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The Great Glacier and its house : the story of the first center of alpinism in North America, 1885-1925
https://archives.whyte.org/en/permalink/catalogue20180
- Medium
- Library - Book (including soft-cover and pamphlets)
- Published Date
- 1982
- Author
- Putnam, William Lowell
- Publisher
- New York : American Alpine Club
- Call Number
- 01.4 P98t reference
1 website
- Author
- Putnam, William Lowell
- Responsibility
- Willaim Lowell Putnam
- Publisher
- New York : American Alpine Club
- Published Date
- 1982
- Physical Description
- 23 pages : illustrations, portraits, map
- Subjects
- Glacier House
- Illecillewaet Glacier
- Selkirk Mountains
- Railway routes
- Railway stations
- Railways
- Tourism
- Mountaineering
- American Alpine Club
- History
- Abstract
- he hotel is gone and the passenger trains, now rarely on time, go by only once daily. The Great Glacier has all but vanished. The motor traffic on the fast, modern highway sweeps past in ignorance that this deep, half-forgotten, Illecillewaet valley of the Selkirk Mountains, with its dark forests and glittering summits, was the cradle of professional North American mountaineering and, for several decades, the principal Canadian attraction for climbers from three continents. Surely the time has long since passed for someone to tell the story of the early days when geologists, scientists, alpinists, guides, tourists and more than a few of our continent’s empire builders stopped in Glacier, British Columbia to explore, study, climb, earn a modest living, admire the scenery or just rest from their labors. It is most appropriate that William L. Putnam, one of America’s outstanding experts on the Selkirks, should have undertaken the task of writing a history of the area. It is even more appropriate that this history should have been published by The American Alpine Club, whose first president, Professor Charles E. Fay, spent many sunny days over several seasons scaling the region’s unclimbed summits and, as we learn from the text, many rainy weeks in the Old Glacier House where at idle moments he amused himself by analyzing the comments in the hotel’s guest register. The author has labored hard and gone to great lengths to obtain original source material and to check facts. As might be expected, his story begins with the construction of the Canadian Pacific track through Roger’s Pass; without it, the central Selkirks and the outstanding Matterhorn-like crest of Mount Sir Donald would no doubt still be little known and less visited. The absence of dining cars on the early transcontinental express trains, plus the superb view of what was then the awesome Illecillewaet Glacier, led to the building of a small restaurant-hotel by the track some five miles west of the pass. In time that hotel grew to become the Canadian Pacific’s western show-piece. Tourists, scientists, mountaineers and guides arrived in growing numbers. The peaks were measured and climbed, trails were built, caves explored and an electric generator was constructed to light the premises. A pet bear was even provided on the grounds for the entertainment of guests. Then, slowly, the Great Glacier retreated, the railroad was modernized and rerouted through a five-mile tunnel some distance from the hotel, tourists and climbers alike went off to war on the battlefields of France, and the Canadian Pacific shifted its emphasis to its latter-day attraction at Lake Louise in the nearby Rockies. The old hotel was closed, then torn down, and the valley and its glacier almost forgotten. Such is the skeleton of Putnam’s story. But it is far more. Putnam has labored industriously. He has unearthed, and quoted at length, the original on-the-spot observations of the early visitors in the decades between 1890 and 1920. He has recovered ancient photographs, many excellent, to illustrate the stories and anecdotes he recounts. Thanks to his labor of love, those of us who are familiar only with modern mountaineering now have the opportunity to learn what climbing was like in the good old days around the turn of the century. Despite its deceptive scrapbook style, the work is scholarly. It is also highly nostalgic. The author is at his best with the history of the early climbing. One wishes he had personally said more and quoted less—but, then, many of the quotations are memorable. He might also have omitted, or at least modified, the chapter on distant Mount Sir Sandford, for its story, while essential in any broad account of Selkirk climbing, belongs elsewhere and shifts the focus away from the House and the Glacier at the very moment when the reader has become engrossed in both. But these, however, are minor flaws, overshadowed by good research, an entertaining style, excellent history and magnificent illustrations. Samuel H. Goodhue (from American Alpine Club)
- Contents
- Introduction
- The Railroad Track
- The House
- The Tourists
- First Climbers
- Men of Science
- Alpina Americana
- Britannic Majesty
- Canadians at Last
- Some of the Best
- The Last Big Mountain
- The Rest is Silence
- Appendices
- A: The Guides
- B: Place Names in the Central Selkirks
- Bibliography
- Index
- Notes
- Signed by author - addressed to Hans Gmoser
- ISBN
- 0930410130
- Accession Number
- AC637
- Call Number
- 01.4 P98t reference
- Collection
- Archives Library
- URL Notes
- Link to book review on American Alpine Club website
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Map from the Pacific Ocean across the Rocky Mountain Zone
https://archives.whyte.org/en/permalink/catalogue24555
- Medium
- Library - Maps and blueprints (unannotated; published)
- Map
- Published Date
- January 1874
- Call Number
- C11-3.7
- Published Date
- January 1874
- Scale
- Scale: 1/1:584,000 or 25 English Statute miles to 1 inch
- Subjects
- Canada
- Railway routes
- Notes
- Accompanies: "Report on the Explorations and Surveys" 08.5/C16/rep.
