provincial powers under Section 92A of the Constitution and the 2023 Impact Assessment case. But this misrepresents the scope of federal powers. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that the federal government has authority over matters of “national concern.” GHG emissions are transboundary pollutants, which means that what Alberta emits affects Quebec, Ontario and the Atlantic provinces. The 2021 Supreme Court reference case on carbon pricing explicitly upheld Ottawa’s right to regulate GHG emissions, calling this a national concern. A federal cap on oil and gas emissions targets pollution, not resource extraction, making it constitutional.

Yes, the oil and gas industry has made some progress in reducing emissions intensity. But total oil and gas emissions continue to be Canada’s largest source of climate pollution. Since 2005 oil and gas emissions have increased significantly, even as other sectors have shrunk theirs.

Exner-Pirot also foresees job losses and GDP decline under an oil and gas emissions cap. But global markets are already shifting: the International Energy Agency projects global demand for fossil fuels will peak this decade. Supporting fossil fuel expansion is bad for the environment and economically irresponsible. Conversely, clean energy investments are surging worldwide.

She also highlights the cost per tonne of reductions but ignores the massive economic and health damages tied to climate inaction. Climate disasters are increasingly expensive: 2024 was the costliest year for severe-weather-related insurance losses in Canadian history, at over $8-billion. And this is only expected to get worse, as 2025 is already our second-worst wildfire season ever. Furthermore, the Canadian Climate Institute estimates that climate impacts will reduce Canada’s GDP by $25-billion starting this year. The damage will only spread if we ignore climate change.

Oil and gas is Canada’s largest source of climate pollution, and voluntary emissions reduction methods have failed.

The health costs too are staggering. Air pollution from fossil fuels causes an estimated 34,000 premature deaths annually in Canada, with direct economic and societal consequences. Additionally, a recent study published in the journal Science shows that air pollution from the Athabasca oil sands may be up to 6,300 per cent higher than industry-reported figures. This pollution would rival all other human-made sources in Canada combined, and it raises dire health concerns for nearby communities.

The harms of oil and gas emissions aren’t evenly distributed. Air pollution disproportionally affects communities—particularly Indigenous, racialized and low-income—that are closest to industrial sites or lack resources to protect themselves. Indigenous communities near the oil sands face higher rates of cancer and respiratory illnesses linked to industrial emissions.

A cap is not an extra burden. It’s risk mitigation and protection for public health and the economy.

Exner-Pirot says an oil and gas emissions cap would be divisive. But depending solely on households and small businesses to shoulder Canada’s emissions-mitigation burden while oil and gas companies continue to pump out vast amounts of pollution with no accountability is inequitable. Rather than divisive, an oil and gas emissions cap would share responsibility fairly. It would ensure that industry’s operations align with national and international climate goals. If industry were to support a cap, they would show they’re serious about reducing emissions. This would send clear signals to investors, workers and communities that a smooth, fair transition is possible—rather than a chaotic collapse.

Exner-Pirot calls a cap unconstitutional, economically damaging and unnecessary. But constitutionality is established by a Supreme Court ruling. An early transition is far more economically prudent than clinging to fossil-fuel dependence, as renewables offer stronger long-term returns and avoid risk of stranding assets. Emissions data contradict the promise of voluntary emissions reduction from the oil and gas industry. And the health and environmental costs of delay are crippling, with climate disasters and pollution already exacting a heavy toll.

Canada promised in 2021 to cap oil and gas emissions. Fulfilling that commitment is not about ideology but about survival. Implementing an enforceable federal cap is about safeguarding our climate, economy and communities. It is time to deliver on that promise.

Heather Exner-Pirot responds to Aly Hyder Ali

What’s the case for capping oil and gas emissions According to Aly Hyder Ali, it boils down to some tried and true environmentalist warnings: we can’t meet our Paris Agreement commitments without a cap; companies won’t reduce emissions without a cap; and we’ll be left behind in the energy transition if we don’t do it.

I’ll grant him that our efforts to meet the Paris goal are all but certain to fail. That doesn’t preoccupy me much. For those people who still prioritize that goal, however, I reiterate it could be achieved at less cost to the Canadian economy than through imposing an emissions cap.

Hyder Ali argues that “the oil and gas industry has made little effort to meaningfully reduce its carbon footprint” and that “emissions have risen by roughly 80 per cent since 1990.” The first point is demonstrably false, and the second is a red herring.

Emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector peaked in 2015, even though we’ve added over a million and a half barrels of production since then. How was this accomplished Through industry’s sincere efforts to reduce its carbon footprint, including through methane capture, electrification and efficiency measures.

Emissions intensity per barrel in Canada has decreased by over one-third since 2000. This kind of achievement takes significant human, physical and financial capital, and yet it is totally dismissed.

It’s unfair for Hyder Ali to point to 1990 as a benchmark year. Emissions rose sharply between then and the early 2010s because a couple hundred billion dollars of investment in the oil sands came to fruition and production grew dramatically. But ever since 2015—the year of the Paris Agreement—we have seen a decoupling between production growth and emissions. We know that the oil sands can meaningfully reduce GHGs.

Not only does the federal government not have the jurisdiction to enforce a cap, it doesn’t have the mandate.

The argument that Canada will be “left behind” unless we turn to greener alternatives is rarely substantiated. The main markets for our oil, led by the US, do not pay a premium for lower-carbon products. And our LNG is already some of the least GHG-intense in the world.

We can plainly see Europe’s economic trajectory as it has tried to decarbonize its energy and offshore its industrial activity. This isn’t a path to emulate. Today most of the world isn’t ramping up its energy transition but rather plateauing—or, in the case of the USA, retreating. Bans on offshore drilling and fracking in New Zealand and Mexico have been reversed. Canada would be an outlier if it didn’t recalibrate some of its own expensive climate measures.

At any rate, there’s no reason to believe that a supportive environment for oil and gas production detracts from investments in renewables, electric vehicles and clean tech. Quite the opposite: the revenues generated from a healthy oil and gas sector allow governments and corporations to invest in such technology. Starving the industry of capital and growth with a cap would inevitably result in it spending less on decarbonization, not more.

But my main criticism of Hyder Ali’s argument and those like it is they remain in the abstract, indifferent to the trade-offs involved. These are emotional and ideological appeals. They fail on the details. They’re impracticable. When the federal government proposed draft regulations and modelled the costs of an emissions cap, it was a hot mess. The assumptions made no sense, unintended consequences weren’t accounted for, the costing wasn’t logical and there were inherent contradictions.

How would a cap work with Alberta’s existing industrial carbon pricing and emissions trading system and comparable frameworks in BC, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland How can the energy sector meet ambitious targets without limiting production How can operators plan without knowing their exact compliance obligations We don’t know.

The proposed cap is emblematic of a policy approach that has put Canada’s unrealistic Paris commitment at the top of a hierarchy, with every other policy issue subordinate. This isn’t what Canadians want. We’re preoccupied with housing, the high cost of living, Trump’s threat to our economy. Prime minister Mark Carney ran on a promise to make Canada an energy superpower with the strongest economy in the G7. Paris and the 2030 commitment weren’t even mentioned in his platform. Nor was an emissions cap. Not only does his government not have the jurisdiction to enforce an emissions cap, it doesn’t have the mandate.

We all want a healthy environment alongside a strong economy. We all want world-class environmental, social and governance standards. But it’s manifestly not in our interest to regulate our oil and gas to the point where production is so uncompetitive that other jurisdictions, likely higher-emitting ones, take up our market share. That’s the choice: produce oil and gas in Canada or let someone else—likely not a democracy or an ally—produce it instead. Hyder Ali is arguing for the latter.

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A Story Can Be Told About Pain

Angie Abdou — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 10:00:39 +0000

by Lisa Martin
NEWEST PRESS
2025/$24.95/400 pp.

Nearly every paragraph of A Story Can Be Told About Pain, Lisa Martin’s debut novel, reads like a prose poem. Martin constructs her words so carefully that each sentence sings with beauty. An award-winning poet and essayist, Martin proves equally adept at the novel. Her prose has the rich evocativeness of the novels of Michael Ondaatje.

The central metaphor of the novel, highlighted in the book’s exquisite design, is the pine beetle plague, slowly eating trees from the inside. Toward the book’s end, a narrator draws readers’ attention to the attractive lines the pine beetle makes in wood. Should we admire the beautiful scripts beetles leave on dead trees, despite the destruction Standing on nearly 400 pages of proof, the book eventually answers: maybe yes. Maybe admiring beauty is the only way to keep going.

Though the novel has many complex characters and compelling plot lines, the main story revolves around Shiloh and her mother, Ruth. In the opening, the reader watches with Shiloh as her father plummets in a plane crash that ends his life and changes Shiloh’s and Ruth’s. Martin’s meditation on pain—how to be present with so much pain, how to move on from that pain—centres on these two characters but extends to all characters and perhaps her readers.

