Winter 2010 - The Alpine Club of Canada

Wheeler House becomes artist group’s inspiration
by Rob Alexander
A
group of artists gathered at the
Wheeler House in Banff in July
to draw inspiration from the
aging home and its history.
The intent, according to Canmore
painter Donna Jo Massie, was to create
a tribute to the house and its first owner,
Arthur Oliver Wheeler, with a body of
artwork that was displayed at the Banff
Park Museum National Historic Site.
Massie received permission from
Banff National Park superintendent
Kevin Van Tighem to take 10 artists to
the house for a three-hour period to
paint, sketch and draw inspiration from
the house and its sublime setting.
Wheeler, a surveyor who, along with
Elizabeth Parker and Stanley Mitchell,
founded the Alpine Club of Canada
(ACC), built the house as a summer
residence in 1920.
Wheeler called the Craftsman-style
bungalow Claremount House for his
wife, Clara.
The bright red house sits in the
Middle Springs Wildlife Corridor not far
from Mountain Avenue.
The wildlife corridor, which runs
along the base of Sulphur Mountain, is
closed to the public to give wildlife an
unimpeded route past Banff and to protect
critical Banff Springs snail habitat.
The Wheeler family owned the house
until 1953. The lease for the land reverted
to Parks Canada in 1991 and in 1993
the house received status as a Federal
Heritage Building.
The Historic Sites and Monuments
Board of Canada, meanwhile, commemorated
Wheeler with a plaque at
the Columbia Icefield in Jasper in 1998.
An ACC hut in Rogers Pass National
Historic Site in Glacier National Park
also bears Wheeler’s name.
Parks Canada plans to demolish the
Wheeler House given its poor state—it is
now deemed a public safety hazard—and
because of its location in the wildlife
corridor.
Massie, who is well aware of the history
of the house and its founder, organized
the afternoon trip to say “thank you”.
“Because it is going to disappear, it
shouldn’t disappear without someone
saying thanks for the memories and
recognize what part it played in the
history not only in Banff, but the ACC,
Parks and the geological society,” Massie
said. “It’s nice to remember and reflect on
this particular place, because places are
really important.”
Upon arrival at the crumbling, barnred
house, the group spread out in the
meadow surrounding the back of the
house and encircled the pond where
goldfish continue to thrive.
The group of artists—painters, a
ceramicist, an illustrator, a glass blower, a
photojournalist and a singer-songwriter—
included Alex Emond, Jenny Crompton
(Wheeler’s great-granddaughter), Lucie
Bause, Susan Gottselig, Joe Martin, Jocey
Asnong, Rob Harding, Cori Brewster and
Massie.
“I tried to think of people who had
been in the area or knew about the area
or people who had shown an inclination;
who had tried to give back to the place in
some shape or form,” Massie said.
Cori Brewster, who has a longstanding
connection with the history
of the Bow Valley, and who dipped into
Banff ’s history for her most recent album,
Buffalo Street, said she is thinking of writing
a song about the Wheeler House in a
similar vein as the songs on Buffalo Street.
Standing in the sun, looking at the
back wall of the house covered in graffiti,
Brewster—whose family started Brewster
Transport—said the ideal situation would
be to find a way to preserve the building,
an initiative Crompton has been working
on with Parks Canada.
“When we get rid of the structures,
we get rid of the stories. Then the interest
becomes that of the academics who study
them in the archives and I don’t think
that is enough,” Brewster said.
“People want to see it, feel it, get a
sense of it, whether it is through music
or stories. I was thinking of the A.O.
Wheeler house, with actors acting out
the story of this home and people going
home with this real sense of early exploration
in this area as being really important.
We need to continually challenge
Parks’ wisdom on some of the things and
I think that is a healthy dialogue,” she
said, adding that perhaps the house has
survived so long for a reason.
Gottselig, a glass artist, moved around
the house examining broken pieces of
glass and investigating the configuration
of windows.
“This house obviously had different
stages of glass in it and different
types of glass,” she said. “The glass tells
me that light was important to them
and the views were important to them.
Sometimes we have this funny idea about
Lucie Bause, Cori Brewster and Rob Harding study
Claremount, A.O. Wheeler's Banff home.
photo by Rob Alexander.