I am staying with friends south of the Yellowhead about a hundred kilometres west of Edmonton. My host has come to let me in his gate then takes off - that bit of a black spot at he end of the lane is what I see of him after a few seconds. The farm includes a couple of hay fields and a wood through which the drive is cut.
Yellowhead
The Yellowhead, named after a pass in the Rocky Mountains (which was the nickname of a fair-haired Métis-Iroquois-freeman named Bostonais who lived in the area in the early 1800's) is a sometimes divided four-lane highway running from Portage la Prairie west of Winnipeg in Manitoba to Prince Rupert on the northern west coast of British Columbia.
I and my Little Pipsqueak, a Chev Trax, turned east onto highway 16, the Yellowhead, at Tête Jaune Cache in British Columbia following the rushing Fraser River into Alberta then along the base of Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Rockies, through Jasper to Edmonton.
Ten days later we picked up the Yellowhead at Lloydminster, a town on the east border of Alberta and west border of Saskatchewan. Meandering along wheat fields and rail tracks to the Battlefords, then over to Saskatoon we turn southeast down to Yorkton and along to Landenburg at the east border of Saskatchewan. The next day a rainy dawdle through to Foxwarren before we meet the end of the road in Portage la Prairie abruptly joining the 21st century hustle and bustle racing head long onto the divided four lane Trans Canada highway whizzing to Winnipeg.
Come see what we see!
Mount Robson on the Yellowhead heading east towards Jasper.
For someone like myself who has visited Jasper many times, entering the town on the Yellowhead from the west is sobering. The black stocks of trees, the stone of foundations, the bare brown land where once houses stood but where all evidence of the fire is gone, the crumbled, black, twisted shell of gas pumps sitting amidst the charred land … words cannot describe.
Tears well remembering the ski weekends, the spring camping trips, the wedding. The walks around town with the Elk as company.
Then like night to day, the town that survived. The hospital, high school, post office, churches, and houses, restaurants and hotels, are all cleaned, repaired, and operational.
It’s hard to comprehend that in a year hotels are full, restaurants are bustling, and the high school students are marching down the street singing and shouting while joyously waving signs proclaiming WE’RE SENIORS.
Preparing land for more temporary housing.
The backbone, determination, fortitude and, yes, spunk of these people!
The CN Railway Station escaped the fire
But, like all buildings, not the smoke and water and trauma.
