Off the beaten path? Ski mountaineering and the weight of tradition in the Canadian Rockies, 1909–1940

Abstract

This article presents a case study of the early development of ski mountaineering in the Rocky Mountains of Canada. It combines an emphasis on the early adaptation of skiing as part of a larger process of economic and cultural production during the early decades of the twentieth century, with parallel attention to the form in which ski mountaineering was both constrained and, later, suddenly generated throughout the 1930s by the Alpine Club of Canada. Their writings played a strategic role in the location of skiing within the wider discourses of Victorian mountaineering, and served to confirm and legitimate Anglo-Canadian hegemony. Examining the processes and struggles of this shift, this article is informed to a great extent by the accounts written in the Canadian Alpine Journal, the club's official organ, during a period loosely framed by the ending of the era now celebrated as the ‘Glory Days of Canadian Mountaineering’ and Canada's entry in the Second World War.

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge with gratitude critical readings of an earlier version of this article offered by Stephen Slemon, I.S. MacLaren, PearlAnn Reichwein, Douglas A. Brown, J.A. Mangan and Chic Scott. I am forever indebted to Simon Robins, Deryl Kelly and Grzegorz (Greg) Tos for sharing 28 glorious days skiing the spine of the Continental Divide.

Notes

[1] Sapir, Artificial Mythologies, 169.

[2] See Haberl, Alpine Huts; Toft, Touring the Wapta Icefields.

[3] One of the earliest recorded explorations of the Wapta Icefields was made by an Anglo-American team that included Englishman John Norman Collie and Swiss guide Peter Sarbach, in 1897. See Stutfield and Collie, Climbs and Explorations in the Canadian Rockies, 16–38.

[4] ‘Technical climbing’ requires the use of ropes and fixed belay anchors on either rock or ice. It includes any sustained climbing where, generally speaking, the arms are used to pull upward rather than being used solely for balance.

[5] John Baldwin, ‘A History of Ski Mountaineering in the Coast Range’, Canadian Alpine Journal (hereafter CAJ) 66 (1983), 24. Baldwin is best known for his guidebook to ski touring in the Coast Mountains. See Baldwin, Exploring the Coast Mountains on Skis.

[6] Wetherell, ‘A Season of Mixed Blessings’, 38.

[7] Scandinavian immigrants, mostly, first brought skiing to western Canada around the turn of the century. It was an activity that was deeply ingrained in their culture, and, in some ways, according to historian Jorgen Dahlie, served to ease the transition from the Old World to the New. See Dahlie, ‘Skiing for Identity and Tradition’, 99.

[8] While some recent scholarly histories have examined the development of early skiing in North America within its wider social and economic context, most logically track skiing's progression from its Nordic roots to early mechanization in North America or concentrate on the emergence of modern mass-leisure resort skiing. One good example is Allen, From Skisport to Skiing. Another is Coleman, Ski Style. Few histories, if any, however, have critically examined the direction skiing took into the mountain back country of western Canada.

[9] The hegemony produced by alpine journals, regarding the ethics, form and style of mountaineering, dates back to the mid-nineteenth century in Britain. See Robbins, ‘Sport, Hegemony and the Middle Class’; Donnelly, ‘The Invention of Tradition and the (Re) Invention of Mountaineering’, 242. For the situation in Canada, see Robinson, ‘The Golden Years of Canadian Mountaineering’, 3, 9. Information about the criteria and selection process used by the CAJ's early editorship, however, is extremely vague. Such information would, no doubt, add to our understanding of power and ideology embedded in early mountaineering literature and practice.

[10] The controversy surrounding George Kinney's disputed ascent of Mount Robson in 1909 is a prime example. See Robinson, ‘Storming the Heights’.

[11] The rise of consumer culture during the 1920s and its resulting effect on Canadian sport is discussed by Howell, Blood, Sweat, and Cheers, 50–82, 91–6. The trend in the United States is addressed by Dyreson, ‘The Emergence of Consumer Culture’.

[12] Gina L. La Force, ‘The Alpine Club of Canada, 1906–1929: Modernization, Canadian Nationalism, and Anglo-Saxon Mountaineering’, CAJ 62 (1979), 39.

[13] Scott, Pushing the Limits, 38.

