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Greatest Hits: After escaping the Jasper forest fires, this tourist couple found safety in the Jewish community

JL;DR SUMMARY Sharon Chodirker and Chaim Bell, a Toronto couple, share their harrowing experience of escaping the Jasper forest fires, aided by the Jewish communities in Kamloops, B.C., and Canmore, Alberta, including remarkable hospitality from the local Chabad. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski.

  • At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself.
  • This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude.
  • Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from.
  • But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
  • And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.
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Tags

Jewish Community SupportEmergency ResponseEvacuationsNatural DisastersJasper Forest FiresTravel DisruptionsChabad In The RockiesToronto CoupleAlberta FiresKamloops Jewish Community

Places mentioned

Jasper, Alberta, Canada
"Hours later, though, when the Toronto couple was eating dinner in Jasper, they saw a grey wall of smoke block out the sky and then each of them got an emergency alert message on their cell phones from the government."
Valemount, British Columbia, Canada
"The couple managed to find places to stay in other parts of the Rockies, including Kamloops, until Friday, when, as they'd previously scheduled, they headed east to Canmore, Alberta, and spent Shabbat with a Chabad rabbi and his family."
Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada
"And we hope that they'll be able to recover from the situation there and rebuild."
Canmore, Alberta, Canada
"Until Friday, when, as they'd previously scheduled, they headed east to Canmore, Alberta, and spent Shabbat with a Chabad rabbi and his family, who had just established a new Jewish community centre there."
Golden, British Columbia, Canada
"When his phone rang at 11 o'clock one recent night, Rabbi Pinson heard from a stranded American couple fleeing from another forest fire. This one in Golden, B.C., who had no place to sleep."
This podcast episode was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 60232
Cairo Source ID 72
Retrieved 2025-08-28 05:30:46 UTC
Curated 2025-08-28 06:03:06 UTC