Wildlife Promotions, Western Canadian Boosterism, and the Conservation Movement, 1890–1914

NOTES

• E.J. Hart, The Selling of Canada: The CPR and the Beginnings of Canadian Tourism (Banff: Altitude Publishing, 1983). Margery Tanner Hadley, “Photography, Tourism and the CPR: Western Canada, 1884–1914,” in L.A. Rosenvall & S.M. Evans, eds., Essays on the Historical Geography of the Canadian West (Calgary: Geography Department, University of Calgary, 1987), 48–69. For explorations of related themes in tourism history, see Patricia Jasen, Wild Things: Nature, Culture, and Tourism in Ontario, 1790–1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995). Also, Gerald L. Pocius, “Tourists, Health Seekers and Sportsmen: Luring Americans to Newfoundland in the Early Twentieth Century,” in James Hiller and Peter Neary, eds., Twentieth-Century Newfoundland: Explorations (St. John's: Breakwater, 1994), 47–77.
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• Symbolic use of animals can be found in many social contexts. See Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Toronto: Penguin Books, 1990). Social perspectives on natural history pursuits, including taxidermy collection, are presented by David Elliston Allen, The Naturalist in Britain: A Social History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). MacKenzie connects British interest in taxidermy to rising imperialism. John M. MacKenzie, The Empire of Nature: Hunting, Conservation and British Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), while Turner sees sensibilities towards animals changing with rising industrialism in Britain. See James Turner, Reckoning with the Beast: Animals, Pain and Humanity in the Victorian Mind (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1980).
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• Janet Foster, Working for Wildlife: The Beginnings of Preservation in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978). Michel F. Girard, L'écologisme retrouvé: essor et déclin de la commission de la conservation du Canada (Ottawa: Les presses de l'université d'Ottawa, 1994), 13–19; Paul-Louis Martin, La Chasse au Québec (Montreal: Éditions du Boréal, 1990), 72–74. PearlAnn Reichwein, “Beyond the Visionary Mountains: The Alpine Club of Canada and the Canadian National Park Idea, 1906–1969,” Ph.D. thesis, Carleton University, 1995.
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• Frank Graham, Jr. The Audubon Ark: A History of the National Audubon Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990); David Evans, A History of Nature Conservation in Britain (London: Routledge, 1994), 34–49; Karen Wonders, Habitat Dioramas: Illusions of Wilderness in Museums of Natural History (Uppsala, 1993), 114–143. Jones' work in domestication is sometimes overlooked in nineteenth century conservation efforts. See Col. Henry Inman, Buffalo Jones' Forty Years of Adventure (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1899).
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• Robert G. McCandless, Yukon Wildlife: A Social History (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1985).
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• George Altmeyer, “Three Ideas of Nature in Canada, 1893–1914,” Journal of Canadian Studies 11.3 (1976): 21–36.
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• See Schultz's committee notes and witness interviews: John Schultz Files, MG12 E1, File 7820. The published findings: “Minutes of Proceedings of the Senate of Canada,” Friday, 17 June 1887, 354–359, “Second Report of the Select Committee of the Senate on the Existing Natural Food Products….” Provincial Archives of Manitoba, Winnipeg. Hereafter cited as PAM.
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• Warren M. Elofson, “Adapting the Frontier Environment: Mixed and Dryland Farming near Pincher Creek,” Prairie Forum 19 (1994): 44.
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• The report stated that the “capacity to support life” of Manitoba soils, and the “variety and abundance of wild animals” in the province proved its great farming potential. Report of the Minister of Agriculture of the Province of Manitoba for the Year 1880 (Montreal: Gazette Printing, 1881) PAM. Later Department of Interior brochures discussed wildlife as a food resource. “The Lac La Biche District, Alberta: A Guide for Intending Settlers,” Department of Interior Brochure, 1923. Also, “The Last Best West,” the department's popular brochure. See RG 76, Vol. 389, File 541601. National Archives of Canada, Ottawa. Hereafter cited as NAC.
