The shocking footage of the Jasper town site… struck a deep chord with me. Like many others, I have cherished childhood memories of the park. …Just as fires rage across much of western Canada, so too do political debates about the causes of the fires. Is it climate change? Is it the mountain pine beetle epidemic? Is it a lack of prescribed burns and a banning of Indigenous burning practices? Is it bureaucratic and government inaction? …When tragedy strikes, everyone wants to point fingers and come up with a clear answer. We all want certainty in an uncertain world. And yet, the causes of wildfires are complex and there’s no single answer as to why so many of our communities are threatened by wildfires in this moment.

Those more inclined to opine on the Jasper fire include:

• WJ Burn in the Edmonton Journal: ‘Green’ forest policy turned Jasper into a tinderbox
• Ed Struzik in the The Tyee: Jasper Is another grim warning of Canada’s wildfire failures
• Ryan Tumilty in the National Post: How much did beetle-killed trees feed the runaway wildfire?
• Byron Hackett in the Red Deer Advocate: We need context without piling all the blame on ant one party
• Lorne Gunter in the Toronto Sun: Parks Canada insists dead forests be allowed to regenerate naturally
• David Climenhaga in AlbertaPolitics.ca: Yes, Alberta, it’s time we had a grown-up talk about wildfires
• Marc Fawcett-Atkinson in the National Observer: The blaze fueled a wide disinformation firestorm
• Corey Morgan in The Epoch Times: We need proper forest management now or wildfires will get worse
• Don Braid in the Calgary Herald: Bad management has turned forests into firebombs. Bring back the Indigenous ways