- Accession Number
- 10,000
- Call Number
- C11-3.7
- Collection
- Archives Library
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Map of the country between the provinces of Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba
https://archives.whyte.org/en/permalink/catalogue21432
- Medium
- Library - Maps and blueprints (unannotated; published)
- Map
- Published Date
- January, 1874
- Call Number
- C11-3.7(a)
- Published Date
- January, 1874
- Subjects
- Canada
- Railway routes
- Notes
- Accompanies: "Report on the Explorations and Surveys" 08.5/C16/rep
- Distances from Fort Garry (The Stone Fort) to Toronto and Montreal. All rail routes
- Accession Number
- 10,000
- Call Number
- C11-3.7(a)
- Collection
- Archives Library
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(Not) the dinner bell
https://archives.whyte.org/en/permalink/catalogue19816
- Medium
- Library - Periodical
- Published Date
- May 2019
- Author
- Stuart, Ryan
- Publisher
- Crowfoot Media
- Call Number
- P
1 website
- Author
- Stuart, Ryan
- Publisher
- Crowfoot Media
- Published Date
- May 2019
- Physical Description
- p.18-19
- Medium
- Library - Periodical
- Subjects
- Bears, Grizzly
- Railway routes
- Canadian Pacific Railway
- Wildlife
- Wildlife corridors
- Research
- Abstract
- Pertains to the mortality rate of grizzly bears along the Canadian Pacific Railway lines in Banff National Park and the five-year study by Colleen Cassady St. Clair of the University of Alberta with the creation of a warning system with University of Alberta engineering student Jonathan Backs.
- Notes
- In Canadian Rockies Annual, vol.04, May 2019
- Call Number
- P
- Collection
- Archives Library
- URL Notes
- Website for Crowfoot Media - publishers of Canadian Rockies Annual
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Outline map of section of Canadian Rocky Mountains.
https://archives.whyte.org/en/permalink/catalogue24559
- Medium
- Library - Maps and blueprints (unannotated; published)
- Map
- Published Date
- Visited during 1907 and 1908
- Publisher
- Grand Trunk Pacific
- Call Number
- C11-3.9
- Publisher
- Grand Trunk Pacific
- Published Date
- Visited during 1907 and 1908
- Scale
- 24 miles to 1 inch
- 300 miles to 1 inch
- Subjects
- Canada
- Railway routes
- Notes
- Sources of Information: J. McEvoy and Dr. J. Norman Collie's sketch map of "Dominion of Canada".
- Accession Number
- 576
- Call Number
- C11-3.9
- Collection
- Archives Library
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Outline map of Section of Canadian Rocky Mountains
https://archives.whyte.org/en/permalink/catalogue24560
- Medium
- Library - Maps and blueprints (unannotated; published)
- Map
- Published Date
- Visited during 1907 and 1908
- 1912 revision
- Publisher
- McEvoy, Collie and Schaffer
- Call Number
- C11-3.10
- Publisher
- McEvoy, Collie and Schaffer
- Published Date
- Visited during 1907 and 1908
- 1912 revision
- Scale
- 24 miles - 1 inch
- Subjects
- Canada
- Railway routes
- Notes
- (Insert map). From map of Dominion of Canada
- Accession Number
- 576
- Call Number
- C11-3.10
- Collection
- Archives Library
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Plans of the Rivers Kamanistiquia and Nepigon
https://archives.whyte.org/en/permalink/catalogue24557
- Medium
- Library - Maps and blueprints (unannotated; published)
- Map
- Published Date
- January 1874
- Publisher
- Canadian Pacific Railway 08.5/C16/rep
- Call Number
- C11-3.7(e)
- Publisher
- Canadian Pacific Railway 08.5/C16/rep
- Published Date
- January 1874
- Scale
- Kamenestiquia Plan: 4000' - 1 inch
- Subjects
- Canada
- Railway routes
- Notes
- To accompany report of the Engineer-in-chief
- Accession Number
- 10,000
- Call Number
- C11-3.7(e)
- Collection
- Archives Library
This material is presented as originally created; it may contain outdated cultural descriptions and
potentially offensive content.
