Summer 2007 - The Alpine Club of Canada

Munday biography brings history alive in readers’ hands
BY RON DART
Don Munday has been called
the elder and dean of British
Columbia mountaineering,
and Phyllis Munday has been called the
grand lady of the ancient spires and white
capped diadems. It is rather uncanny that
a biography had not yet been written on
the lives of Don and Phyllis Munday,
but now Kathryn Bridge has fi lled the
gap in a most readable, meticulous and
accessible manner.
Bridge carried out her sleuth work
well in her 2002 Phyllis Munday:
Mountaineer, an informative teaser and
primer on the life of Phyllis Munday.
Th ere was much missing in this earlier
telling of the tale of Munday’s life, and
the curious and keen reader could not
help but yearn for more to slake the
thirst of the mountaineering palette. A
Passion of Mountains:Th e Lives of Don and
Phyllis Munday off ers a full course and
much more on this pioneering couple of
mountaineering lore and legend.
A Passion for Mountains has a most
alluring and appealing cover, and the
many photographs in the missive cannot
but hold and delight the attentive reader.
Many a page tells the tale well, in a visual
way, of the climbing ethos and life of
Don and Phyllis Munday. Th e written
text fi ts hand and glove with the fi ne
photographs. Bridge quotes amply from
the varied writings of the Mundays,
and she threads her interpretive text
judiciously through the fabric of the
photographs and primary material.
A Passion for Mountains tracks the
life of Don and Phyllis Munday in a
chronological way, from their early years
apart, their meeting, their many climbs
and their parting with Don’s early death
in 1950. Each chapter’s title acts as a well
30
MOUNTAIN
years
EXPERTISE
built cairn for the reader, pointing the
way further along the trail: 1) Early Years
and the BC Mountaineering Club, 2)
Wartime, 3) Recovery and Discovery, 4)
Climbing on the Coast, 5) Th e Alpine
Club of Canada, 6) Mystery Mountain
Years, 7) Icefi elds and Mountains, and 8)
Later Years. Th e evocative prose poems
by Phyllis: I Th ink What Will Happen To
Me, Th e Legacy and List Of Ascents winds
down the few fi nal pages of this well
crafted book.
Th ere is no doubt that A Passion for
Mountains is a much more mature and
integrated book than Phyllis Munday:
Mountaineer. Bridge deserves many an
accolade for her hard archivist work and
visually pleasing text. Don and Phyllis
Munday would be more than honoured
by the attention Bridge has lavished on
them.
A Passion for Mountains is a keeper
and must read for those interested in the
early years of mountaineering in BC and
Alberta, and the early years of the Alpine
Club of Canada. Phyllis Munday was the
fi rst woman to climb Mount Robson, and
it was the Mundays who scouted out the
approaches to the highest mountain in
BC, Mount Waddington. Do delight in
the text. History will come alive in your
hands.
A Passion of Mountains:Th e Lives of
Don and Phyllis Munday is published by
Rocky Mountain Books, a division of
Heritage House.
photo: N. Rapaich
Alpine Club of Canada ● Gazette ● SUMMER 2007 9