Canada To-day and To-morrow

by Arthur E. Copping

As to the mountain section (which is now being rapidly pushed forward from both the east and the west), the country it traverses is said to be unequalled in North America for natural resources. Where the conditions do not lend themselves to agriculture, there is mining or lumbering to be developed, and in the rare districts in which those possibilities fail, there is at least trapping and hunting.

Last year I spoke with members of a party who, on behalf of the company, had just traversed the railway route across the mountains. On the beauty of the country they could not sufficiently dilate. At Yellowhead Pass, they said, you enter a vast, wild, unsubdued Alpine wonderland. It has been dedicated for ever to the use of the nation as the Jasper National Park—an expanse of indescribable grandeur, with an ocean of majestic virgin peaks comprised within the numerous well-defined ranges, snow-capped and glacier scored, which tower above a continental watershed wherein are the headwaters of five mighty rivers—the Saskatchewan, the Athabasca, the Thompson, the Columbia, and the Fraser. Also I heard of forest-clad slopes, flower-strewn passes, impressive solitudes, vast snow-fields and exquisite lakes.

Far above the explorers’ heads was Roche à Miette—an imposing, sphinx-like head with a swelling Elizabethan ruff of sandstone and shales. To the east the party saw a cluster of mineral springs, two of which boil out of a mountain side in a wild secluded little valley, and have a temperature of 116 degrees.

Farther on they saw Mount Geikie towering inaccessible, its summit lost in azure at a height of 11,000 feet. To the south-east lay Simpson’s Pass, in which the mighty Athabasca is born in a region of perpetual snow and a succession of glaciers. Within that pass is the “Committee’s Punch Bowl,” whereof Sir George Simpson has written: “The relative position of the opposite waters is such as to have hardly a correlative on the earth’s surface, for a small lake sends its tribute from one end to the Columbia and from the other to the Mackenzie.”

Presently they arrived in sight of Mount Robson, the King of the Rockies, which had been recently scaled by the Rev. G. R. B. Kinney, of the Alpine Club of Canada. Impressions of that eminence must be given in the words of its hero. “The first party of white men (of which I was one),” says Mr. Kinney, “ever known to reach Mount Robson was organised by Dr. Coleman, of Toronto University. . . . Our first camp was in the deep shades of the cedar and hemlock on the Grand Forks, within a mile of where the branch coming in from around the north of the mountain joins the one from around the south. Because of my roving disposition, I became the explorer of the party, and my first discovery was that of the beautiful lake that bears my name. Nestling at the very foot of Mount Robson on the west, walled in on every side by majestic glacier-bearing peaks, this forest-fringed emerald gem, sentinelled by the highest and grandest mountain in all the Rockies, will rival Lake Louise for splendour. The feeling of being the first white man known to walk its shores, and looking for the first time on the glories of its brand-new wonders, filled me with a sense of awe.”

The party failed to climb Mount Robson in 1907, so they returned to the task in the following summer, when again their efforts were unavailing.

Hearing in 1909 that an American party were about to seek the coveted prize, Mr. Kinney got together a pack train of three horses and three months’ provisions, “and left Edmonton alone to capture the mountain, hoping to pick up a companion on the trail.” At the place where he swam his horses across the Athabasca, he fell in with Donald Phillips, a young Ontario guide, and enlisted his companionship. They worried their packs to an altitude of about 10,700 feet, where they succeeded in making a bed on a snow-covered shelf. “For hundreds of miles,” says Mr. Kinney, “the peaks lay at our feet. Scores of miles of the Fraser valley lay open below us like a map, and the mighty Fraser was but a tiny, crooked thread of silver. Then the valleys disappeared, and we were alone with the stars and the snow-white peaks and the grinding avalanches.

“Friday, August 13, dawned clear and cold, and by the time the sun rose we were on our way to the peak. The many cliffs we had to climb were only from ten to a hundred feet high, but those hard, smooth, icy slopes between were tipped at an angle of from fifty to seventy degrees. One slip on the part of either of us meant a fearful slide to death thousands of feet below. The storm-clouds of sleet swept down and engulfed us while we were at little more than eleven thousand feet altitude. We had not enough provisions for another two-days’ climb. This was our last possible chance, and we despaired of ever reaching the peak. Fortunately, though the clouds were very dense and cold, but little snow fell. The storm was a blessing in a way, for though it spoiled our chance of getting pictures, it shut out of view those fearful sheer slopes below.

“In five hours of steady work we reached the peak. The clouds broke open for one brief minute, revealing to us a wonder world, with the Fraser more than eleven thousand feet beneath us; then the storm swept in worse than ever. It took us seven hours to return to our ‘highest-up’ camp, so dangerous had the softened slopes become on account of the storm, and by the time we reached our camp in the valley the climb had cost us twenty hours of hard work—but we had finally captured Mount Robson for our country and the Alpine Club of Canada. Our provisions were gone, we were hundreds of miles from civilisation; so for two weeks we lived on what mountain-gophers and birds we could get. I finally reached Edmonton September 6th, only to find that Cook and Peary monopolised the interest of the world.”

But, to continue our progress towards the Pacific, I learn that, seventy-five miles from the sea, there occurs a marvellous palisade of corrugated and terraced mountains reaching a height of 6,000 feet. Then comes a cañon one mile long with sheer walls a hundred feet high; and through that majestic avenue flows a mighty torrent. And so we continue along the Skeena River—a valley of enchantment—until we reach the new ocean port (Prince Rupert) that will be created by the Grand Trunk Pacific.