Martin’s characters live with various kinds of pain (even simply the pain of living a long life). The crash scene (with its aftermath) is central, articulating the ineffable grief and confusion of life-altering disaster and the impossibility of comprehending our reality changing in an instant. Martin brilliantly captures the devastating realization that we have little control over our own lives.

The stories Martin tells also address the question of how much weight to give such personal pain in a world of melting Arctic ice caps, warming waters of Bangladesh, ruined forests, and wildfires. One character beautifully decides that we must put the weight of the world down until we can bear the weight of our own pack. “I don’t want to be just another dead tree still standing.” Nobody can carry the whole weight all the time, and trying to do so will work to nobody’s advantage. Martin fills her book with profound bits of hard-won wisdom.

A Story Can Be Told About Pain is poetic and philosophical. Readers can approach it as a contemporary survival treatise. However, first it is a compelling novel—with riveting stories about Ruth and Shiloh and Raymond and Madeleine and Dave.

Lisa Martin proves that not only can a story be told about pain, but, in talented hands, pain (whether personal or global) can be transformed into beauty. She has a special talent.

Angie Abdou is the author of This One Wild Life (ECW).

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August 4-8, 2025

Alberta Views — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 21:34:23 +0000

Monday, August 4: Minister of Arts, Culture and Status of Women Tanya Fir releases a statement on Heritage Day, saying that the holiday “honours the rich tapestry of cultures, traditions and histories that shape Alberta.”

July 28-August 1, 2025

Alberta Views — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 10:00:13 +0000

Monday, July 28: Finance MinisterNate Horner meets with Guy Smith, president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, to discuss collective bargaining for 23,000 public employees. Both sides agree to begin enhanced mediation. Negotiations have been underway for 18 months. In May 2025 the union voted 90 per cent in favour of striking; the vote remains valid until mid-September.

July 14-18, 2025

Alberta Views — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 10:00:55 +0000

Monday, July 14: Alberta announces 1,314 total measles cases, surpassing the number reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the entire US (1,288 measles cases). Alberta’s population is roughly 5 million; the US population is 340 million+.

July 14: Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation RJ Sigurdson issues a statement celebrating 75 years of Alberta being rat-free, championing the province as being “one of the few jurisdictions on Earth to live without the pest.”

July 7-11, 2025

Alberta Views — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 10:00:21 +0000

Monday, July 7: Former UCP caucus members Peter Guthrie and Scott Sinclair announced over the weekend that they plan to relaunch the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta to give centrist Alberta conservatives “a place to park their vote.” Both were voted out of caucus after challenging UCP policies.

MELTDOWN

Lynn Martel — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 10:00:24 +0000

The mood was celebratory. The smoked salmon appetizers were scrumptious, washed down with wine. Oohs and aahs filled the gallery as the buzz intensified while a lineup waited outside the Whyte Museum in the winter air. The launch event of MELTDOWN: A Drop in Time, an exhibition of large-scale photographs of glacial landscapes, was a resounding success.

The images were downright jaw-dropping. Giant prints—some wider than many living room walls—featured sculpted, polished and glimmering blue glacier ice, some resembling splendid precious gems. Others showed no ice at all. Dry rock, bare, sharp ridgelines, rubbly moraine slopes, naked cliff bands. Dark, dirty, dry and withered ice. Dying ice. On one hand, the ultimate eye candy for a glacier lover; on the other, a bitter aftertaste of reality.

MELTDOWN was conceived by Jim Elzinga. A groundbreaking Rockies-based alpinist since the 1970s, Elzinga led the 1986 team that supported Canmore’s Sharon Wood to become the first North American woman to summit Mount Everest, climbing a never-repeated route. Elzinga followed up with a 25-year international career as an organizational development consultant.

Now, with his hardest climbs behind him, the glacier-draped peaks and ice cliffs he ascended are diminishing too.

The loss of these inspired him to found Guardians of the Ice, a non-profit focused on the steadily shrinking Columbia Icefield as indicator of the worldwide climate crisis. Spanning approximately 200 km² atop the Continental Divide where Jasper and Banff parks meet, that icefield is a significant bellwether of Earth’s warming climate.

“One of the many reasons I want still photography to be part of the Guardians project is the ability to make large high-quality prints that immerse the viewer, like an IMAX film,” Elzinga said. “I feel this is the best way to create an emotional connection with the viewer and provide an experience as if they’re actually in the mountains. Our purpose is to effectively engage the public to build support for a low-carbon future.”

