GRANDE CACHE, ALBERTA
When residents of this coal-mining and logging town learned the local sawmill was shutting its doors earlier this year, it was another blow for the battle-scarred community.
Built in 1969 to accommodate the discovery of coal in the eastern Rocky Mountains, the northwestern Alberta town has endured a roller-coaster of worker layoffs, plant shutdowns and other economic hardships as its resource-based economy struggled under the weight of fluctuating world prices and wavering demand.
Given two choices – continue the wild ride and pray for the best, or find a new and steady source of jobs – the community has rallied back to develop its other, largely untapped, natural resource: Tourism.
 |
| Susan Mate, Business Edge |
| Grande Cache Chamber of Commerce president Jean Bourdua sees brighter days ahead thanks to the tourism industry. |
And local residents say the future looks bright as they get the word out that their scenic community, touted by some as the next Jasper or Banff, is much more than a highway pitstop en route to other parts of northern Alberta, British Columbia and Alaska.
“It’s all here for us – now it just has to happen,” says local Chamber of Commerce president Jean Bourdua, who came to the town 24 years ago to work at the local mine and today owns and manages the Grande Cache Hotel. “I think in the next five years we’ll see more happen in this town than we have in the past 25 years.”
Situated at an altitude of 1,260 metres on the shoulder of Grande Mountain and ringed by two dozen other peaks, the community is rebranding itself as a mecca for adventure tourism, wildlife viewing, outdoor recreation and sightseeing. Willmore Wilderness Park, a 4,597-sq.-km. provincial wilderness sanctuary, is a few kilometres away and the region is dotted with lakes, rivers, mountains and alpine trails.
Few in Grande Cache, located on Highway 40 about 180 kilometres south of Grande Prairie, dispute that tourism is the ticket to the economic future of the region. The only real sticking point is how much development should happen – and how fast it should occur.
Some residents such as Deputy Mayor Gerry Verstraten – who owns the family-run Misty Mountain Vacation Suites – favour a slow and steady pace of development, such as a small ski hill or golf course supported by a range of locally owned mom-’n’-pop hotels and hospitality services.
“To build tourism in a resource town is a slow process . . . but we have to keep going until we achieve that goal,” says Verstraten.
He has high praise for provincial politicians and agencies such as Travel Alberta and Alberta Economic Development for working with the community to define its vision since the Weyerhaeuser mill closed in early February. More than 160 jobs were lost in that closure, while another 300 positions disappeared four years ago when the Grande Cache coal mine shut down (the mine reopened late last month with jobs for 50 people and further expansion plans in the works).
 |
| Photo courtesy Chad Wanless |
| Competitors in the Great Canadian Death Race, a gruelling 125-kilometre event, have helped swell tourism coffers in Grande Cache. |
“There’s no way this community will fold . . . what we’ve been through in the past has strengthened us,” Verstraten says.
Other town residents such as Bourdua are outspoken about the need for a larger-scale and more immediate development, including a ski and mountain-bike hill, 18-hole golf course, an accompanying resort village and major investors from near and far.
“You need to be bold, you need to keep your vision simple . . . and you need to steer in the right direction. Things happen too slowly here,” he says. “We don’t want to lose sight of our vision to diversify the economy.”
While Grande Cache is frequently overshadowed by its better-known neighbour to the south – Jasper National Park – the town has found its way onto the map despite its rather isolated location in large part due to the Canadian Death Race, an annual event that brings more than 800 extreme athletes and hundreds of other tourists to the town each August long weekend.
“The Death Race has brought us through the glass ceiling,” says race organizer Dale Tuck, who has become a household name in Grande Cache for his tireless promotion of the five-year-old race and other tourism initiatives such as the Passport to the Peaks mountain-climbing program.
Tuck, a parole officer and avid outdoorsman, says the gruelling 125-kilometre race (which can be run by individuals or relay teams) and related training workshops bring nearly $2 million to the community each year.
Tuck says he wants more action and fewer words when it comes to developing new tourism initiatives, attractions and infrastructure.
“Everyone was so shocked when the mill shut down . . . people were waiting for a rainy day, and when the rainy day hit, it hit pretty hard. Guys, hello! What did people expect?”
One new tourism initiative is the creation of the Grande Cache Tourism Operators Association (GCTOA), a non-profit consortium of local tourism operators working to promote the area as a viable travel destination.