[14] Erling Strom, ‘What the Dudes Did Do,’CAJ 22 (1933), 167; Strom, Pioneers on Skis,113–14.

[15] Strom, ‘What the Dudes Did Do’, 167.

[16] Strom, Pioneers on Skis, 3, 9. The Nordic Games was the first international multi-sport winter event, though the vast majority of participants came from Sweden, Norway and Finland, with very few from other countries. In fact, of the eight Nordic Games that were held, only one was hosted outside Sweden. While the games survived the First World War, the social and economic turmoil following the war led to their discontinuation after 1926. See Jorgensen, ‘From Balck to Nurmi’.

[17] Strom, Pioneers on Skis, x.

[18] Ibid., 57–8.

[19] Dyreson, ‘The Emergence of Consumer Culture’, 261.

[20] See Kidd, The Struggle for Canadian Sport, 79–93.

[21] Strom, Pioneers on Skis, 114.

[22] The cabins, which were leased to the ACC during the early 1920s, had served as summer accommodations for Arthur Wheeler's old ‘Public Riding and Walking Tours’ from Banff to Assiniboine and the South Kananaskis.

[23] Strom, ‘What the Dudes Did Do’, 167.

[24] Strom, Pioneers on Skis, 114–16.

[25] Yeo, ‘Making Banff a Year-Round Park’, 87.

[26] Ibid., 88.

[27] Strom, ‘What the Dudes Did Do’, 168.

[28] Fair though this assessment may be, it is well to remember that there were earlier cases, albeit few, in which skis were employed in the Banff area. According to sport historian Rolf Lund, for example, ‘there is evidence of skis being used as early as 1887 when Scandinavian axemen, working on railway construction crews around Silver City [now a ghost town near Castle Junction, Banff National Park], made skis by hand and used them on the job during the winter months’ (Lund, ‘The Development of Skiing in Banff’, 26).

[29] According to Cyril Paris, the first known set of skis used by a resident of Banff belonged to his father, George Harrison Paris. They were given to him by a Norwegian-American visitor, who, in the winter of 1894, had been a guest of the Brett Sanitarium Hotel, where George Paris worked. See ‘Early Skiing in Banff – recalled by Cyril Paris’, unpublished manuscript, Banff, 1965, Archives of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff (hereafter WMCR), M68 2. Peter White later changed the spelling of his name to ‘Whyte’.

[30] Kain, Where The Clouds Can Go, 275. Because equipment was still difficult to obtain in the Canadian west at that time, Kain's Norwegian telemark skis were copied by Jack Stanley at his Minnewanka lumber and boat works, and supplied to local enthusiasts.

[31] B.S. Darling, ‘Winter Mountaineering at the Coast’, CAJ 2 (2) (1910), 198.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Donald Phillips, ‘Winter Conditions North and West of Mount Robson’, CAJ 6 (1914–15), 187.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Kain, Where the Clouds Can Go, 276.

[36] Norman K. Luxton was the son of Winnipeg Free Press co-founder William Luxton. After working for the Winnipeg newspaper, Norman Luxton joined the Calgary Herald for eight years. Luxton bought Banff's Crag and Canyon newspaper in 1902 and remained as publisher until 1951.

[37] WMCR 02.6 B221 1912 PAM; Stovel, 50 Switzerlands in One, 55–7.

[38] For an examination of how businessmen profited from Toronto's burgeoning sports industry, see Joyce, ‘Sport and the Cash Nexus’.

[39] Hardy, ‘Entrepreneurs, Organizations, and the Sport Marketplace’; Hall et al., Sport in Canadian Society, 66–9.

[40] Howell, Blood, Sweat, and Cheers, 57–8.

[41] ‘Winter Sports in Banff,’Crag and Canyon 15 (48) (23 Jan. 1915).

[42] Abbot, ‘Cold Cash and Ice Palaces’, 180–1; Metcalfe, ‘The Evolution of Organized Physical Recreation in Montreal’, 149; Morrow, ‘Frozen Festivals’, 173–4. West of the Rockies, in the Columbia Mountains, for example, winter carnivals in the small mining communities of Rossland and Revelstoke, beginning around the turn of the century, drew hundreds of visiting spectators. See Scott, Powder Pioneers, 19–35.