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- Medium
- Library - Maps and blueprints (unannotated; published)
- Map
- Published Date
- 1910
- Publisher
- Departmentof Interior
- Call Number
- C11-3.8
- Publisher
- Departmentof Interior
- Published Date
- 1910
- Scale
- 100 miles to 1 inch
- Subjects
- Canada
- Railway routes
- Accession Number
- 573
- Call Number
- C11-3.8
- Collection
- Archives Library
This material is presented as originally created; it may contain outdated cultural descriptions and
potentially offensive content.
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Railway Map of the Dominion of Canada
https://archives.whyte.org/en/permalink/catalogue21430
- Medium
- Library - Maps and blueprints (unannotated; published)
- Map
- Published Date
- 1920
- Call Number
- C11-3.4(a) to 3.4(h)
- Published Date
- 1920
- Subjects
- Canada
- Railway routes
- Notes
- A series of eight maps from Labrador to British Columbia showing railway routes.
- See: Title map C11-3.4(a), Legend C11-3.4(d), Index C11-3.4(e)
- Accession Number
- 400
- Call Number
- C11-3.4(a) to 3.4(h)
- Collection
- Archives Library
This material is presented as originally created; it may contain outdated cultural descriptions and
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The soo line's famous trains to Canada
https://archives.whyte.org/en/permalink/catalogue26213
- Medium
- Library - Book (including soft-cover and pamphlets)
- Published Date
- 2023
- Author
- Gainer, Terry
- Publisher
- Victoria, BC : Rocky Mountain Books
- Call Number
- 08.5 G12t
- 08.5 G12t reference copy
- Author
- Gainer, Terry
- Publisher
- Victoria, BC : Rocky Mountain Books
- Published Date
- 2023
- Physical Description
- 90 pages ; 8 cm
- Subjects
- CP Rail
- Canadian Pacific Railway
- Canadian Pacific Railway Company
- Canadian Pacific Railway Hotels
- Railway
- Railway routes
- Transportation
- History
- Abstract
- The Soo Line’s Famous Trains To Canada is a brief history of a small and unique Class 1 railway and its famous Canada–USA tourist trains. Initially chartered in 1883 to serve the needs of local millers in Minneapolis, the Soo would eventually come to join the Canadian Pacific line at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, with service to Montreal. In 1888, Canadian Pacific assumed controlling interest in the Soo Line, providing entry into the lucrative US market and levelling the playing field for the CPR to face the onslaught of ferocious competition from James J. Hill, the infamous American railway baron. The “little railway that could” grew to attain giant-killer status, launching famous passenger trains from Minneapolis and St. Paul, meeting head-on the western expansion of the Great Northern Railway and viable, competitive routes to the Atlantic seaboard. Over the years, the Soo Line introduced thousands of Americans to Montreal and Quebec City, the famous Canadian Rockies resorts, and the city of Vancouver, the home port for CP’s Pacific steamship services. The Soo also successfully competed on the Spokane and Portland routes from Minneapolis to the Pacific Northwest. In 1923 the “Soo Mountaineer” was launched, becoming the most famous and longest “two-nation” train journey in North America. -- From publisher
- Contents
- Part 1: A brief history of the soo line -- 1. In the beginning -- 2. The birth of the railway -- 3. What a tangled web we weave -- 4. Westward ho through great northern's backyard -- 5. Wisconsin central, the final piece of the puzzle -- 6. Setting the stage, Canadian pacific steamship company and Canadian pacific hotels and resorts -- Part 2: Famous trains of the soo -- 7. The Atlantic limited -- 8. The soo Pacific express -- 9. The Manitoba express, the Winnipeg express, the winnipeger -- 10. The soo-Spokane-Portland train deluxe -- 11. The mountaineer -- 12. The mystique of the mountaineer -- 13. The depression and the dirty thirties -- 14. My mountaineer -- 15. 1962, triumph and tragedy -- 16. The end of an era.
- ISBN
- 9781771606714
- Accession Number
- P2023.25
- Copy 1 signed by author
- Call Number
- 08.5 G12t
- 08.5 G12t reference copy
- Location
- Reading Room
- Collection
- Archives Library
This material is presented as originally created; it may contain outdated cultural descriptions and
potentially offensive content.
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