Importing the Tourists: Canada's Banff National Park

If we can't export the scenery, we'll import the tourists.

This simple and pragmatic quote, spoken by William Cornelius Van Horne, vice-president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, not only articulates something fundamental about the creation of Canada's first national park but also something fundamental about Canada itself.

Banff National Park at dusk. All photos by Cory Gross unless otherwise noted.

Unlike its neighbour to the south, Canada was not founded on any high ideals about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." On the contrary, Canada's comparable motto has been "peace, order, and good government"... A much more prosaic ambition, though certainly no easier to achieve. Canada's history is largely economic instead of ideological, a larder of natural resources to be exploited by European industry rather than a new "Promised Land" of liberty.

The first of these industries was the fur trade. The lure of luxurious fur and an expanded French empire drove Samuel de Champlain to establish Quebec in 1608. "Canadien" coureur des bois did a brisk business in beaver fur, independently trading with local Indigenous peoples, until Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard Chouart des Groseilliers ran afoul of Quebec's governor in 1659. Soured to France, the pair turned to England and King Charles II, who signed the charter of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1670. That company, which still exists as Canada's iconic department store chain, followed waterways into the heart of the continent, expanding the British Empire as they went. 

The formation of the Dominion of Canada was also largely economic. In 1867, a quartet of independent British colonies joined together in "Confederation" to solidify trade and reinforce British sovereignty against a rapacious United States. Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick were joined in 1871 by Prince Edward Island and British Columbia. Lying between Ontario and British Columbia was a fair bit of space, monopolized by the Hudson's Bay Company. Anticipating the integration of British Columbia, the government of Canada bought the Hudson's Bay Company's interests in 1870. According to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, full title to the land could only be obtained from their sovereign inhabitants, leading to a series of treaties from 1871 to 1921 between the Crown and the Indigenous peoples of what is now Western Canada. It was from these "North-West Territories" that the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, and the territories of Yukon and Nunavut, were eventually carved out  (Newfoundland did not join Canada until 1949).      

British Columbia, isolated on the Pacific coast, only agreed to join Confederation on the promise that a railway would be built connecting them to the markets in the East. After various and sundry political scandals, the Canadian Pacific Railway finally began construction in 1880. Anticipating a decade-long project, it was actually completed in five years. The CPR still holds the record for the most amount of track laid by hand in a single day. As one can imagine, laying down that much track that quickly is very expensive. When the last spike was driven on November 7, 1885, in Craigellachie, British Columbia, the Canadian Pacific Railway slipped immediately into the tourism business.

Another view of twilight in Banff National Park.

Central to the CPR's strategy was the creation of a new national park. The world's first national park was Yellowstone in the United States, established on March 1, 1872. Within a decade Northern Pacific Railway laid tracks to park's northern gateway, and within the next two decades built up an infrastructure of luxurious lodges like Old Faithful Inn, Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, and Lake Hotel. This didn't escape the notice of Canadian Pacific, and in the course of building the railway through the Canadian Rocky Mountains they accidentally happened across exactly the attraction around which to build a national park.

For as long as Indigenous peoples have lived in Western Canada, they have known of the hot springs that bubble up from beneath the Canadian Rockies. One of the oldest settlements in the country was found by archaeological surveys on the shores of Vermillion Lakes. 10,700 years ago, Indigenous bighorn sheep hunters camped near hot springs that emptied into the lake, maintaining open waters even during the depth of winter. Early European explorers came across them through the 1850's and 1870's, but they were brought to public attention when railway workers Frank McCabe and William McCardell descended through the roof of a hot spring cave. They attempted to set up a spa by the cave and its nearby open-air hot spring pool, prompting a legal battle into which the Government of Canada (by the CPR's invitation) intervened to establish Banff Hot Springs Reserve in 1885. This was expanded to "Rocky Mountain Park" in 1887, and finally expanded and renamed to Banff National Park in 1930. Banff was Canada's first national park and the second oldest extant national park in the world after Yellowstone.

A panorama of Vermillion Lakes, with Sulphur Mountain to the centre
and the distinctive peak of Mount Rundle to the left.

Impossible to Conceive: Grand Canyon National Park

I have come here to see the Grand Canyon of Arizona, because in that canyon Arizona has a natural wonder, which, so far as I know, is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I shall not attempt to describe it, because I cannot.  I could not choose words that would convey or that could convey to any outsider what that canyon is. I want you to ask you to do one thing in connection with it in your own interest and in the interest of the country--to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is.

Theodore Roosevelt, the greatest American president, spoke these words on his first visit to the Grand Canyon in 1903, five years before he would exercise executive power to preserve it as a National Monument. He was not alone in his sentiments. Even the lyrical John Muir, spiritual father of the US National Parks, wrote in 1902 that "it is impossible to conceive what the canyon is, or what impression it makes, from descriptions or pictures, however good."

Click on images for a larger version.
All photos by Cory Gross unless otherwise noted.

The most accurate description of the Grand Canyon is to admit that it simply cannot be described. Nothing does it justice. No words can capture its subliminity. No photograph prepares you for its vastness. The four edges of a screen constrain the pure power of being surrounded by its sheer walls of living rock. Listing off its dimensions is of little help: 277 miles long, 18 miles wide and 1.25 miles deep. The South Rim of the Grand Canyon sits at approximately 7,000 ft elevation - as high as some alpine passes in the Canadian Rocky Mountains - and the North Rim towers another 1,000 ft higher than that. During summer, the relentless Colorado River that continues to carve out the Grand Canyon flows at a rate of 100,000 cubic feet per second. For all but the most geographically astute, those are mere numbers.

The Grand Canyon from a viewpoint called "The Abyss".

The most able descriptor of the Grand Canyon's sheer power was Ferde Grofé. While working as an arranger for the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, Grofé took on a role as the chanticleer of the American experience. He composed the Mississippi Suite in 1925 and Metropolis: a Fantasy in Blue in 1928. In 1931 he completed his magnum opus and most well-known work: the Grand Canyon Suite. In five movements lasting just over a half hour, Grofé captured in Jazz orchestral form the mystery, terror, and grandeur of the world's most magnificent geologic specimen. Its stirring refrains (and the clip-clop rhythm of hoofbeats) are some of the greatest in American popular music.

Yet Grofé does stray from the Grand Canyon itself: the second of its movements is "The Painted Desert". The story of the Grand Canyon is not limited to what is contained between its two rims. Its existence is owed to the uplift of the Colorado Plateau, spanning significant portions of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. Complications in the roiling mantle of the Earth underlying the plateau began to push it upwards 20 million years ago. Drainage off the plateau in turn carved out and turned up an incredible array of geologic features. The Colorado Plateau has the highest concentration of US National Parks units in the country, with 9 National Parks and 18 National Monuments. The Grand Canyon's story is truly a regional story.