[43] Luxton, Banff: Canada's First National Park, 116.

[44] Calgary Herald, 21 Jan. 1939, 19.

[45] ‘Mid-Winter Carnival Preparations’, Crag and Canyon 17 (47) (13 Jan. 1917).

[46] ‘Ready, Aye Ready’, Crag and Canyon 17 (50) (3 Feb. 1917).

[47] Info file: Banff Winter Carnival 1917, Accn. 594, WMCR; Programme: The First Annual Carnival.

[48] Successful Winter Carnival brought to an end', Crag and Canyon 17 (52) (17 Feb. 1917).

[49] Ibid.

[50] Yeo, ‘Making Banff a Year-Round Park,’ 90.

[51] Howell, Blood, Sweat, and Cheers, 103; Kidd, The Struggle for Canadian Sport, 146–83.

[52] Cyril Paris, interview by Elizabeth Rummel, 29 April 1970, interview S1/50 1750, audio recording, WMCR. The club was given a great boost in 1918, when local merchant Dave White, who was the father of Cliff, Jack and Peter White, brought in skis from the Northland Ski Company of Minneapolis: ‘Early Skiing in Banff – recalled by Cyril Paris’, unpublished manuscript, 1965, M68 2, WMCR.

[53] ‘The Human History of Skiing at Lake Louise,’ speech, 8 Feb. 1992, M159, Cliff J. White Collection, WMCR.

[54]Peter White, Dunsmore, and Paris discovered the terrain in 1920, when they skied over Norquay Pass across to Mount Edith, likely becoming the first skiers to make recreational use of the area. A forest fire had conveniently cleared much of the brush cover, and numerous slash trails – made by summer logging operations – had left long swaths open that made for excellent downhill ski runs. See Lund, ‘Recreational Skiing in the Canadian Rockies’, 30.

[55] American investment doubled in Canada during the 1920s. See Thompson and Seager, Canada 1922–1939, 342–3; Marr and Patterson, Canada: An Economic History, 290–7, 355–74.

[56] Notes by Catharine Whyte from conversations with Peter Whyte and others, Catherine Robb Whyte Collection, M36 28, WMCR.

[57] Round, ‘Mount Norquay Ski Camp’, 76; Lund, ‘Recreational Skiing in the Canadian Rockies’, 31.

[58] Touche, Brown Cows, Sacred Cows, 15; Lund, ‘Recreational Skiing in the Canadian Rockies’, 31.

[59] Strom, Pioneers on Skis, 126.

[60] Ibid., 126; Hart, The Battle for Banff, 36–7.

[61] Strom, Pioneers on Skis, 116.

[62] See Robinson and Reichwein, ‘Canada's Everest?’. It is interesting to note, though it is hardly surprising, that the 1925 Mount Logan expedition employed the use of snowshoes rather than skis.

[63] At the annual meeting in 1930, the ACC's executive passed a resolution authorizing an expedition similar to the 1925 Mount Logan initiative. Wheeler framed it in a similar way: ‘In 1925 we had the Mt. Logan Expedition; you all know about this; but my point is since then we have done nothing but hold these camps, and I think therefore it is time that we should do something again.’ Any ideas, however, were dashed the following year: ‘[T]he Executive Committee has found that it was inadvisable to conduct an Expedition in 1931, chiefly for financial reasons.’ Arthur O. Wheeler, ‘Honorary President's Address’, CAJ 19 (1930), 178; H.E. Sampson, ‘President's Address’, CAJ 20 (1931), 182.

[64] Beginning in 1906, the ACC was in receipt of a yearly grant of $1000 from the Department of the Interior. Historian PearlAnn Reichwein suggests that the 1931 cutback may have been reaction to the club's political activism, specifically its opposition to earlier hydro-development plans in the Rockies. See Reichwein, ‘“Hands Off Our National Parks”’, 154–5.

[65] A.O. Wheeler, ‘Honorary President's Address’, CAJ 20 (1931), 186.

[66] Ibid., 185.

[67] W.E. Stone, ‘Amateur Climbing’, CAJ 11 (1920), 2.

