Elizabeth Parker

Elizabeth Parker co-founded the Alpine Club of Canada (ACC) in 1906 with Arthur Oliver Wheeler. A journalist for the Manitoba Free Press in Winnipeg, she became the club’s first secretary and wrote the opening article of the first Canadian Alpine Journal (1907), outlining the ACC’s philosophy: environmental protection, scientific study, and mountaineering as national character. She promoted the “National Trust” ideal; that Canadians should access the mountains to build civic identity.

1907 Paradise Valley Camp. The ACC held its first Annual Camp at Yoho Pass (1906), but the 1907 camp in Paradise Valley; in the shadow of Mount Temple; cemented the club’s culture. Parker served as matriarch while ~110 members attempted climbs on Mount Aberdeen and Mount Temple. She described it as the “altar and hearthstone” of the club. Around the campfire beneath the Horseshoe Glacier, she led discussions on literature and conservation, embedding the idea that to be a Canadian alpinist was to be a philosopher-citizen. The “graduating” system for members was solidified there.

Lake Louise paradox. Parker was a CPR publicist; the railway owned the Chateau Lake Louise; yet she despised the crowds it brought. Writing at 73, she recalled the “brief golden age of Lake Louise” before tourism; trampled alpine flowers prompted her to call tourists “miserable vandals! All that bloom is gone.” She wanted Canadians to access the mountains for “national character” but found the reality; trash, noise, destruction; repulsive. She pushed the ACC into the backcountry to find the solitude Lake Louise had lost.

Lake O’Hara and the Elizabeth Parker Hut. As Lake Louise became the “Hollywood” of the Rockies, Parker championed Lake O’Hara (just over the Continental Divide in Yoho) as the true sanctuary; accessible enough to reach, difficult enough to deter the “casual vandal.” The Elizabeth Parker Hut, originally a CPR cabin (1919), was donated to the ACC in 1931; a symbolic victory for her vision of a permanent foothold for alpinists in a protected meadow.

Later years. Despite her disdain for crowds, Parker stayed at the Chateau Lake Louise as an honoured guest, using her visits to lobby railway executives and park officials in the tea rooms; securing ACC funding and protection for “mountain solitudes” she could no longer hike to herself. Her reaction to Lake Louise’s transition from wilderness outpost to tourist hub defined the conservationist ethos of the ACC.