Winter 2010 - The Alpine Club of Canada

Mountaineers and Banff National Park
by Zac Robinson
It should be hardly surprising that
James Bernard Harkin (1875-1955), the
first commissioner of the Dominion
Parks Branch and celebrated “father” of
national parks in Canada, generously
cited the writings of mountain climbers
in promoting the first Dominion parks
established in the Rocky Mountains. The
charm and attractiveness of the range,
which justified and compelled pride of
country, were best related, according to
Harkin, “by those whom the world recognizes
as having the right to speak with
authority upon the subject of mountains
and scenic attractions”. Privileged players
in the realm of aesthetics, mountaineers
were widely regarded as arbiters of taste
and thus picturesque scenery in the
Rockies.
But Banff National Park, celebrating
its 125th anniversary in 2010, has always
had a special relationship with mountain
climbers. Its earliest boundaries—the
first, in 1885, enclosed a reserve of 26
square kilometres surrounding hot springs
near Sulphur Mountain; expansion in
1887 brought 673 square kilometres,
named Rocky Mountains Park, under
Dominion control—were drafted by some
of Canada’s earliest climbers: surveyors.
The mountains provided new challenges
and pleasures for the profession. And
the demands of mapping in the Rockies
meant surveyors also played a major role
in the evolution of mountaineering pursuits
in the range.
Surveyors had company in the
Members gather in front of the Banff Club House.
country’s western mountains: Swiss
guides and a whole cohort of experienced
international climbers. Their activities,
of course, along with a hefty dose of
homegrown nationalism, sparked the
genesis of the Alpine Club of Canada
(ACC), whose Banff Clubhouse—built
halfway between the town and the Upper
Hot Springs—opened in July, 1909. Its
headquarters gave permanent visibility
to the Club and to mountaineering in
Canada. Indeed, much of early development
of mountaineering in the Rockies
was planned there, and its distinctive red
roof quickly became a recognizable feature
from town, a speck of colour against
the green, pine-clad slopes of Sulphur
Mountain. Long-time Banff resident
Eleanor Luxton (1908-1995) remembered
the Clubhouse as “a delightful place, and
much used by all climbers”.
The Club became the park’s strongest
advocate by the 1920s. Decades of
“parkmaking”—the building of roads and
bridges, the establishment of a townsite,
and the provision of tourist facilities—
had all contributed to make Banff a premier
destination. But tourism, then, was
seen as neither a detriment to the park
nor its priority; for years, it was merely
the financial icing on the cake. Instead,
the park needed saving from resource
extraction. Coal mining and lumbering,
which were accepted practices under
early parks policy, had grown increasingly
divergent from the conservationist sentiment
sweeping the country. For Harkin
photo from the ACC collection.
and his fledgling Parks Branch, formed in
1911, the future of parks was in the “business
of selling scenery”. For the ACC, the
threat was hydroelectric development.
It was a fight that determined the
future of Canada’s national parks. Calgary
Power Company (later TransAlta),
which already had power dams on the
Bow River’s Horseshoe Falls, at Lake
Minnewanka and at Kananaskis Falls,
needed more power in 1923. Pressure
mounted for further operations within
the park. A proposal to dam the Spray
River, just east of the town of Banff,
gained momentum. Its proponents rallied.
If Harkin needed an ally, he found it in
Arthur Oliver Wheeler (1860-1945), a
surveyor by profession and the fiery director
of the ACC.
At its Annual Meeting in 1923, held
at the Larch Valley Camp, near Lake
Louise, Wheeler and the ACC formed a
second organization, the National Parks
Association. It was the country’s first
non-government watchdog for parks, and
the group quickly made its resolve known
to the Minister of the Interior: “That a
National Parks Association for Canada
be formed with objects consisting of the
conservation of the Canadian National
Parks for scientific, recreational and
scenic purposes, and their protection from
exploitation for commercial purposes”.
A letter campaign followed and over
the next seven years the Spray Lakes
controversy—likened by historians to the
famous Hetch Hetchy dam debates in
Yosemite National Park—attracted attention
from all levels of government.
Resolution was bittersweet. In
negotiation with the Prairie provinces,
the Canadian government enacted
new legislation in 1930—the National
Parks Act—to ensure parks remained
“unimpaired for the enjoyment of
future generations”. It was a landmark
achievement. Mining was no longer
permitted, nor were commercial forestry
or hydroelectric schemes. For Harkin and
Wheeler, however, the legislation came at
a cost. Lands of “substantial commercial
value”—Canmore and its coal mines,
Exshaw with its cement plant, and the
Spray Valley with its hydro potential, for
example—were taken out of the newly
named Banff National Park. Boundaries