[68] Albert Frederick Mummery was one of the earliest advocates of guideless climbing in the Alps. Rivalled in success only by Edward Whymper's famous Scrambles Amongst the Alps (1871), Mummery's book, My Climbs in the Alps and Caucasus (1895), widely popularized his philosophy on amateur mountaineering.

[69] ‘Rational recreation’ was the ideal that nineteenth- and twentieth-century middle-class reformers imposed on the urban working class of their day. Recreation was viewed as ‘rational’ only when it fostered self-improvement and self-enrichment and, as a result, enhanced self-expression and personal and social identity.

[70] W.E. Stone, ‘Amateur Climbing’, CAJ 11 (1920), 6.

[71] By the 1930s, as one ‘Winnipegger’ proudly boasted, ‘ski mountaineering had become the ACC Winnipeg Section's special game’. Everett J. Fee, ‘Manitobans in the Mountains – Fifty Years of Ski Mountaineering’, CAJ 66 (1983), 19.

[72] Spanning 34 years, McCoubrey's contributions to the ACC were impressive. In addition to being the Winnipeg section chairman of the ACC for nearly 14 years (1926–40), McCoubrey was the vice-president of the club (1928), the president of the club (1932–4), the editor of the CAJ (1930–42), and the chairman of the club's glacier- and ski-mountaineering committee for numerous years.

[73] A.A. McCoubrey, ‘Ski-ing in the Canadian Cordillera’, CAJ 19 (1931), 161.

[74] See Toft, Touring at Rogers Pass.

[75] McCoubrey, ‘Ski-ing in the Canadian Cordillera’, 161.

[76] Don Munday, ‘Ski-Climbs in the Coast Range’, CAJ 19 (1931), 101–11; Russell H. Bennett, ‘A Ski Expedition to the Columbia Ice Fields’, CAJ 19 (1931), 112–16; A.D. Lindley, ‘The Trip from Brazeau Cabin to the Columbia Ice Fields’, CAJ 19 (1931), 117–20; Cyril G. Wates, ‘On Ski into the Tonquin’, CAJ 19 (1931), 124–9.

[77] Unsworth, Hold the Heights, 140.

[78] CAJ 19 (1931), 167–71.

[79] McCoubrey, ‘Ski-ing in the Canadian Cordillera’: 161.

[80] Hobsbawm, ‘Mass-Producing Traditions’, 263–307; Williams, Marxism and Literature, 115–20.

[81] Capt. A.H. d'Egville, ‘Ski-Mountaineering’, CAJ 20 (1932), 96.

[82] Ibid.: 98.

[83] In addition to the ‘Ski Section’, another new section, titled ‘New Maps’, appeared in the back matter of McCoubrey's 1931 journal. See ‘New Maps’, CAJ 20 (1932), 169. International commentators took notice, as well. In the 1932 volume of the American Alpine Journal, for instance, J. Monroe Thorington, a noted authority on North American mountaineering matters, even suggested the distinct possibility of a new line of travel – ‘a high-level glacier route’, he called it – that would link the major icefields of the Rockies between Jasper and Lake Louise. Thorington, unlike his Canadian counterparts, however, makes no mention of skis. The route was suggested as a summer initiative. See J. Monroe Thorington, ‘A High-Level Glacier Route from Jasper to Lake Louise’, American Alpine Journal 1 (4) (1932), 529–33. Nevertheless, the route was first completed by four Canadians on skis, during their centennial year. They called the high-level route the Great Divide Traverse. See Chic Scott, ‘The Great Canadian High Level Ski Tours’, CAJ (1978), 2–4; ‘High Level Ski Tours’, Polar Circus 1 (1986), 15–17; ‘Skiing the Spine of the Continent’, Mountain 2 (3) (Winter 1999/2000), 22–9; Scott, Summits and Icefields, 190–210, and Powder Pioneers, 134–52.

[84] Russell H. Bennett, ‘The Ski Ascent of Snow Dome’, CAJ 20 (1931), 107.

[85] McCoubrey, ‘Ski-ing in the Canadian Cordillera’, 162.

[86] Under the newly instated National Parks Act of 1930, federal officials changed the name of Rocky Mountains Park to Banff National Park, formalized Banff's boundary changes and enshrined the principle of inviolability in federal legislation. See Taylor, ‘Legislating Nature’, 131–2.

