Photo by Bailey Parkinson.
Tanner Rodgers sits back on his kayak as he takes in the scenery at Waterton National Park.

Canada is prepping for its 150 birthday this year and some of the festivities are already taking place.
As of Jan. 1, the Canadian government made the national parks Discover Pass free to all Canadians.
One of the parks getting ready for a rush of visitors is Waterton National Park, and the park is already seeing the excitement of people collecting their passes.
The planning began long before the new year hit and the park is making sure the experience is enjoyable to everyone who checks through the gates.

“We’re used to dealing with large amounts of people and we started planning for 2017 back in 2016 and our planning is ongoing. We have been provided with additional resources to ensure we have the capacity necessary to manage what we anticipate a very busy season,” said Locke Marshall, the visitor experience manager at Waterton.
The park is also expecting to see more people pass through as numbers of the past years have grown.
“The trend has been for our visitation to increase every year for quite some time now. Last year we welcomed 477,000 visitors to the park in 2015 and in 2016 that was over half a million. So we’re anticipating that trend will continue this year and following years,” said Marshall.
Businesses will also have to make sure they are prepared for the amount of visitors coming through the park.
“Especially during the 150 anniversary coming up, businesses will more than likely have to double, maybe in triple the products and goods they have had to produce in the past. With more footprints in the park, keeping up with cleanliness will also be important,” said Bailey Parkinson who worked at the Waffleton Café.
Preparations for the coming year have been ongoing through 2016 and had some closures in the park to make sure they were ready.
“I think to prepare for the increase of visitors, Parks Canada has done as much as they could with fixing up key roadways,” added Parkinson.
Marshall says the park is excited to connect with people who may have not made their way to Waterton and hopefully get them to return for years to come.