Using a high-resolution Phase One medium format camera, Elzinga partnered with friend and cinematographer Roger Vernon. To create each image required three people—one to hold the camera, another to recalibrate the settings on a laptop, and a third to pilot the helicopter.

Leanne Allison, Jim Elzinga, Roger Vernon and Tiffany Shaw. Whyte Museum

That January 2025 night at the Whyte, however, was more than a photo exhibit. It was also the official launch for the Canadian branch of the 2025 United Nations International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation. The IYGP was proposed in 2022 by Tajikistan, whose 13,000 glaciers supply the mountain headwaters for Central Asia and some two billion people downstream.

The IYGP Canada co-chair is long-time Canmore resident Bob Sandford, senior government relations liaison on Global Climate Emergency Response at the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health. Most of the world’s glaciated countries are participating, and with Switzerland’s glaciers having lost 10 per cent of their volume in two years alone—2022 and 2023—that country and France have announced major commitments. “But even countries without glaciers, like Holland, are participating in the full realization of how much glacial ice contributes to the thermoregulation of the entire global climate system,” Sandford said.

The purpose is to raise awareness of the vital role glaciers, snow and ice play in the climate system.

Western Canada’s mountains (combined with the US northwest) comprise one of 19 regions around the world represented in the IYGP, alongside New Zealand, Greenland, Antarctica and the southern Andes. The Year’s purpose is to raise awareness of the vital role glaciers, snow and ice play in the climate system and water cycle, as well as the far-reaching impacts of rapid glacier melt.

A full quarter of Earth’s remaining ice is found in Canada, with some 18,000 glaciers in the mountain west. Alberta’s Rockies hold more than 1,100, including the best-known and most accessible glaciers in the country. This makes Alberta the natural centre for the Canadian IYGP initiative. “The latest scientific research regarding the state and fate of our glaciers originates here,” Sandford said. “As Parks Canada rolls out its 2025 UN Glacier Year program, Canadians all across the country will learn what the Dutch already know: that even if there isn’t one nearby, glaciers contribute enormously to the stability of the global climate.”

Canada’s IYGP objectives include promoting Canadian snow and ice research to improve scientific understanding of climate change impacts and recognizing snow and glacier ice as more than just water resources, with an emphasis on artistic and Indigenous perspectives.

“Terminus.” Jim Elzinga and Roger Vernon

MELTDOWN’s image titles speak volumes: “Terminus,” “The Black Hole,” “Battered Hero.” The latter depicts Mount Athabasca, a peak that’s been trod by countless crampons since J. Norman Collie and Herman Woolley were most likely the first to stand on its summit in 1898. Reaching the mountain back then took 19 arduous days on horseback from Lake Louise; nowadays it’s a two-hour drive. From that summit, they viewed the massive Columbia Icefield, noting that its meltwater flows to three oceans—the Arctic via the Sunwapta, Athabasca and Mackenzie rivers; the Atlantic via the North Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan and Nelson rivers; and the Pacific via the Columbia River.

More ice melted from the glacier in 2023 than in any of the 10 previous years.

Compared to historical photos in the Whyte’s bookshop showing Athabasca’s slopes blanketed in plush white snow and ice during Collie’s time, the MELTDOWN image shows dingy ice clinging to rocky slopes like a threadbare sheet.

Climbers and tourists remain drawn to these peaks. The Columbia Icefield Centre (CIC), located where the Athabasca Glacier terminated a century ago, now hosts nearly a million visitors annually, with more than 400,000 riding specialized snowcoaches onto the glacier. Hundreds more join walking tours, whose guides safely lead them to peer into crevasses and experience coursing meltwater streams close enough to get splashed. MELTDOWN images are now on display at the CIC’s Glacier Gallery having left the Whyte.

Jasper is one of seven national parks—along with BC’s Glacier National Park—where hundreds of glaciers are carefully monitored by Parks Canada. Geological Survey of Canada and Parks Canada researchers recorded more ice melt from the Athabasca Glacier in 2023 than in any of the 10 previous years. In Glacier, as of 2018, 129 glaciers remained, down from 337 in 1978. The next survey is planned for 2026. Scientists estimate that if all the glaciers in Glacier National Park melt, the area’s creeks and streams would carry one-third less water. Many could disappear completely.

“By partnering in the IYGP, Parks Canada can encourage hundreds of thousands of Canadians to reflect on the importance of glaciers and the role of protected areas,” said Louis-René Sénéchal, a Parks Canada manager. “We want to inspire them to do something about climate change and share with them the knowledge to make a difference.”

