Among the Canadian Alps

Among the Canadian Alps
Lawrence Burpee

Lawrence J. Burpee

Among the Canadian Alps

PREFACE

The writer takes this opportunity of gratefully acknowledging his indebtedness to Mr. J. B. Harkin, Commissioner of Dominion Parks, Col. Maynard Rogers, Superintendent of Jasper Park, and Mr. Arthur O. Wheeler, Director of the Alpine Club of Canada, for valued assistance in gathering material for this book; to Mr. Walter D. Wilcox, Sir James Outram, Dr. A. P. Coleman, Dr. J. W. A. Hickson, Rev. George Kinney, Dr. Charles E. Fay and Mr. P. D. McTavish, for permission to quote from their books and articles on the Rocky Mountains; and to Miss Mary M. Vaux, Mrs. Mary T. S. Schäffer, Mr. W. H. P. Lett, Mr. Arthur O. Wheeler, Mr. H. W. Craver, Rev. George Kinney, Mr. P. D. McTavish, Mr. James F. Porter, Mr. P. L. Tait, Mr. John Woodruff, Mr. A. Knechtel, Messrs. G. and W. Fear, the Canadian Pacific Railway Company and the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Company, for permission to reproduce photographs of Rocky Mountain scenery and climbing and other incidents.

Ottawa, CanadaOctober, 1914

I

THE LURE OF THE MOUNTAINS

WHAT is the peculiar charm of that mighty, snow-capped sea of mountains, whose stupendous waves tossed far into the heavens seem ever about to overwhelm the level wheat-fields of Western Canada? The lure of the mountains defies analysis, but it is surely there with its irresistible appeal to all in whom the spirit of romance is not quite dead. It stirs the blood strangely when, far out on the plains of Alberta, you get your first glimpse of the Canadian Alps – a line of white, glittering peaks just above the horizon, infinitely remote and ethereal, something altogether apart from the prosaic world about you of grain and cattle, neat farm-house and unsightly elevator.

As you follow the course of the sun, the peaks loom gradually up into the sky and dominate the scene, but still retain the atmosphere of another world. The rolling foothills in the foreground, like spent waves from the storm-tossed sea, seem tangible and comprehensible, but beyond and above the dark ramparts of the outer range, the towering outer wave of the mountains, float silvery outlines that seem to be the fabric of some other and purer world. Doubt may come with the marvellously clear and hardening light of the western day, but at sunrise, and peculiarly at sunset, the last shreds of uncertainty are swept away. Not of this earth is that dream of fairyland poised mysteriously in the upper air, glowing in exquisite tints, soft as a summer cloud; a realm of the spirit to which one might hope to journey over the path of a rainbow.

One who has seen this vision may not resist the insistent call to explore the mountain world, to discover what lies beyond the frowning battlements that guard this other realm. The call has been working in the hearts of men for generations. They came alone in the early days, each man fighting his way up through some doorway that led into the heart of the Glittering Mountains. Only the stout of heart might then win through, for this Wonderland was guarded close on every side. Pitfalls awaited the unwary. The explorer must cut his own trail through the wilderness, cross icy torrents, climb alpine passes, find a way through networks of fallen timber, face perils and discomforts every hour of the day. And yet there was something alluring, something that drew him on, and brought him back again to these high fastnesses; something that he could not understand, but that was none the less imperative. That same spell is as potent to-day, but most of the barriers are down, and where once men came singly or in twos and threes, paying heavily in labour and peril for the joys they found in the mountains, thousands now follow at just enough cost to themselves to give spice to the experience.

The history of the Canadian Alps, so far as White Men have had anything to do with it, dates back to the closing years of the French Régime in Canada. It is characteristic of the race that gave to the world such heroic figures as those of Champlain and La Salle and La Vérendrye, that while the infamous Bigot and the egotistical and brainless Vaudreuil were gambling away an empire in the New World, tireless and unselfish explorers were carrying the boundaries of that empire far out toward the setting sun.

It was in the year 1751 that the Chevalier de Niverville, with a small party of French voyageurs, pushed his way up the muddy waters of the Saskatchewan, and built Fort Lajonquière in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Niverville was not the discoverer of the mighty range that runs like a backbone throughout the length of North America. He had been anticipated some years before by a fellow-countryman, La Vérendrye, son of the patriotic explorer who had devoted his life to western discovery for the glory of his native land. Niverville, however, was the first White Man to look upon that portion of the mountains now known as the Canadian Rockies.

