Mitchel Philp was an outlier in Jasper’s tourism worker community. In a town of trekkers, mountaineers and all-around nature fanatics, the Australian was never even much of a hiker. But after a friend in Canada shared an opportunity to make some cash in Jasper, he seized on it.
Arriving on an International Experience Canada , he says he felt a warm welcome in the chilly Rockies and quickly grew close to a small-knit community of tourism workers. “All the people there are awesome, everyone’s catching up all the time, we had a good little setup,” he said. “It was just getting warm so we could go for more swims .
.. sitting by a lake having a few beers.
” Like hundreds of seasonal staff and temporary foreign workers who make up Jasper’s tourism industry – about 63 per cent of all jobs in town – Mr. Philp was looking for a way to combine employment with adventure; travelling and paying his way through gigs as a barista. But with the tourism season cut short by , many have found themselves not knowing what comes next.
The situation is even more urgent for temporary foreign workers, whose ability to remain in Canada is tied to their jobs. “We’re in limbo still, just waiting on information and stuff, I think they’re still dealing with a few fires,” said Mr. Philp, who along with a group of foreign workers, has been provided with temporary accommodation at a hotel in Calgary.
“We’ve been left up in the air a bit at the moment, sort of just hanging.” The .