Jasper Park Lodge

er umild Natio/tat/ park 161 CANADIAN ROCKI ES HERE'S something about mountains! Merely to be among them, on the tops looking down or—as it is with most people—in the valleys looking up, is a tonic for body and soul. You are carried along on the rhythm of their rolling slopes, lifted up with their soaring summits; the snow and ice and the shining lakes are eternally refreshing; the rivers and the cataracts driving impetuously to the sea quicken your pulse, and the air is like wine. "Great things are done when men and mountains meet!" exclaimed the poet William Blake. "This is not done while jostling in the street." In the mountains you are stimulated to do great things —to climb the highest peaks, to ride horseback or hike for miles, to get a better golf score, catch a bigger fish, take photographs you never dreamed of taking. Free of the humdrum workaday world, you get a second wind, a new lease on life. But you don't have to be as energetic as all that! You can be invigorated and restored without working too hard at it. The mountains for you may be a simmering down. Like the gentleman in the definition of Con- fucius, you can be calm and spacious. In Jasper National Park great things have been done for you and all you have to do is enjoy them. The text and photographs in the following pages can give you only a few of the highlights of this great playground in the northern Canadian Rockies. Your Canadian National agent will tell you more. VP. .4111111111111...1..•-• --nliga•.••••••• 3 The south gable of Jasper Park Lodge. Its native stone and cedar harmonize with the mountains. Itinnpd lot ileaburt) • • Headquarters for vacations long remembered is Jasper Park Lodge, the famous resort hotel operated by the Canadian National Railways. Here, for more than thirty years, visitors have been coming for rest and recreation, many of them returning summer after summer, as much at home as the bluebirds whose azure wings flash among the pines. The Lodge is not an hotel in the ordinary sense of the word. There is nothing ordinary about Jasper. Instead of one building, it is a whole village, a self-contained community of more than a thousand inhabitants, built on the landscaped shore of an entrancing mountain lake, three miles from the railway station. The ordinary things everybody expects of a modern hotel are here, but they are tuned up to the holiday mood. Every detail of the 4 Lodge's complex but smooth-running organi- ture, over a frame of steel and concrete, is zation, from the unseen sources of power to native fieldstone and cedar, in keeping with the flowers on the dining room tables, is geared the mountains to which it belongs and with the for the comfort and pleasure of honored guests. log bungalows gathered around it between the The heart of the system is the new Central lake and the golf course. It provides shelter Building, acclaimed by travellers as a marvel and even carpeted luxury, but the great out- of 20th century resort architecture. Its struc- doors—its reason for being—is not shut out. 11 Wide windows frame enchanting pictures of take and mountains. More than 500 guests are served at a single sitting in the large yet gracious dining room. 5 A view of the lounge, showing the unusual architectural treatment of the ceiling. Wide windows running the full length of the dining room let it in on the lake side and the mountains are kept in mind by the gracefully soaring stone pillars supporting the angled ceiling. All things work together for enjoy- ment—the airy room the meals, so fresh and expertly cooked, so varied the table appointments the prompt and courteous service the dinner music. The focus of the lounge, which opens on a long verandah under wide eaves overlooking the lake, is the immense double stone fireplace. The room is large and spacious but the guests don't feel exposed and minimized. The furniture, made for relaxation, is grouped in blocks of color in such a way as to give the impression of smaller, separate clubrooms, comfortable for conversation or a game of cards, for reading or writing letters. The ballroom, reached through the lounge, is designed for meetings and movies as well as dancing and, by the 6 The ballroom, cleared for the evening dance. use of a folding partition, it may be extend- registration desk and the hotel offices, the ed for large conventions. Doors open on railway and the telegraph offices; and the news the patio, which leads to the snack bar, also stand and the specialty shops are handy. The accessible from outside the building. The post office, a branch bank, the beauty parlor self-contained tavern has its own entrance and the barber shop, and the recreation room, on the lakefront. are on the lower level. The vast and spotless kitchens, with their up-to-date stoves, refrig- Under the roof of the Central Building is erators and other equipment, occupy their own the business wing. Here are housed the wing at the rear. Entrance to the lounge, showing one of the totem pole pillars. 7 The terrace, looking over the gardens and the swimming pool to the lake. Without standing oppressively close, the Pyramid and, across the valley, the spare grey mountains are all around the Lodge—across Colin Range, with the Good Old Man whose the shimmering water of Lac Beauvert, the eternal slumber was no more disturbed by the rolling Whistlers, leading, by way of Indian coming of the railway than it was by the Ridge, to majestic Edith Cavell, girdled and passing of the fur traders generations ago; at crowned with everlasting snow and ice; in his feet, Signal, and then the ring of other another direction, the polished bosses of peaks that closes with Cavell. The patio, at the heart of the Central Building, is open to the sky. 8 11111- A view of the Central Building from the lake, swimming pool in the foreground. • The well-equipped games room. Fine English woollens and china are among 41. the gifts visitors take home from the Lodge. 9 lb- Your house and garden . o Gracious living in a typical guest room. • Room service comas on wheels. 10 OcOMP Of your own . There are no guest rooms in the Central Building of Jasper Park Lodge. You stay in a log cabin on one of the streets that curve around the bay. Every street is paved and every house has its garden. It would be true to say, indeed, that the resi- dential section of the Lodge is one continuous garden. The cedar, spruce and pine of the mountains have been left, or trans- planted, immaculately groomed lawns have been laid down and flower beds that are the pride of the gardener and the delight, not only of the guests, but of the deer, who have dainty appetites and who feel that they have a perfect right to munch the flowers, since they, after all are the original inhabitants. The cabins come in various sizes, some with as many as 16 single rooms, some with only four. You may have half a cabin, for example, with two rooms and connecting bathroom, your own private entrance and verandah sitting room, or you may have a whole house to yourself. The buildings are constructed of peeled logs. They are soundly built, weather-proof and equipped with all the refinements fastidious guests expect—steam heating for the cool mountain nights, hot water, electricity, telephones. The beds are comfortable and the furnishings—drapes, counterpanes, rugs, lamps, dressing tables, desks and so on—are fresh and modern. 11 One of the deluxe bungalows. 4 The golf course at Jasper Park Lodge, de- The hazards include the beautiful mountain signed by one of the most celebrated golf terrain, which makes it hard to keep your eye architects of North America, hewn out of the on the ball, and sometimes a bear uncon- mountains and brought to perfection by the cernedly ambling over the fairway, but they grooming of a quarter of a century, is rightly do not include strenuous climbs. known as one of the great courses of the world. The course is laid out on the British principle, It is a championship course-6,700 yards, with the ninth hole farthest away from the par 71—and Golf Week, culminating in the clubhouse, but an additional three holes permit Totem Pole Tournament, attracts high calibre a nine-hole game, taking you back to the players, both men and women, every year. clubhouse with no cutting in. But duffers needn't be over-awed. Whatever The 21 holes are well trapped and Lac your handicap, there's top fun on this course. Beauvert provides sporty water hazards. Keep your eye on the boll if you con! Another view of the golf course. Some players find the Go/fmobile a boon. The Totem Pole Trophy played for every year in Golf Week. 13 The Government Fish Hatchery, which helps provide sport for anglers. Rainbow Eastern Brook Fishing in fabulous Ma/igne Lake. Dolly Varden 14 A few miles from the Lodge, on the lower vided with Rainbow, Dolly Varden, Lake, Maligne River, the Government Fish Hatchery Speckled and Eastern Brook trout, sporty fish breeds the trout with which the mountain that lure anglers hundreds of miles every year. waters are stocked. Hundreds of thousands It is easy to get to the fishing places.

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