One wonders what his impressions were as he gazed out to the westward over that bewildering scene. As a Canadian officer he had served in the expeditions against the New England Colonies, and was therefore familiar with the mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont, as well as with his own Laurentian Hills, but what preparation were these for such awe-inspiring majesty? Range piled upon range to the westward, soaring up and up in vast towers and domes and spires, and extending north and south to the utmost limits of vision, they must have seemed to Niverville an impregnable fortification designed to bar all further progress in this direction.

Niverville was not the man, however, to be daunted by even the most formidable natural obstacle, and he was not without evidence that a way might be found through the mountains to the shores of that Western Sea for which he and many other Canadian explorers had been searching, even since the days of Champlain. While at Fort Lajonquière a party of Indians visited him, from whom he learned that they had traded with a strange tribe whose home was far to the westward, beyond the great barrier, and who spoke of White Men that they had seen on the sea coast. Niverville no doubt made plans for an expedition through the mountains, but they came to nothing. His leader, Saint-Pierre, was having trouble with the Indians at his fort on the Assiniboine; Niverville was recalled, and before long the entire party of French explorers were making their way back to far-off Quebec, to help Montcalm in his last desperate effort to save New France.

In 1754, and again in 1772, officers of the Hudson's Bay Company made journeys of exploration from York Factory, on the western shores of Hudson Bay, to the country of the Blackfoot Indians, among the foothills of the Rocky Mountains; but it was not until 1793 that any White Man was daring enough to penetrate their fastnesses. In that year Alexander Mackenzie, who had four years earlier descended the river that bears his name, to the shores of the Arctic Ocean, forced his way through the Peace River Pass, and after suffering great hardships, stood at last beside the waters of the Pacific, fulfilling at last the dream of French explorers of an overland route to the Western Sea.

Within the next few years discoveries followed thick and fast. The North West Company, the Canadian rival of the Hudson's Bay Company in the western fur trade, was reaching out eagerly for new fields to conquer, and the more adventurous of its officers, scouting far ahead of the main army, became more explorers than fur-traders. Mackenzie was himself a partner of the North West Company, and where he led others soon followed, breaking new trails through the mountains, leaving the level plains and comparatively sparse vegetation of the eastern side, and coming down into the almost tropical luxuriance of the Pacific slope.

David Thompson, the astronomer of the North West Company, was the first to find a way through the mountains in the neighbourhood of the Kicking Horse Pass route, or the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway. In 1800 he made his way over to the Columbia Valley, perhaps by what was later known as the Simpson Pass; and the same year Duncan McGillivray found a route farther north by Howse Pass, named after Jasper Howse, another Rocky Mountain explorer. Simon Fraser, who had followed Mackenzie through the Peace Pass, in 1808 explored the river that bears his name from the mountains to the sea, descending its terrific canyons in a frail canoe.

At the very time that Fraser was making his way down this river, Thompson was exploring the Kootenay and the Columbia. Two years afterward the latter discovered the Athabaska Pass, which for many years was to remain the principal highway of the fur-traders back and forth through the mountains. Often enough the mountains above the pass must have looked down upon the picturesque cavalcade of traders, carrying goods over to the posts in New Caledonia or down the Columbia, or bringing back the "returns" as the cargoes of furs were called. One can picture the long string of pack-horses climbing up the pass, with the cheerful philosophy (or diabolical cunning) of the Indian cayuse, urged forward by fluent traders. One can see, too, at nightfall, the camp-fires in the mountains; horses, browsing contentedly; men lounging about waiting for their supper, perhaps fresh venison, or the old stand-by pemmican; and later, pipe and story and song – the beautiful old chansons of French Canada with their haunting refrains:

A la claire fontaine
M'en allant promener,
J'ai trouvé l'eau si belle
Que je m'y suis baigné.
I' ya longtemps que je t'aime,
Jamais je ne t'oublierai.

or —

Derrier' chez nous, ya-t-un étang,
En roulant ma boule.
Trois beaux canards s'en vont baignant,
En roulant ma boule.
Rouli, roulant, ma boule roulant,
En roulant ma boule roulant,
En roulant ma boule.

