Fundraising After The Flames

On July 22, during an already dry, hot summer afternoon, a fire started near the Jasper Transfer Station. Over the next hour, 30-kilometre-an-hour winds blew two southern fires north towards the station, turning them all into a single blaze with 50-metre flames that engulfed the town and turned a 6,000-plus hectare area into what’s become known as the Jasper Wildfire Complex.

Mary Bailey was in Edmonton, but she remembers it well. “At first it was, ‘People are being asked to leave’ and then, boom — all we’re hearing and all we’re seeing is Jasper on fire,” she says. Like many Edmontonians, Bailey has spent a lot of time in Jasper throughout her life, and the images of people fleeing the fire broke her heart. But once news broke that everyone made it out alive, the publisher and editor-in chief of The Tomato magazine thought of the people she writes so often about: food and hospitality workers. “Whether it’s a bartender, a server in a cafe or someone working on a raft crew, I think we’ve all experienced Jasper hospitality. Some of the workers are from there, or live there year-round, and some come from all over for work, but I just wondered: What’s happening to them?”

Instead of just wondering, Bailey got on the phone. She first called her friend Kaelin Whittaker, who owns Awn Kitchen in Edmonton. “I had called my brother, who is a firefighter … and I asked him where [was] the best place to donate money so it would get in the hands of the people in Jasper,” Whittaker says. “He said, ‘adopt a business and donate directly to them and encourage other small businesses to do the same.” She and Bailey then called Butternut Tree and The Marc Co-owner Scott Downey … who had already called Peter Keith from Meuwly’s. “We knew that if we were all thinking the same thing, that others in the hospitality industry would be too,” Bailey says. “If we could help mobilize them, we could help the workers from Jasper.” They named themselves YEG Hospitality for Jasper, a group of people who, despite their overflowing sympathy and goodwill for their kitchen compatriots, knew they couldn’t do it alone.

After assembling their team, they made the next important call to Edmonton Community Foundation (ECF). “I was actually just looking for advice, to get a read on what to do in this situation,” Bailey says. “So I sent an email, not knowing anyone there, and I got a call from [CEO] Tina [Thomas] that afternoon.” The two talked, and less than a week later, the group had ECF’s new Jasper Hospitality Fund.

In turn, ECF reached out to their counterparts at the Banff Canmore Foundation (BCF) and the Northwestern Alberta Foundation (NAF) to collaborate. “There are over 200 community foundations in Canada,” says Noel Xavier, ECF’s VP of Philanthropy & Donor Engagement. “Each has local expertise to maximize impact, which is why we’re in discussions with BCF and NAF to determine where donations from the Jasper Hospitality Fund should go. ECF created an online giving page for YEG Hospitality for Jasper where people can donate and get information about hosting their own events to raise even more. This turned the group’s role from cold-calling fundraisers into managers coordinating the growing list of people wanting to help in their own ways.

“We immediately started getting text messages and emails saying ‘I want to do something. What can I do?

Keith says. “So if we have four different people who say, ‘I really want to host some kind of a wine fundraiser, we just put them in touch with each other and say, ‘Here you go — run with it.’ We wanted to become a platform that could just empower other groups to do their own initiatives and unite them under this cause.” Within a few weeks of launch, Sundance Ski Shop held a beer-and-barbecue fundraiser. Vagabond Pop-Up donated sales from glasses of rosé and Jacek Chocolate Couture directed all profits from a single day of business to the fund. “We had so many events happening that we couldn’t even keep up with them,” Bailey says. “People weren’t necessarily letting us know right away, they were just kind of putting it up on their own and sending the Jasper Hospitality Fund the money afterward.”

The Canadian Restaurant Association made the biggest donation of $10,000, with smaller donations bringing the total to about $40,000 to date. All the money in the flow-through fund will be used to support Jasper hospitality workers, which means more donations will be needed going forward. You can  donate anytime at yegfoodforjasper.ca.