Will Baart woke up in the middle of the night Tuesday, July 23, and saw an orange flicker on the bedroom wall of his Jasper home.
“I looked out the window and saw 300-, 500-foot flames shooting swirls and tornadoes off the ridge 10 to 15 kilometres away,” he said. “It was terrifying. So I had to knuckle down, put that aside and go to work in the morning.”
The general manager of the town’s TGP grocery store had been called back by a Parks Canada logistics coordinator after evacuating with the rest of the population late Monday. First responders battling the blaze in and around the townsite would need to eat.
By about noon, Baart was back and had his hands full preparing loads of groceries to go out to the fire teams. At 8 p.m., the store’s long-serving grocery manager, Michael Galope, had arrived, cleared to cross the RCMP line to give Baart a hand.
At around 9 p.m. they took a break, walked the block over to Connaught Drive, the town’s main drag, and took photos of a fire Baart said had changed “dramatically.
“Earlier in the day, there was white smoke, telling me first responders were fighting it,” he said. “When we saw it then, it was just billows of black smoke, feeding on fuel, and it had doubled in size.”
At 10 p.m., they were finished and went home for a good night’s sleep, with Baart waking once to take those dramatic photos of the fire.
Both men returned to work at about 7 a.m. Wednesday. They were warned that the town’s air raid siren, used in normal times to call firefighters who happen to be out on the trails back for a call, or for other emergencies like an avalanche on the Icefields Parkway, would sound if and when the remaining first responders including paramedics and the RCMP were themselves evacuated.
That telltale wail rang out across the valley just before 4 p.m. and within 10 minutes, Baart and Galope were eastbound on Highway 16.
Thank the GOAT
Glenda MacDowell was not with them. The recipient of the 2024 Mayor’s Special Award for Humanitarianism and mainstay of her concession in the Jasper Community Arena remains in the townsite feeding first responders day and night.
“Glenda is an absolute legend,” Baart said Friday. Both are part of the Jasper Food Alliance, which combats food waste and hunger in the town. “She works her butt off.”
Ditto, says Jasper Park Chamber of Commerce executive director Pattie Pavlov.
“We have angels and heroes in our community right now," she said, referring also to first responders, "and Glenda is one of them."
Baart said he’s confirmed that the TGP is still standing (as is the town's other grocer, Nesters, formerly Robinson's). Parks personnel have access to the food inside, and have been taking groceries on the honour system.
“I’m so grateful to work for a corporation that is so cooperative to allow Michael and myself to go in and support the community we love,” he said. “They sent two tractor trailers of food here from the distribution centre in Edmonton when it literally looked like a war zone. And expediting on the fly what we needed to do when things were changing hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute, was nothing short of miraculous.”
Baart is more qualified to spot a grocery miracle than most. After 11 years at Robinson’s and 12 at TGP, he says he’s been feeding Jasper for more than two decades.
“It’s our passion,” Baart said. “When I asked Michael to come back, it was a no-brainer.
“Every one of my team members is adamant – they want to come back and they want to rebuild their community.”
