CHAPTER VIII.
THE ALPINE CLUB OF CANADA.
The coming of the Railway was the advent of mountaineering in the Canadian Alps. In 1888 there were no climbers in Canada who climbed for climbing's sake. There were, however, certain civil engineers and topographers who climbed laboriously and heroically, without Swiss guides and with scarcely any of the equipment now common among our climbers. Every mountain was a virgin peak and dangerous to men unskilled in snow-craft, ice-craft or rock-craft, who, nevertheless, carried transit and camera on their shoulders up the perilous cliffs while making topographical surveys for the Dominion Government. Notable among them was Mr. J. J. McArthur, who had charge of the Mountain Topography from 1886 to 1892. His name is associated with a beautiful blue lake 7,359 feet above sea, in the lap of Mt. Biddle near Lake O'Hara, and with a high mountain in the Gold Range. Mr. McArthur's achievements cover thrilling experiences. A gap would be filled in the annals of Canadian climbing if he would but write out the stories now hidden between the lines of his official records in Government Blue Books.
But all this so important climbing was work and not play. Climbing for pay and paying for climbing are not the same. "I climb because I must," says one; "I climb because I like it," says the other: each phrase an apologetic, supremely terse and unanswerable. And though mountaineering as a sport—now and always the sublimest of all sports—followed the railway, which ran hard by group after group of unknown attractive alpine peaks, Canadians were not of it. True, in 1883, occurred that picturesque incident on the summit of Rogers Pass, when a Canadian Alpine Club was organized with three members, a president, secretary and treasurer; one resolution was passed of thanks to the discoverer of the pass, another that its first activity should be the conquest of Mt. Sir Donald: and the Club's health then drunk in a sparkling streamlet at their feet. The officers were, in order. Sir Sandford Fleming, the late principal Grant and Mr. S. Hall Fleming. Though a bit of a frolic in the pause of the hardships of mountain travel without even a trail—and unless you know devil's club and the jungle mixed with its forests you know nothing of trailless travel in the Selkirks—the perspective of the years now shows that prophetic episode in a fine glamour.
The railway fairly in operation, news of virgin "ground in Canada, whose mountaineering potentialities appealed to the imagination of climbers eager for new peaks to conquer, reached the Alpine Club of England, the Swiss Alpine Club, and the Appalachian Club of Boston. And for years the Canadian mountains were exploited by climbers from other lands, though, owing to its nearness, the American climbers came oftenest and achieved most in actual climbing. Here and there a Canadian began to climb for love of it, but the new century was a half-decade old ere the full meaning of these mountains and of mountaineering gripped their minds and hearts. After a climb or an excursion revealing some new peaks and distant snowfields, there would be ardent talk about an alpine club. Mr. A. O. Wheeler whose whole heart was in the glaciers and peaks of the Selkirks, felt the reproach of it to Canadians. And so did one