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• History of the Provincial Museum of the Province of Saskatchewan, R-E3374; Province of Saskatchewan Archives, Regina and Saskatoon. Hereafter cited as PAS.
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• Ibid. Also, Report of the Provincial Taxidermist, included in the Report of the Chief Game Guardian, Report of the Department of Agriculture of Saskatchewan for the Year 1912, 255.
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• James Reilly, Unpublished Report of North-West Territories display at World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in October 1893, PAS.
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• See Richardson to Luxton regarding the stocking of a Dominion Exhibition, 3 January 1908, File 2, Norman Luxton Files, Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies Archives, Banff. Hereafter cited as WMA. For an overview of Luxton's tourist promotions, see Laurie Meijer Drees, “Making Banff a Wild West: Norman Luxton, Indians and Banff Tourism, 1902–1945,” M.A. Thesis, University of Calgary, 1991.
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• Scott and Luxton correspondence, 1907; RG 76, Vol. 14, File 133, NAC.
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• “It might induce a few hunters to visit that country if it were exhibited as a sample of the game to be found in British Columbia. It will certainly be an attraction if displayed as an ornament in your London office but as the Canadian Pacific cannot derive any advantage from that, we should not in my opinion be asked to give free transportation.” Bosworth to Scott, 7 July 1908; RG 76, Vol. 14, File 133. NAC.
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• George Colpitts, “Science, Streams and Sport: Trout Conservation in Southern Alberta, 1907–1930,” M.A. Thesis, University of Calgary, 1993. See appendix listing associations and members. Subsequent research of association correspondence in Manitoba and British Columbia was assessed in Bryan Williams's letterbooks in the Provincial Archives of British Columbia. Hereafter cited as PABC. See also the few surviving game guardian files in PAM. For an overview of association work in Alberta, see George Colpitts, “Fish and Game Conservation in Alberta, 1907–1930,” Alberta History (1994): 16–26.
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• Colpitts, “Science, Streams and Sport,” 66–74.
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• Ibid., Chapter 3, “High River and the Stream Closure Movement,” 66–83.
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• The poacher trial at High River in the same time period is of equal interest. Ibid., 77–78.
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• Correspondence, Calgary Good Roads Association, 1920, RG 84, Vol. 107 file U125, NAC.
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• By 1908, three reserves were set aside in B.C.: the Yalakon Reserve in the Lillooet District, one in the East Kootenays, and one on Vancouver Island. See Bryan Williams, “4th Report of the Provincial Game and Forest Warden, 1908,” B.C. Sessional Papers, 1909 (Victoria: King's Printer, 1909). The Cassiar district soon had a breeding reserve set aside in the hopes of protecting the area's big game populations. Saskatchewan converted most of the former federal forest reserves into twelve game preserves. Report of the Chief Game Guardian, Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture, Saskatchewan Sessional Papers, 1916 (Regina: Provincial Printer, 1916), 241. Manitoba had thirteen reserves by the ends of World War One. See “Section of Map Showing Areas Set Apart as Provincial Game Preserves in Manitoba,” Manitoba Naturalist Society; PB 5066, PAM.
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• Report of Rocky Mountains National Park, Department of Interior Annual Report, Part IV, 6, NAC.
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• On this antelope park, see Lethbridge Daily Herald (14 and 25 March 1915).
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• Edenic images were often used in the expansionist era. The Illustrated London News in 1858 reported that Hind's first reports back to the British parliament lauded the plains as a future, abundant garden, being nothing short of “a paradise of fertility.” See “Canada,” The Illustrated London News (18 December 1858). A treatment of promotions supporting expansionist aims is found in Doug Owram, Promise of Eden: The Canadian Expansionist Movement and the Idea of the West 1856–1900 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992.)
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• Peter C. Gould, Green Politics: Back to Nature, Back to the Land, and Socialism in Britain: 1880–1900 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), 19–20.
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• Mackenzie instead follows imperial themes in African hunting promotion and conservation. See, though, the reprinted railway poster in his book. John M. MacKenzie, The Empire of Nature.