After this initial age of exploration, most of the credit of which belongs to the men of the North West Company, we come to a period of travel. Some of the rarest and at the same time most interesting books of travel in Northwestern America are those which describe overland journeys to and from the Pacific by way of one or other of the famous gateways through the Canadian Rockies. Such a book is Gabriel Franchère's narrative including an account of his trip through the mountains in 1814; another is that of Ross Cox, who with Franchère was concerned in the dramatic events connected with the history of Astoria, of which Washington Irving wrote such an entertaining and thoroughly unreliable account. Ross Cox crossed the mountains three years after Franchère.

Another little-known narrative is that of Sir George Simpson's expedition of 1825. Sir George Simpson was then Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, and like Jehu he drove furiously. He travelled in what was known as a light canoe, manned with picked boatmen famous for speed, skill and endurance; they were off at daylight or earlier, and did not camp before nightfall. In his journeys across the continent, by the great water routes of the fur-trade, the Governor's canoe bore about the same relation to the regular brigades that the Twentieth Century Limited does to a freight train.

One of the most fascinating of the narratives of this period is Paul Kane's Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America. Kane was a Toronto artist, who travelled across the continent studying the manners and customs of the various tribes, and making a series of most delightful sketches of them and of their country. His comments on the natives and their habits are shrewd and entertaining, and if written to-day would sometimes be thought much too frank for publication. Kane crossed the Athabaska Pass in 1846, and returned the same way the following year.

Five or six years earlier Sir George Simpson again traversed the mountains, by the pass that bears his name, in the course of his famous journey around the world. The journeys of Father De Smet, the western missionary, of the Earl of Southesk, of Milton and Cheadle, and of William Francis Butler, to mention only a few of the more prominent, belong to the same general period.

Butler went through the Peace River Pass, and at its eastern entrance climbed a steep hill known as the Buffalo's Head to get his first wide view of the mountains. He tried to describe what he saw, but admitted the futility of the attempt.

"Not more wooden," he says, "are the ark animals of our childhood, than the words in which man would clothe the images of that higher nature which the Almighty has graven into the shapes of lonely mountains! Put down your wooden woods bit by bit; throw in colour here, a little shade there, touch it up with sky and cloud, cast about it that perfume of blossom or breeze, and in Heaven's name what does it come to after all? Can the eye wander away, away, away until it is lost in blue distance as a lark is lost in blue heaven, but the sight still drinks the beauty of the landscape, though the source of the beauty be unseen, as the source of the music which falls from the azure depths of the sky.

"That river coming out broad and glittering from the dark mountains, and vanishing into yon profound chasm with a roar which reaches up even here – billowy seas of peaks and mountains beyond number away there to south and west – that huge half dome which lifts itself above all others sharp and clear cut against the older dome of heaven! Turn east, look out into that plain – that endless plain where the pine-trees are dwarfed to speargrass and the prairie to a meadow-patch – what do you see? Nothing, poor blind reader, nothing, for the blind is leading the blind; and all this boundless range of river and plain, ridge and prairie, rocky precipice and snow-capped sierra, is as much above my poor power of words, as He who built this mighty nature is higher still than all."

Yet so insistent is the charm of the mountains, as he makes his way ever deeper into their secret recesses, that he must try once more to put his impressions into words:

"Wonderful things to look at are these white peaks, perched up so high above our world. They belong to us, yet they are not of us. The eagle links them to the earth; the cloud carries to them the message of the sky; the ocean sends them her tempest; the air rolls her thunders beneath their brows, and launches her lightnings from their sides; the sun sends them his first greeting, and leaves them his latest kiss. Yet motionless they keep their crowns of snow, their glacier crests of jewels, and dwell among the stars heedless of time or tempest."

Up to the year of 1858 travel in the Rocky Mountains was confined to one or other of the passes. Men did not wander off the beaten trails, but hurried through east or west. Between 1858 and 1860 the members of the Palliser Expedition, and particularly that tireless explorer, Dr. James Hector, pushed into the very heart of the mountains, discovering new passes, tracing rivers to their sources, and for the first time giving the world some idea of the wonderful region of peaks, lakes and valleys that lay beyond the western prairies. Among many other familiar place-names in the Canadian Rockies, that of Kicking Horse Pass was given by Dr. Hector, who on his first journey through the pass was nearly killed by a vicious horse. It has before now been suggested that a more appropriate name for this important route through the mountains would be that of the explorer himself.

