Arthur Oliver Wheeler

Arthur Oliver Wheeler was a Dominion Land Surveyor who co-founded the Alpine Club of Canada (ACC) in 1906 with Elizabeth Parker and served as its first president. He shaped the map of the Lake Louise region through boundary surveys, photo-topography, and peak naming.

Boundary Survey (1913–1925). As British Columbia Commissioner for the Alberta–British Columbia Boundary Survey, Wheeler physically marked the Continental Divide; traversing, climbing, and photographing the most rugged terrain to determine where water flowed east versus west. His work solidified the map of the Lake Louise and Wapta Icefield region. He named St. Nicholas Peak (Wapta Icefield, 1908) for a rock gendarme resembling Santa Claus; Quadra Mountain (near Consolation Lakes, 1910) for its four pinnacles; quad, not the explorer Bodega y Quadra. During and after WWI he named dozens of peaks in the Kananaskis area after French villages and Allied generals (Mt. Foch, Mt. Petain), controversially suspending Indigenous and descriptive naming traditions.

Photo-topography. Wheeler mastered “photo-topography,” a technique developed by Surveyor General Édouard Deville. He hauled heavy glass-plate cameras to summits; overlapping panoramas from known points allowed mathematical reconstruction of topography. In 1903 he established a camera station on Observation Peak (north of Lake Louise near Bow Lake) that produced the first accurate maps of the glaciated terrain from Mount Hector to Peyto Lake.

ACC and the Annual Camps. Wheeler partnered shrewdly with the Canadian Pacific Railway: the CPR provided cheap passage and support; Wheeler supplied hundreds of climbers who popularized the Rockies. His “Annual General Mountaineering Camp” was a massive tent city; Lake O’Hara (1909), Consolation Valley (1910); that democratized climbing. Before Wheeler, Lake Louise was the domain of wealthy Europeans hiring Swiss guides; his camps turned teachers, scientists, and middle-class Canadians into alpinists.

“Wonder Trail” and conservation. Wheeler was the first to propose a road connecting Lake Louise to Jasper; a “Wonder Trail” along the spine of the continent. His survey work showed the route was feasible; he predicted it would be “world-renowned.” It became the Icefields Parkway, opened in 1940. A utilitarian conservationist, Wheeler argued that access was the key to protection: if Canadians could not reach the mountains to love them, they would not fight to protect them. His advocacy helped secure national park boundaries.

Namesakes. Mount Wheeler (Rogers Pass/Selkirks), Wheeler Hut (Rogers Pass), Mount Oliver (Bonnyville; named for his son Edward Oliver Wheeler, who later mapped Mount Everest).