Editor:
Re: Former Parks Boss Slams Commercialization, published in the Thursday, September 19, 2013 edition of the RMO.
This article was precipitated by former Banff National Park (BNP) Superintendent Kevin Van Tighem’s negative Facebook entries concerning the building of a proposed 66-room hotel and 15 tent cabins on the shores of Jasper’s Maligne Lake.
Then-superintendent Van Tighem previewed the draft Park Management Plan to Parks employees at the Banff YWCA in November 2009. I stood up at that meeting and told him and other Parks staff that what he was describing sounded more like a marketing plan than a management plan. His spirited defence of the draft management plan amounted to little more than “Is not!”
I have to assume that the Jasper Management Plan is similar to the BNP management/marketing plan.
We’ll likely never know if Mr. Van Tighem actually believed that the draft document that he was selling was a management plan or was just following orders from his superiors in far-off Ottawa but, during the draft BNP management/marketing plan sales process Mr. Van Tighem would have possessed in-depth, and perhaps confidential, knowledge of zipline, Brewster Glacier Skywalk, via ferrata and other proposals which, as a retired Parks employee, he likely does not support.
Yet, his efforts to sell the draft BNP management/marketing plan would have suggested to many people that he supported these attractions.
Mr. Van Tighem’s statement “… the deliberately-fostered cynicism now infecting the body politic leads pretty directly to apathy,” would be considered by many to be an observation regarding the cynical attitude that many Canadians feel about government pronouncements because of the spin-doctoring distortions that are too frequently a component of any government’s announcements, particularly when retired government officials voice opinions that are contrary to the government policies which they promoted when they were employed by the government.
Jon Whelan,
Banff
