Tour bus company charged in rollover

ALBERTA

A tour bus operator is facing eight charges in connection with a fatal 2020 rollover that saw a bus specially designed to ferry tourists across glaciers overturn in a remote part of Jasper National Park, killing three.

The results of an RCMP investigation have not yet been released, but the charges announced Friday were laid under Alberta’s Occupational Health and Safety Act and allege that Brewster Inc. failed to maintain a safe workplace by, among other things, requiring seatbelts, controlling the hazard of the lateral moraine down which the bus rolled, and ensuring all equipment could perform the function for which it was designed.

The case will go to court in Jasper on June 23.

Brewster’s Ice Explorer tours at the Athabasca Glacier are a popular summer tourist attraction. The Ice Explorers, which look like large buses with outsized tires, travel up the lateral moraine — the ridge of rock and dirt that gets pushed up along the sides of the glacier — before turning down the moraine and onto the glacier itself, where visitors are often given the chance to walk around.

But on July 18, 2020, one tour carrying 27 people took a terrifying turn, overturning before it reached the ice and rolling “50 to 100 yards” down the hill, RCMP said at the time. Three people died at the scene while the rest, including the driver, were taken to hospital.