Former Banff Superintendent Reflects on Alberta’s Changing Landscapes

Kevin Van Tighem has spent a lifetime studying the places that shape Alberta’s identity. The former Banff National Park superintendent and longtime conservationist has written extensively about the province’s wild landscapes, from the Bow River to the Eastern Slopes. For Van Tighem, the fight to protect Alberta’s landscapes has never been abstract; it’s personal, rooted in a lifetime spent watching the places he loves change faster than they can recover. His latest book, Understory: An Ecologist’s Memoir of Loss and Hope, brings that experience into sharp personal focus.

In Understory, Van Tighem traces his journey through a lifetime of conservation work, family history, and reflection on the environmental changes he’s witnessed across Alberta, from the slow disappearance of wild species to the tension between human progress and ecological balance. It blends stories of wilderness and work with deeply personal essays about grief, love, and the challenge of staying hopeful in a world under pressure.

For decades, Van Tighem has been a steady, sometimes provocative voice in Alberta’s conservation movement. His essays and speeches have urged Canadians to look beyond tourism brochures and see the wild landscapes that quietly hold their communities together. Understory continues that mission but from a more vulnerable place. Part memoir and part meditation, the book examines how humans might rebuild a respectful relationship with the land and with each other.

Looking Beneath the Story

When asked why he chose the title Understory, Van Tighem explained that the word captures the hidden strata of both forests and lives. “One’s life is, in important ways, simply a series of stories,” he said. “But it’s not enough to look at the story. One has to explore the under-story. What was going on beneath the surface and how did it shape things?”

He said that writing the book forced him into uncomfortable territory. “It made me confront things I think most of us would rather just skate past. But I think the most important learnings are found in the understory, so we have to force ourselves into there.”

That honesty defines the memoir. Van Tighem writes candidly about his own mistakes and the environmental losses he has witnessed, linking both to what he describes as a culture that treats nature as something to use, rather than something we belong to.

Turning Despair into Discipline

Few Canadian writers speak as openly about environmental grief, the emotional toll of watching the natural world unravel. For Van Tighem, that grief became deeply personal. In one of the book’s most wrenching passages, he likens watching the land decline to watching his mother die. “Writing the book deepened some of my grief,” he wrote. “In the same way as too much rumination can feed depression.”

He added that the act of writing was also a way to heal. “The final chapters really do represent a coming to terms with how we are and where we are.”

Van Tighem quoted British nature writer Robert Macfarlane: “Despair is an indulgence. Hope is a discipline.” For him, hope is not optimism but daily practice, a refusal to surrender to cynicism. “The things I love matter too much to me to simply give up and stop trying,” he said.

That sense of responsibility eventually carried Van Tighem from the page to the political stage.

The Politics of Place

Van Tighem’s sense of duty to the land has always gone beyond words. After decades in Parks Canada, he entered provincial politics in 2023, running as the Alberta NDP candidate in Livingstone-Macleod. “Running in the election was a heck of a good way to spoil a retirement,” he wrote. Although he did not win the seat, his decision was motivated by the province’s push to open the Eastern Slopes to coal mining, a plan he and thousands of Albertans fought to overturn.

The provincial government’s plan to lift a decades-old ban on open-pit coal mining in the Eastern Slopes drew massive public opposition, uniting ranchers, Indigenous leaders, and conservationists across Alberta. The campaign, he said, showed him what genuine cooperation could look like. “I remember going to a barbecue to celebrate a big win in the coal struggle and looking around at the Piikanii mothers and their kids, foothills ranchers, urban environmentalists, anglers, movie people, musicians and thinking, so this is how we could have been. This is who we should have been.”

For Van Tighem, that moment captured a rare sense of unity, people from every background standing together for the same purpose. It was, he said, a glimpse of the Alberta he wishes could endure. “It’s late, but not too late. Maybe it is no longer just about coal and water. It’s about finally coming home. Together.”

The Bow Valley Mirror

Closer to home, Van Tighem worries about how growth is reshaping the Bow Valley. He notes that the same landscape drawing new residents and visitors also faces increasing pressure from development and recreation. “It troubles me to see how easily we can alter places that have taken thousands of years to form,” he said.

He believes the challenge lies in finding balance between welcoming people to enjoy the valley and protecting what makes it unique. His concern echoes debates familiar to many Bow Valley residents: how to balance tourism, housing, and habitat in a place where the land itself is both home and destination. “We need to think carefully about what kind of growth truly serves the community and what kind erodes the very qualities that brought us here in the first place,” he wrote.

Re-storying a Culture

For all his bluntness, Van Tighem insists that Understory is a book about reconciliation, not just between humans and nature, but within ourselves. “We don’t live apart from nature. We are a part of it,” he wrote. “We don’t have dominion over nature any more than we have control over our heartbeats.”

He describes the goal of Understory as “re-storying” our culture, telling new stories that heal the split between people and place. “I’m too realistic to think that books like Understory will change our culture,” he said. “But I’m hoping it will change some of our conversations. The rest might follow.”

Across Alberta, and especially here in the Bow Valley, readers have responded to Van Tighem’s mix of candour and care, an ecologist who admits his doubts but keeps showing up for the places he loves. “As long as one is trying,” he said, “one is creating hope.”

Author Visit

Van Tighem will visit the Bow Valley to share more about the stories and ideas behind Understory. He’ll speak at the Canmore Library on Thursday, October 30, from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. in the Friends Program Room. The event is free to attend.