If all the glaciers in Glacier National Park melt, local creeks and streams could carry one-third less water.

The 2023 NFB film Losing Blue was playing continuously behind a privacy screen at the Whyte. Visually exquisite, poetic and soul-stirring, the 16-minute film by Canmore’s Leanne Allison (whose previous award-winning films include Being Caribou and Finding Farley) posed the question “What does it mean to lose a colour?” The narrator references how the world’s glacier-fed lakes are losing their beguiling turquoise hues as glacial content declines. Drone imagery brings viewers seemingly close enough to touch the glaciers, soaring mere centimetres above an ice cave—which I recognized as Peyto Glacier’s toe, which has since melted and flowed onward to Hudson Bay.

“The ancient bond between glaciers and lakes is ending—the bond that gives the lakes their otherworldly blue,” states the narrator.

A smaller gallery presented an exhibition of images by Canmore’s Glen Crawford titled Etched in Ice. The photos shared perspectives captured by drone at his backcountry lodge in the Rockies north of Golden, BC. Intimate and abstract, their subtlety balanced the raw power of the MELTDOWN images. Dull-grey ice, bisected by a long, skinny strand of whitish snow dribbling into a dingy-green meltwater pool. Pebbles and dirt filling the creases of dark, scrawny ice. Ice resembling hammered metal, scratched and beaten.

“I’ve been very fortunate to live in the Bow Valley and explore the nearby mountain wilderness for 50 years. Glaciers are an integral part of this landscape,” Crawford told me. “They’re also key in helping understand how climate change has an effect worldwide. With potentially 15,000 years of climate record stored in glaciers, they’re a natural archive that is now endangered. I hope the UN IYGP promotes awareness, discussion and motivation that help enact change.”

That hope is shared by other IYGP partners, including Tim Patterson, an IYGP Canada ambassador. A member of the Lower Nicola Indian Band of the Interior Salish-speaking peoples of BC, Patterson is a hiking guide who owns and operates Zuc’min Guiding—the name means “red ochre,” with which Indigenous people painted their faces before entering the mountains.

By sharing Indigenous perspectives with his clients—including during walks on the Athabasca Glacier—Patterson aims to foster Indigenous perspectives and knowledge of Canada’s glaciers, water, ice and snow among international travellers and Canadians alike.

While many of the IYGP Canada team members are Albertans, Québécoise ambassador Caroline Côté shares perspectives as a polar expedition guide. Long before her first Arctic expedition, she was awed by remnants of an ancient glacier, the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which covered much of Canada 20,000 years ago.

“Glaciers are at the centre of my life,” she said. “But I also believe that they are, and must be recognized as, the centre of every Canadian’s life. If you head east of Baie-Comeau, you can still see traces of the last glaciation. What struck me the most was the sheer power of ice, its ability to move mountains and carve valleys, leaving its mark on the rock. Our world, as we know it, was shaped by glaciers thousands of years ago.”

“Battered Hero” Jim Elzinga and Roger Vernon

Early in her career, Côté dreamed of exploring Antarctica, a dream she felt fortunate to fulfill. But she later realized Canada was home to more than 20,000 glaciers, and she needn’t travel so far. “To protect glaciers, my goal in the coming years is to reduce my travel and make more conscious choices.”

During the formal launch of the main UN IYGP in Geneva, Switzerland, on January 21, Canmore resident John Pomeroy, director of the University of Saskatchewan’s Centre for Hydrology and its Canmore-based Coldwater Laboratory, spoke in his role as IYGP advisory board co-chair. He laid it bare. “Global concentrations of carbon dioxide have risen from 315 to 425 parts per million, and as a result winter temperatures in northern Canada have risen over 6ºC during my lifetime. Counterfactual industries and regimes around the world would deny these measurements, but they can’t deny their culpability in the destruction of glaciers that’s occurring before our eyes. Glaciers don’t care if we believe in science; they just melt in the heat for all to see. The International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation provides a mechanism to kick-start renewed efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase the science and adaptation necessary to prepare for a warmer, less icy world. There is still time to turn this around.”

This statement brought me to a MELTDOWN image titled “After the Heat Dome.” Dark, severe, rough broken rock dominate the frame, with a thin layer of glacier ice resting on the highest ridgetop, its days obviously numbered.