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• Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
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• Clive Phillipps-Wolley, A Sportsman's Eden (London: Richard Bentley, 1888). Another obvious example: B.A. Watson, The Sportsman's Paradise; or, The Lake Lands of Canada (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1888). An explicit reference to a western “Walhalla” described by a New Yorker is found in Zephine Humphrey, “Five Women on the Trail,” The Outing Magazine (May-June 1909).
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• Banff's museum was called the “university of the hills” in “Prince of Playgrounds: Come Home by Canada and Revel in the Rockies.” Department of Interior brochure, 1911, 25, Glenbow Archives, Calgary. Hereafter GA.
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• Museum Reports Files from 1903 onwards, Sanson's inventories and correspondence; RG 84 Vol. 572, NAC. Also, Sanson's reports and correspondence in RG 84 Vol. 977 File B318-1 Part 1 & 2, NAC. Dioramas in the Banff museum are described by J.B. Harkin, “A Development of the Diorama,” The Museum Journal 35 (1935). Interior photographs taken in the 1940s can be seen in PA-135004, and PA-135006, photographic archives, NAC.
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• Harkin said that the museum completed a park visit, “rendering the place attractive to tourists during their stay” and encouraging repeat visits. J.B. Harkin letter, 1924. RG 84. B318-1 Part 2. RG 84 Vol. 977, NAC.
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• Incorporation of the “Calgary Natural History Society,” 27 January 1913, and the Society's Minute Book, Box 87–013, City of Calgary Archives. Correspondence of the society's members can be found in “Calgary Museum,” M2111, Box 1, File 9, GA.
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• Calgary Herald (24 April 1928). Harlan Smith, “The Natural History Museums of British Columbia,” Science (4 November 1898): 619–620.
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• A Preliminary Catalogue of the Collections of Natural History and Ethnology in the provincial Museum (Victoria: Queen's Printer, 1898); “Visitor's Guidebook to the Museum,” Provincial Museum of Natural History and Ethnology, Victoria, British Columbia (Victoria: King's Printer, 1909); Fannin's life is recounted in Kermode to Wade, 10 March 1925, Box 3, File 12, GR 111, PABC.
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• Wonders, 19–20; 24.
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• Box 41, File 4, GR 111, PABC. Postcards of “The Museum, Provincial Parliament Buildings, Victoria, B.C.,” can be found reprinted in Peter Corley-Smith, White Bears and Other Curiosities: The First 100 Years of the Royal British Columbia Museum. Special Publication. Victoria: The Royal British Columbia Museum, 1989), frontispiece photo, 25, 38, 46.
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• Diorama photos appear in Kermode's “Visitor's Guidebook to the Museum, Provincial Museum of Natural History and Ethnology, Victoria, British Columbia” (Victoria: King's Printer, 1909), PABC. Another good source for diorama photos is yearly reports of the Chief Game Guardian, B.C. Sessional Papers.
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• Postcard, “Calgary,” ca. 1910. N3884–24, photographic collection, GA.
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• Postcard, “The Spoils of One Day at Pipestone, Man.,” ca. 1910. Pipestone 2 File, N928, photographic collection, PAM.
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• Memo to Association, 5 March 1935. RG 17, Box 32, File 29.2.1. Deputy Minister, Game Branch Files. PAM.
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• Emphasis added to “Report of the Chief Game Guardian,” Annual Report of the Saskatchewan Department of Agriculture, in the 1912 Sessional Papers (Regina: 1913), 247.
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• Vreeland's letter to Hornaday stressed the need for Canadians to enlarge Waterton National Park. Vreeland to Hornaday, 3 November 1910; RG 84, Vol. 43, File W300, NAC. In this file, also, see Vreeland's proposed resurvey of the park, undertaken with a Pincher Creek settler: H. Riviere to J. Herron, 24 April 1913. B.H. Chapman wanted to donate elk to Waterton, on the condition that the Parks Branch protect them. Ibid., Harkin to Brown, 2 December 1912.
