Canadian Alpine Journal/Volume 1/Number 1/The Alpine Club of Canada

by Elizabeth Parker

THE ALPINE CLUB OF CANADA

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By Elizabeth Parker

Its apologetic is summed in the second paragraph of the circular announcing the organization of the Club.

"The objects of the Club are: (1) the promotion of scientific study and the exploration of Canadian alpine and glacial regions; (2) the cultivation of Art in relation to mountain scenery; (3) the education of Canadians to an appreciation of their mountain heritage; (4) the encouragement of the mountain craft and the opening of new regions as a national playground; (5) the preservation of the natural beauties of the mountain places and of the fauna and flora in their habitat; (6) and the interchange of ideas with other Alpine organizations."

When the Club was organized in March, 1906, it was a red-letter day to some who had long felt the reproach of Canadian apathy to Canadian mountains. For, while English and American mountaineers had, year by year, seized the summers following the advent of the railway, and had explored and climbed—here and there a man with the "magic of the words" telling the story,—an increasing few of our own people had also been climbing for love of it. Thus learning of the immensities of the alpine regions of their own land, they became jealous for their compatriots' sake. Why should not mountaineering become one of our national sports?

Not until November, 1905, did any positive movement towards organization begin. The response from all parts of the Dominion was a surprise, and ought to have been a rebuke to us who had loudly lamented Canadian indifference to a sport for which Nature had provided so vast a playground on our own immediate territory. We had awakened out of sleep, and would redeem the past by a vigorous mountaineering organization. But whatever the Alpine Club of Canada achieves of climbing, of discovery, of purely scientific work; whatever the Club may eventually become, it must never forget how great and splendid service, and affectionate withal, has been rendered to our mountains and Canadian mountaineering by the members of the Appalachian Mountain Club, the American Alpine Club, and the Alpine Club of London. They have done the work, and published the tidings in a series of publications that already make a considerable library of Rocky Mountain literature. When the Canadian Alpine Club was organized, it counted itself honored to confer honorary membership upon some representatives of these Clubs, and happy to receive others as active members. The first life-member on our list is Professor Herschel C. Parker of Columbia University, one of the boldest pioneers of them all.

What does the Alpine Club of Canada propose to do? Does it take itself too seriously? There may be learned cosmopolitan alpinists whose many years' experience of hardy holidays among the glaciers and upper snows of the mountain ranges of the world, would incline them to look with patronage, if not incipient scorn, upon an organized effort to popularize the exclusive sport. They might say that to popularize was to vulgarize. Not so. Mountaineering is too toilsome, too hard a sport, and demands qualities of mind and character quite other than vulgar. Many pastimes and sports, many vocations and avocations may become vulgarized. But it must be obvious to any who know ever so little about the glaciers and névés and precipices—the unimaginable visions from the upper heights; it must be obvious that, from the very nature of the sport, to popularize mountaineering is not to vulgarize nor degrade it. The mountains themselves hold the high effort and achievement in fee. The vulgar reach the mountain summits by a way against which the Alpine Club of Canada will set a face of flint. We know what way that is: the way of the monster, Mammon. By virtue of its constitution, the Alpine Club is a national trust for the defence of our mountain solitudes against the intrusion of steam and electricity and all the vandalisms of this luxurious, utilitarian age; for the keeping free from the grind of commerce, the wooded passes and valleys and alplands of the wilderness. It is the people's right to have primitive access to the remote places of safest retreat from the fever and the fret of the market place and the beaten tracts of life. We are devoutly grateful, as we ought to be, that the Canadian Pacific Railway Company has shown itself wise in a national sense, by refusing to follow in the wake of the cog-railways of the Rigi and Pike's peak. Our associate member, Mr. Whyte, the Second Vice-President of the Company, than whom a shrewder man of commerce does not live in Canada, nor one with a clearer vision of the people's good, would deplore any wanton defacement of the wild natural beauty and grandeur of these now secluded fastnesses. If I had space I could give tangible proof of this.

