Calgary salon hosts cut-a-thon to raise money to rebuild Jasper salon destroyed by wildfire

Some Jasperites have moved back to their community and tourists are being allowed in, but efforts to rebuild the third of the town that was destroyed by July’s wildfire remains the priority.

It will be an expensive undertaking and one business in Calgary is doing what it can to help.

Hedkandi Salon, located in the Hotel Arts building on 13 Avenue S.W. did what it does best on Saturday night; cut hair.

“We're doing a cut-a-thon for Jasper,” says Wray Bokitch, a partner in Hedkandi salon.

“One of our salons in our Bumble and Bumble network didn't make it through the fire, and when Bumble reached out to us to see if there's anything we could do, we decided that this was going to be how we contributed back to the town.”

Bokitch says her family has spent a lot of winters and Easters there and wanted to make sure that there's a town for them to go back to.

She says they were asking everyone for a minimum $50 donation.

“We'd love to raise $10,000. We've done cut-a-thons in the past, and that is our goal every single time and we just hope that we can give something back to the town,” she says.

“We're so grateful when the community comes together to support us that we want to make sure that we're there to support when they need it.”

This weekend Parks Canada says the Jasper wildfire is now listed as under control.

The change in status means the fire has been sufficiently suppressed to ensure it won't spread outside of its 278-kilometre-long perimeter.

Parks Canada says there is a good chance that smoke and flames will be still be seen inside the fire area into the early winter.