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• Inman, Buffalo Jones' Forty Years of Adventure, 250–300.
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• See letters exchanged between Bryan Williams (the provincial game guardian), the Field conservation association, and Hornaday. Hornaday's massive campaign to have the sheep's breeding areas protected from Albertan Stony native Indians is also highlighted here. Game Guardian Letterbook 1907–08, GR 446, PABC.
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• Whitcher to Burgess, 26 March 1884; Vol 317, File 73055, Game Preservation in NWT, NAC.
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• He laments that “railways, ranchmen, and miners have taken possession of what was once the sportsman's paradise. Many parts of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho are still worth visiting for the sake of sport, but the old glory of those States is gone never to return,” 26. See also 37. William A. Baillie-Grohman, Fifteen Years Sport and Life in the Hunting Grounds of Western America and British Columbia (London: Horace Cox, 1900) 36–40.
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• Ironically, Seton Karr's disappointment with the Canadian Rockies was published after he traveled on one of the CPR's first excursions over the Great Divide. H.W. Seton Karr, Shores and Alps of Alaska (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1887), 5.
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• Martindale described his hunting party traveling in a charter car named the “Yellowstone.” They “gunned over” the west, killing an enormous amount of game. He was quite certain that nothing would be left of even the buffalo bones on the ground near Moose Jaw. Thomas Martindale, Sport Royal, I Warrant You (Philadelphia: H.W. Shaw Co. 1897), particularly 52–57.
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• “In a few years the romance of the prairies will be a tradition of the past. Nay the pig has already replaced the buffalo, and the policeman has supplanted the Indian,” Achilles Daunt, In the Land of the Moose, the Bear, and the Beaver (London: T. Nelson & Sons, 1885), 112–113.
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• The expression is Patillo's, describing hunting near Calgary in 1890 and 1891; by 1902, he said that the same fields were overhunted, and the “fun has gone out of it.” T.R. Pattillo, Moose-Hunting, Salmon-Fishing ad Other Sketches of sprot (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1902), 138.
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• Robert A.J. McDonald, “Victoria, Vancouver, and the Economic Development of British Columbia, 1886–1914,” in W. Peter Ward and Robert A.J. McDonald, eds., British Columbia: Historical Readings (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1981), 384–388.
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• Clive Phillipps-Wolley, Sport in the Crimea and Caucasus (London: Richard Bentley, 1881).
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• Clive Phillipps-Wolley, A Sportsman's Eden.
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• As suggested in Letter XVIII, Ibid., 191.
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• His lecture to Victorians about aid to Russia was to the city's political elites. See Victoria Daily Colonist (8 March 1892). For a biographical treatment of this “quintessential Englishman,” see Peter Murray, Home from the Hill: Three Gentlemen Adventurers (Victoria: Horsdal and Schubart, 1994). His article, “Big Game of North America,” focuses upon the still great game to be found in British Columbia. Clive Phllipps-Wolley, Big Game Shooting (London: Longmans, Green, 1894), 346–385. For a general treatment of Clive's booster spirit, see Murray, 84–86, 107.
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• See the Victoria Gun Club's accusations against Union Club members who “asked for the law to be amended,” “The Gun,” Victoria Daily Colonist (20 March 1892).
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• Clive Phillipps-Wolley, “Big Game in the West: Famous Bags in British Columbia and Vancouver Island, Canada, December 15, 1906,” 393, with description of the Union Club, 393–396, PABC.
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• Baillie-Grohman, 40, speaks of “an English resident of Victoria… editor and chief contributor to a series of English books on sport….,” 39. Baillie-Grohman was undoubtedly referring to the two-volume series of Big Game Shooting, edited by Phillipps-Wolley.
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• Ibid., 39.
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• Ibid., 40.
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• In 1906, Williams believed he had finally convinced the province's premier, previously “lukewarm” towards wildlife conservation, of “what could be made out of it.” Williams to Herchmer, 23 February 1906, Box 5, Letterbook, Game Guardian Files, PABC.