[87] McCoubrey, ‘Ski-ing in the Canadian Cordillera’, 162.

[88] For a general overview of the history of alpine huts in the Canadian Rocky and Columbia Mountains, see Kariel and Kariel, Alpine Huts.

[89] The idea for an official ACC ski camp was first suggested at the club's 1935 annual meeting, held at the Mount Assiniboine Camp. One year later, at the Fryatt Creek Camp, in Jasper National Park, a resolution was unanimously passed among the club's executive that a ski camp be organized for the following spring. See A.A. McCoubrey, ‘The Ski Camp at Lake O'Hara’, CAJ 24 (1937), 82; The ACC Gazette 28 (Oct. 1936), 13.

[90]Funds to upgrade and furnish the cabin were provided by the club's Winnipeg section, aided by a loan from the ACC's new ‘Club Hut Fund’. See Edna H. Greer, ‘The Elizabeth Parker Cabin – Lake O'Hara’, CAJ 20 (1932), 159–61. The inaugural ACC Ski Camp began on 4 April, a date that, according to McCoubrey, ‘was a little later than that desired but as Calgary members had used this cabin for ski-ing for a number of years during the Easter weekend, the committee arranged the camp date to give this section possession of the cabin during the Easter holidays’. See McCoubrey, ‘The Ski Camp at Lake O'Hara’, 82.

[91] Ibid., 85. The idea for a cabin to be built in the Little Yoho Valley was fully realized in 1939 with the construction of the Stanley Mitchell Hut. See C.G. Wates, ‘The Stanley Mitchell Hut’, CAJ 27 (1939), 73–5.

[92] McCoubrey, ‘The Ski Camp at Lake O'Hara’, 81.

[93] Crag and Canyon 37 (53) (31 Dec. 1937), 1.

[94] Rex Gibson was a participant at the ACC's Ski Camp at Lake O'Hara earlier that spring. He led the first ski ascent of Mount Schaffer. See McCoubrey, ‘The Ski Camp at Lake O'Hara’, 83.

[95] John Bulyea, of Edmonton, Loses Life in Avalanche', Crag and Canyon 38 (1) (7 Jan. 1938), 3.

[96] John Bulyea was a well-known skier in Edmonton. He was a 20-year-old medical student at the University of Alberta, where his father, Dr H.E. Bulyea, was the director of the School of Dentistry and professor of operative dentistry. ‘Death of Student Saddens Varsity’, Edmonton Journal, 4 Jan. 1938, 9.

[97] ‘City Skier Killed in Mountain Avalanche’, Edmonton Journal, 3 Jan. 1938, 1–2; ‘John H. Bulyea is Swept to Death in Roaring Avalanche’, Edmonton Bulletin 108 (1) (3 Jan. 1938), 1–2; ‘Tragic Ski-ing Expedition: Abandon Search for Youth Lost in O'Hara Snowslide’, Calgary Daily Herald, 3 Jan. 1938, 1–2; ‘Skier is Buried Alive in Rocky Mountain Avalanche: Young Edmonton Student is Victim; Companion Saved by Third Member’, Winnipeg Free Press, 3 Jan. 1938, 1; ‘Avalanche Kills Skier’, Montreal Gazette 167 (2) (3 Jan. 1938), 2.

[98] ‘John Bulyea, of Edmonton, Loses Life in Avalanche’, Crag and Canyon 38 (1) (7 Jan. 1938), 3.

[99] McCoubrey, ‘The Ski Camp at Lake O'Hara’, 83.

[100] ‘First Winter Ascent of Mt. Fay’, CAJ 25 (1938), 105–6.

[101] See Scott, Powder Pioneers, 82–90.

[102] A.H. MacCarthy, ‘The Howser and Bugaboo Spires, Purcell Range’, CAJ 8 (1917), 17; Scott, Pushing the Limits, 107.

[103] La Force, ‘The Alpine Club of Canada’, 43–4.

[104] Robbins, ‘Sport, Hegemony, and the Middle Class’, 586–7.

[105] Touche, Brown Cows, Sacred Cows, 16.

[106] Georg Von Lillienfeld, ‘A Spring Ski Excursion into the Bow Lake District’, CAJ 24 (1936), 75.