A 2015 study established that western Canada could lose 60 to 80 per cent of its glacier ice by 2100, and the bulk of the melting would happen between 2020 and 2040. Since then I’ve had one question. What would the melting look like?

For decades, I’ve skied across glaciers and icefields in winter and hiked among them with my camera in summer. The 2021 heat dome that engulfed Alberta and BC was a regional gamechanger, breaking temperature records and being cited as a leading cause of some 600 deaths. It accelerated the deaths of our glaciers too.

On June 30, 2021, Jasper reached 40.8ºC, its hottest temperature ever recorded. The resulting flooding caused by rapidly melting snow and ice resulted in catastrophic damage to trails and bridges in the area; the Berg Lake trail in Mount Robson Provincial Park is still under repair. Heat-absorbing soot from wildfires—including the 2024 Jasper fire—coats glacier surfaces and accelerates melting. Globally, 2024 was the hottest year ever recorded—after 2023, which had set the previous record—all directly caused by humans burning fossil fuels.

In a handful of years, glacier loss has become visible to the naked eye.

Western Canada’s glaciers had been gracing paintings since before the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed in 1885. In decades since, photographers, filmmakers and writers have shown us this icy landscape. Adventurers have skied across glaciers for days, weeks, sleeping in tents or snow caves. Guides earn their living on glaciers. We create memories on them.

As they melt, we can honour glaciers by sharing these stories and artworks.

“In this coming year, we will celebrate Canadian researchers and institutions studying snow and ice, and honour writers, poets, artists and photographers working to help us understand what the loss of glacier ice means,” Sandford said. “The UN Glacier Year allows us to halt backsliding in terms of climate action by learning more about what we face, and provides an opportunity to shine on the world stage as an example of everything we stand for.

“After the Heat Dome” Jim Elzinga and Roger Vernon

“We want to be able to tell the world that we as Canadians listened for an entire year to what the disappearing ice was trying to tell us.”

At the Whyte Museum that night, I listened as Alberta-based Métis artist Tiffany Shaw explained how she created her glass sculptures from casts taken from the Athabasca Glacier. “I think these will last longer than the glacier,” she said, “which is really sad.”

Lynn Martel is writer in residence for IYGP Canada, an accredited hiking guide, and the author of three books about local mountain culture, including Stories of Ice (RMB, 2020).

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Read more from the archive “Goodbye to Peyto Glacier” September 2022.

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June 30-July 4, 2025

Alberta Views — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:06 +0000

Monday, June 30: The Alberta government announces that the new 8 per cent tax bracket—applying to income up to $60,000, replacing the previous 10 per cent bracket—will take effect on July 1. The government says individual taxpayers will save up to $750 in 2025, with two-income families saving up to $1,500.

Tuesday, July 1: Premier Danielle Smith wishes a “Happy Canada Day” in a message stating that “Alberta helps power, feed and drive this country forward. From our energy and agriculture to our innovation and entrepreneurship, Alberta is a driving force for good in a united and prosperous Canada.”

June 2–6, 2025

Alberta Views — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 18:05:31 +0000

Monday, June 2: Canada’s 13 premiers meet in Saskatoon with Prime Minister Mark Carney to discuss “nation-building” resource and infrastructure projects. After the meeting, Premier Danielle Smith, who is demanding that Canada approve new pipelines, says “I’m encouraged by the change of tone we’ve seen from recent months.”

Tuesday, June 3: Adriana LaGrange, Minister of Primary and Preventative Health Services, announces the government is developing a new name and logo for emergency health services. This follows the June 1 establishment of a new department dedicated to emergency health services across the province.

Wednesday, June 4: Premier Danielle Smith says she has invited Prime Minister Mark Carney to join her to watch the Edmonton Oilers play a possible game five of the Stanley Cup finals at Rogers Place. Carney has not yet responded.

Thursday, June 5: MP Corey Hogan (Calgary Confederation) is appointed as parliamentary secretary to the minister of energy and natural resources. Hogan was one of two Liberal MPs elected in Alberta on April 28.

June 5: Abacus Data releases survey results suggesting that only 14 per cent of Albertans say the chance of Alberta leaving Canada in the next five years is “very likely” or “likely.” The same survey says 56 per cent of Albertans are following news of a possible independence referendum “very closely” or “pretty closely.”

Friday, June 6: As of Friday morning, 24 of 56 wildfires burning in the province have been classified as “out of control.” So far this year 535,000 hectares have burned. A day after parts of the County of Grande Prairie were ordered to evacuate, evacuation orders are expected for parts of the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo.

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