The task so splendidly initiated by Captain Palliser and his associates of exploring and mapping the Canadian Rockies was afterward taken up by the officers of the Canadian Geological Survey and the Topographical Survey of Canada, and is still in progress.

One may round out this very brief survey of the opening up of the Canadian Alps, the Wonderlands of the Canadian West, by mentioning some recent expeditions of a group of explorers whose object was rather recreation than science; who saw in these mountains a boundless playground where tired men and women of the cities might find rest and pleasure, where unclimbed peaks rise on every side to tempt the more energetic and repay them with marvellous impressions of unforgettable splendour, where snowbound passes lead one over into green valleys holding in their embrace lakes of the most exquisite colouring, where the mountain goat and the bighorn gaze down upon you from dizzy heights or scamper up the face of impossible precipices, and the silvertip lumbers off the trail with ponderous dignity, where the day's tramp brings endless variety of towering cliff and snowy summit, cathedral aisles in the primæval forest, falling curtains of mist from gigantic glaciers, chaotic slopes of rock and alpine meadows dressed in all the colours of the rainbow, where the camp-fire brings perfect content and a spirit of comradeship unknown in the cities, where the mountain air puts new life into you, fills you with wholesome optimism, makes you realise as you never did before that the world is good, good to look upon and good to live upon.

One need only mention the titles of some of the books in which these expeditions are described to suggest the spirit that animates them: Hornaday's Camp-fires in the Canadian Rockies, Schaffers's Old Indian Trails, Outram's In the Heart of the Canadian Rockies, Green's Among the Selkirk Glaciers. If we add the wonderfully-illustrated work of Walter D. Wilcox, and the narratives of Stutfield and Collie, Coleman, Baillie-Grohman, and a few others, we have a little library of Canadian Alpine literature that will be a revelation to any one who has not yet become familiar with the irresistible appeal of this land of pure delight.

A word remains to be said, and it may as well be said here as elsewhere, as to routes – how to get to the Canadian National Parks. From Eastern Canada, and the Atlantic seaboard, probably the most convenient route is the direct transcontinental line of the Canadian Pacific Railway from Montreal, and by that route unquestionably the most comfortable train is the well-known "Imperial Limited." From Toronto, or points south of Toronto in the United States, the "Pacific Express" of the Canadian Pacific Railway offers a direct route to the Mountains. If your starting-point is in the Middle West, it will be well to take the route from Chicago to Winnipeg and join the "Imperial Limited" there; or the more direct line from Chicago to the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway at Moosejaw. All these routes will bring you to the eastern portal of the mountains at Calgary, and on to Banff and other points in the Parks. If you are bound for Jasper Park in the north, any of the three transcontinental railways, the Grand Trunk Pacific, Canadian Pacific, or Canadian Northern, will take you direct from Winnipeg to Edmonton, and you can get in to the Park by either the Grand Trunk Pacific or Canadian Northern.

If your starting-point is on the Pacific Coast the Canadian Pacific Railway from Vancouver is the direct route, or you may join the main line from the south at several points east of Vancouver. By the autumn of 1914 the Grand Trunk Pacific will be completed to its Pacific terminus, Prince Rupert, and the Canadian Northern may also be ready for traffic to Vancouver before the end of the year. Round trips will then be possible taking in all the Canadian Mountain Parks: From Calgary by Canadian Pacific Railway to Rocky Mountain Park, Yoho Park and Glacier Park, and on to Vancouver. From Vancouver north by boat to Prince Rupert, and by Grand Trunk Pacific east to Robson Park and Jasper Park; or possibly direct from Vancouver by Canadian Northern to the same parks. From Jasper Park the return to Calgary would be by Edmonton and the Canadian Pacific Railway branch line.

II

THE NATIONAL PARKS OF CANADA

THE last spike in the first of Canada's transcontinental roads, the Canadian Pacific Railway, was driven at Craigillachie, British Columbia, in 1885. Two years later, after a memorable debate in the House of Commons, an Act of Parliament was passed setting apart for the use and enjoyment of the people of the young Dominion a national park in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. Thus was initiated a policy which has since been developed upon broad and generous lines, and which will ultimately give Canada an unrivalled system of magnificent natural playgrounds.