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• Kermode to Wade, 10 March 1925; GR 111 Box 3, File 12, PABC.
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• “Visitor's Guidebook to the Museum.” Provincial Museum of Natural History and Ethnology, Victoria, British Columbia (Victoria: King's Printer, 1909), 5–20.
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• John Fannin, “The Deer of British Columbia,” Victoria Daily Colonist (1 January 1892).
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• Kermode, Visitor's Guidebook, 5.
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• Arthur Bryan Williams, Game Trails in British Columbia: Big Game and Other Sport in the Wilds of British Columbia (London: John Murray, 1925), viii.
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• Bryan Williams, Bureau of Provincial Information, Bulletin No. 17. “Game of British Columbia” (Victoria: King's Printer, 1908), 5.
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• J.H. Hubbard, “Sport in the Canadian North-West: A Paper on the Game Birds and Animals of Manitoba and the North-West Territories” (29 July 1886), 33, PABC. Christy mentions that Walter Hine prepared most of the trophies for the Colonial and Indian Exposition. Miller Christy, Sport in Manitoba (Liverpool: Turner and Dunnett, 1888), 6.
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• C.P. Staff Bulletin, July 1945, 10, Canadian Pacific Archives. Hereafter cited as CPA. Also, Gibbon's promotional activities are recounted in his unpublished biography in John Murray Gibbon Files, WMA.
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• Review of Eyes of a Gypsy in Canadian Bookman, in Gibbon bundle, Ibid. In one novel, Gibbon described an American hunter displaying wildlife taxidermy in his cabin and explaining to a British visitor that America was overcrowded and overhunted and all the animals came from Canada. John Murray Gibbon, Drums Afar: An International Romance (New York: J.J. Little & Ives, 1918), 281–283.
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• Rod and Gun and Motor Sports in Canada, January 1908. Copies found in National Library, Ottawa.
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• Canada-An Illustrated Weekly Journal (9 May 1908). Wildlife being incorporated into an early century exhibition can be seen in the Canadian Milan Exhibit, 1906, PA-76936, NAC.
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• Ibid.
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• CPR Staff Bulletin no. 72A (1 January 1915), CPA.
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• “What Our American Cousins Can Teach Us!” Rod and Gun in Canada and Other Diversions (October 1905).
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• Ibid., Editorial.
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• A CPR brochure claimed of Canada: “Of all the North American continent, once a veritable ‘Sportsman's Paradise,’ [Canada's] picturesque wilds and noble waters have alone been spared the attacks of the game butchers and fish destroyers.” “Fishing and Shooting on the Canadian Pacific Railway” (1890), CPR brochure, National Library, Ottawa.
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• Rod and Gun in Canada and Other Diversions (October 1905). See also, “Fishing and Shooting on the Canadian Pacific Railway” (1890), CPR brochure, 53.
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• Frederic Irland . 1988 . “Sport in an Untouched American Wilderness,” . In Hunting & Fishing in Canada: A Turn-of-the-century Treasury 275 Secaucus, NJ : Castle Books . an 1896 article reprinted in Frank Oppel, ed.
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• “The Sportsman's Map of Canada and the Northwest Territory,” CPR Brochure (1901), CPA.
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• Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Holt, 1921). Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, rev. ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973), 131–147.
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• “Fishing, Shooting, Canoe Trips & Camping,” 29th ed., CPR Brochure (1909), CPA.
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• Soo Line Brochure (1910), “Wild Animals I have Met in the Canadian Rockies,” PABC.
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• Emphasis added to “Fishing, Shooting, Canoe Trips and Camping,” 29th ed., Canadian Pacific Railway (1909), CPA.
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• Emphasis added. J.F. McFadden, “The Advantages of the Riding Mountain Forest Reserve” (1928), Manitoba Legislative Library, Winnipeg.
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• The book was published after his death. Map illustration in Gordon Hewitt, The Conservation of Wild Life of Canada (New York: Scrihner's Sons, 1921).
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