For Alex and Michelle’s wedding slideshow that I made, there were two pictures of Alex, taken some 20 years apart, in the same location. The first was of him as a baby resting cozily in the arms of Jasper the Bear, and the second shows him pretending to be choked by that same bear.
If you’ve ever been to Jasper, you know what I’m talking about. The Town of Jasper’s mascot is Jasper the Bear, and there are a couple fiberglass statues of him around town. Every tourist who has ever visited Jasper likely has a picture taken next to the bear. Since I grew up less than an hour’s drive from there, I am sadly lacking such a photo. It’s funny how we’ll take pictures of places we’ve spent exactly ten seconds of our lives at, preserving the moment forever, and then the places that actually have meaning in our day-to-day lives go unrecorded.
Anyways, what strikes me as odd about Jasper the Bear is his coloration. He’s mostly black, but his face and chest are white. He’s colored rather more like a penguin than any bear I’ve ever seen, even spirit bears. I can think of three possible reasons for this:
1. The original artist had never seen a real bear, and just painted it that way out of naïve ignorance.
2. It was originally painted all black, but this made for really bad pictures, so the Townsfolk painted it partially white to show up better in photos.
3. There was once a breed of Penguin Bears indigenous to, and perhaps unique to Jasper National Park, in much the same way as Kermode Bears are unique to a small section of the BC coast and islands.

Since #3 strikes me as the most reasonable, I am curious as to why this subspecies of bear has gone largely unnoticed. Note how Jasper seems to walk upright just like a penguin does. Perhaps they evolved during the last ice age, and can still be found in the recesses of the Colombia Icefields somewhere, cavorting on the glaciers and swimming in the alpine lakes. I propose an expedition to go and locate any surviving members of this species. Anyone want to come with?