It is the Club's business to support the picturesque and wholly enjoyable transit to the mountain-places by pack-horse and saddle, and to promote the too much neglected exercise of walking. Your true lover of Nature is also a man of the unfamiliar roads and forest trails. It would be a great thing for young Canadians if all the automobiles vanished into space and walking for pleasure became the fashion. As soon as prudence will warrant, huts will be built in remote strategic situations for the convenience of the members, and persons put in charge for the season; bivouacs will be established on the long trails at distances of a day's journey, and the Club will cooperate, where possible, with the Railway and the Government, in making new trails, giving comfortable access to all the places already known or yet to be discovered. And it is the Club's business to support all measures towards preservation for all time of the fauna and flora in their wild habitat. All members are expected to be alert to this end.

First named among the reasons for the Club's existence is the claim of science: "the promotion of scientific study and the exploration of Canadian alpine and glacial regions." This clause makes its appeal to the exclusive class already referred to, whose work is of the schools, a thing apart from, though it may and ought to include mountaineering as an ennobling, ethical and æsthetic pastime. This section has a distinct work to do; and will, we hope, include a considerable number of men of science. And though much snow may fall upon the mountains and much water run in torrents from the glaciers ere it achieves its predestined high place in alpine and glacial science, its progress towards that consummation is in safe guidance. The President will look to that. He is keen for progress, and has withal, an appalling capacity for dogged hard work—and for making other people work. The Scientific Section is not likely to languish while Mr. Wheeler is alive.

Concerning the cultivation of Art, prizes are to be given for the best photographs; and as soon as circumstances will permit, a competition in oils and water colors will be opened for active members. A reliable guide-book, too which will include instruction on the details of mountaineering, will be published for the

Photo, Byron Harmon

ROLL CALL FOR THE OFFICIAL CLIMB OF MT. VICE-PRESIDENT

benefit of any who come to climb in the Canadian Alps.

There is nothing quixotic about the Alpine Club of Canada: it is a sane, sober institution, organized by sane, sober men. As indicated, its mission is manifold. The education of Canadians to an appreciation of their alpine heritage, is of itself a raison d'etre. The Canadian Rocky Mountain system, with its unnumbered and unknown natural sanctuaries for generations yet unborn, is a national asset. In time we ought to become a nation of mountaineers, loving our mountains with the patriot's passion. A great Canadian, who wore himself out for the love he bore to God and Canada, was wont to say that a country which could grow wheat could grow men, by which he meant a race made of the flesh-stuff and the soul-stuff that builds up nations. This is the composite human material out of which mountaineers are made. But the peril is, that men become satiated with wheat, and there follows that effeteness which is worse than the effeteness of an unbalanced culture. Among other correctives none is more effective than this of the exercise of the mountain-craft. No sport is so likely to cure a fool of his foolishness as the steady pull, with a peril or two of another sort attending, of a season's mountain climbing in one of those "thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice" in the wild alpine playground of Canada. The ethical value of mountaineering is a subject upon which our statesmen would do well to ponder; and there is a considerable Canadian Alpine literature from which they may gather data.

Any young man of latent intellectual and moral force, who comes to close grips with the waiting, challenging mountains, and puts one summit after another beneath the soles of his feet, has gained immensely in the Spartan virtues. Moreover, he has, by climbing to these skiey stations and standing face to face with Infinitude, learned some things he may not tell, because they are unspeakable. It is given to very few, to utter such experiences. But there comes to the mountaineer of pure mind and willing spirit the sense of which Wordsworth tells, of the presence interfused in Nature; the presence that dwells among the sheer peaks and in the living air and the blue sky and in the mind of man; the motion and the spirit that rolls through all things. Browning sums it in his swift way: "which fools call Nature and I call God." To this climber is given a key to many an utterance of the Masters, which else remained for him unlocked. It is quite true that every climber has not, nor may not acquire the philosophic mind that is curious regarding the divine interpretation of Nature; but traversing the sources of the great ice-rivers and breathing the virgin air above their mute snows is conducive to that philosophic mind. And whether or no, if that high exercise and that environment fail to arouse a sense of Nature malignant and Nature benignant, his case is hopeless as one who stands among men at the making of the nation.

One word more: the standard for membership may not be lowered. That it will be raised is almost certain; just as, with the progress of education, the standards for matriculation in a new university are raised.