“When the mill shut down . . .
people said, ‘We are not going to let this happen to us without a fight,’” says GCTOA spokeswoman Yvonne Rempel.
“We need to diversify our community so that it’s not just forestry and coal. Tourism is our next industry, and we’ve been very proactive about that.”
Rempel notes the town offers all the scenery and recreational opportunities of Jasper, but with a much lower cost of living. Restaurant meals are comparable in price to centres such as Calgary and Edmonton, while hotel accommodations cost significantly less ($70-$100 a night) than those in Jasper.
The Grande Cache experience is part of a new reality for dozens of rural towns and cities across Alberta and B.C. that have historically relied on resource-based sectors such as logging and mining.
Tourism has been recognized as one of the fastest- growing economic generators by governments in both provinces.
In the Cowichan region of Vancouver Island, for example, numerous initiatives are under way to develop new tourism products such as wineries, agri-tourism, B&Bs and aboriginal attractions, says Geoff Miller, manager of economic development for the Cowichan and Region Economic Development Commission.
Miller says tourism development has been identified as a key source of economic potential by the approximately 7,700 residents of the Cowichan area, which stretches from the Malahat region of southern Vancouver Island to the electoral area of North Oyster in the north, and west to the Pacific Ocean and Pacific Rim National Park.
“All of our attraction venues in the region are improving and growing on a regular basis,” Miller says. “Eco-tourism, in particular, is really coming along.”
Tourism accounts for about 20 per cent of the jobs in the Cowichan area, but there is still heavy reliance on the traditional forestry sector. Miller says local tourism operators are marrying the traditional industry with tourism to create such attractions as the B.C. Forest Discovery Centre, a 1,000-acre facility in Duncan that explores the evolution of the forestry industry in a forest setting. Forestry companies are supporting tourism by allowing and promoting public access to their private lands for hiking, beach-going and other activities, he said.
“We have a long way to go, but we’ve certainly started off in the right direction,” says Miller, from his office in Duncan. “There’s a huge diversity of tourism opportunities in the region.”
In the logging and railway town of Golden, B.C., 250 kilometres west of Calgary along the Trans-Canada Highway, tourism has become one more key commodity for the local economy, says Jon Wilsgard, manager of community economic development.
The town has long been a haven for backcountry and helicopter skiing/hiking, but tourism has taken a more dominant role since the construction of Kicking Horse Mountain Resort.
The resort has injected millions of dollars into the local economy through an array of new residential developments, B&Bs, hotels, restaurants and other tourism-related spinoffs, says Wilsgard. Unlike alpine communities such as Canmore that exist primarily for tourism, Golden has retained its working-class character, relying on a range of local sectors such as the railway and forestry to thrive, he adds.
“We are not a tourist town or a one-industry town . . . there’s been no tidal wave of development. It’s been a slow but steady progression and the economic cultures have been allowed to mix together without being forced to,” Wilsgard says. “We’re still a working town, but tourism is an important part of that.”
In the Alberta town of Hinton, about 70 kilometres east of Jasper, a similar revitalization is under way, says economic development director Gerry Repecka. Hinton (pop. 10,000) suffered a series of blows in recent years with the closure or reduction of the area’s coal mines, but it is finding new economic stability as a regional tourism and shopping destination.
“We are a service centre for western Alberta and northeastern B.C. We are an hour’s drive from Jasper, and we’re starting to see more tourists staying with us and making the commute to Jasper because we are so close and so much less expensive,” says Repecka. “We also are getting more conferences here because we are almost halfway between Jasper and Edmonton.”
Renewed oil and gas exploration in the region has also brought new industry and a steady influx of new residents, while the area’s popularity for hunting, fishing, snowmobiling and other outdoor pursuits is also gaining growing attention, he says. Visitors can also tour a local sawmill or pulpmill, or head out on a self-guided drive along the Coal Branch historic coal-mine trail.
“We’ve seen this community go from mediocre to really, really good,” says Repecka, who has lived in Hinton for nearly 30 years.
“We feel that we will have in the next two years the biggest years that Hinton has seen in more than a decade.
I think we’ve got an awful lot to look forward to.”
Web watch:
www.cvrd.bc.ca/edc/econ_ develop_comm/overview.htm
www.goldenbritish columbia.com
(Susan Mate can be reached at sue@businessedge.ca)