The first park, as created in 1887, covered an area of 260 square miles, with the little station of Banff, on the Canadian Pacific Railway, as headquarters. In 1902 the area was enlarged to 5,000 square miles, but reduced again in 1911, under the terms of the Forest Reserves and Parks Act, to 1,800 square miles. The object of the reduction was apparently to confine the park to an area that could be efficiently administered with the existing staff. It is understood, however, that in view of the extraordinary popularity of this wonderful mountain region, steps will be taken before long to re-establish the boundaries of 1902. The wisdom of such a move cannot be doubted. The increased cost of maintenance would be comparatively slight, and the advantages would be enormous. It would make accessible the exceedingly interesting country north of the present park boundaries with its great alpine peaks, snow-fields and glaciers, its beautiful valleys, lakes, mountain streams and waterfalls; it would help to preserve from destruction by vandalism or sheer carelessness many of the scenic beauties of the region; and would give to the wild animals of the mountains a further lease of life.

Since the establishment of the first reservation, known officially as Rocky Mountains Park, and popularly as the Banff Park, several other similar districts have been set apart. Immediately west of Rocky Mountains Park, but on the British Columbia side of the main range, is Yoho Park, with an area of about 560 square miles. The boundaries of this park also will, it is hoped, be enlarged in the near future. West again, and still following the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway, we come to Glacier Park, in the Selkirk Mountains, with an area of 468 square miles. Farther north, on the main line of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, the Canadian Government has lately established Jasper Park, with an area of 1,000 square miles. This, too, may be expanded to several times its present dimensions within the next few years.[1 - Increased in 1914 to 4,400 square miles.] It is possible also that a new park may be created between Rocky Mountain Park and Jasper Park, to embrace the little-known Brazeau River country and possibly the upper waters of the North Saskatchewan, with the great peaks that lie up toward the continental divide. Down near the International Boundary, at the extreme southwestern corner of the province of Alberta, is Waterton Lake Park. The present area is only sixteen square miles, but the Government is being strongly urged to extend its boundaries so as to make the reserve conterminous with Glacier Park on the United States side, thereby creating what would in effect be an international park.[2 - This has since been done, the present area of the park being 423 square miles.] North again, but still in the province of Alberta, are Buffalo Park and Elk Island Park, the former of 160 square miles, a little south of Wainwright, on the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, and the latter, about the same area as Waterton Lake Park, near Lamont, on the Canadian Northern Railway. The former is the home of the famous herd of buffalo, now numbering over 1,200, most of which were purchased by the Dominion Government in 1907 from Michel Don Pablo of Missoula, Montana. The latter is a reservation for elk, moose and other large animals.

In addition to the proposed Brazeau Park, access to which would be provided by the Canadian Northern Railway, plans are being formulated for a new park west of Glacier, to include Mount Revelstoke and the surrounding region, and another on the Pacific Coast not far from the city of Vancouver, to include the country between the north arm of Burrard Inlet and Pitt River.

The somewhat peculiar boundaries of the Canadian National Parks may call for a word of explanation. It will be noticed that on their western, or rather southwestern, sides Rocky Mountains and Jasper Parks stop at the continental divide, or in other words at the boundary between Alberta and British Columbia. The explanation is this: when British Columbia came into the Dominion she retained control of the public lands within her borders; on the other hand when the province of Alberta was created her land remained vested in the Dominion. Consequently the federal authorities may establish national parks wherever they will on the Alberta side of the mountains, but have no jurisdiction on the British Columbia side except in one particular region. This is a strip of land forty miles wide, or twenty miles on each side of the Canadian Pacific Railway main line, extending from the summit of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. When British Columbia entered Confederation in 1871, one of the terms of union was that the new province should be given railway connection with Eastern Canada. In fulfilment of this agreement, the Dominion granted the Canadian Pacific Railway a subsidy of $25,000,000 and 25,000,000 acres of land. British Columbia was also to give a money subsidy to the company, but finding it impossible to meet its obligations the Dominion assumed the burden in consideration of a grant of this forty-mile strip across the province. It is in this strip, therefore, that the Yoho and Glacier Parks have been located, as well as the proposed park at Burrard Inlet.