Ecology & Wonder in the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site
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Ecology & Wonder Ecology & Wonder in the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site Robert William Sandford Frontispiece: The © 2010 Robert W. Sandford Grand Sentinel The Grand Sentinel is a great Published by AU Press, Athabasca University stone tower located just below 1200, 10011 – 109 Street the summit of Sentinel Pass in Edmonton, AB T5J 3S8 Banff National Park. Were it located outside of the dense cluster of astounding natural Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication features contained within Canada’s mountain parks, it Sandford, Robert W. would be one of the wonders of Ecology & wonder in the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage the world. As it is, it is just one Site / Robert William Sandford. more landscape miracle that can be seen from the summit Includes bibliographical references and index. of the pass. Issued also in electronic format (978-1-897425-58-9). Photograph by R.W. Sandford. ISBN 978-1-897425-57-2 1. Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site (Alta. and B.C.)--Environmental conditions. 2. National parks and reserves--Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site (Alta. and B.C.)--Management. 3. Environmental protection--Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site (Alta. and B.C.). I. Title. II. Title: Ecology and wonder. QH106.2.R6S26 2010 333.7’209712332 C2010-900473-6 Cover and book design by Virginia Penny, Interpret Design, Inc. Printed and bound in Canada by Marquis Book Printing. This publication is licensed under a Creative Commons License, Attribution- Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada, see www.creativecommons.org. The text may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that credit is given to the original author. Please contact AU Press, Athabasca University at [email protected] for permission beyond the usage outlined in the Creative Commons license. This project was funded in part by the generous support of: For Vi Sandford, my partner on this amazing journey, and for our three children, Reid, Amery and Landon, who will inherit this West. Contents Foreword ix Acknowledgements xv Overview Map xx Invocation The Magnificent Seven xxi Part One The West We Had: Foundations of Place 1 A Walk into the Past: Setting a Context of Place 3 2 The Creation: Monumentality and Place 17 3 The Creation: People and Place Before European Contact 27 4 Exchanging What We Had for What We Want: The Fur Trade Era in the Canadian West 33 5 The Coming of Death: Diminishment and Loss among the First Peoples of the West 41 Part Two The West We Have: Making the Mountains Our Home 6 Giving Meaning to Mountains and Making Them Ours: Mountaineering and the Aesthetics of Place 47 7 Brushes with Eternity: Landscape Art and Photography in the Canadian Rockies 69 8 Crystal and Cold Blue Chasms: The Literature of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site 77 9 Stemming the Tide of Loss: The Give and Take of Modern Management In and Around the Mountain Parks 91 10 Countering Dispossession: Saving Our Unique Mountain Culture 105 The East Slope: Flowing Toward the Atlantic 11 The Birthplace of Canada’s National Park Ideal: Banff National Park 115 The North Slope: Flowing Toward the Arctic 12 The Birthplace of Western and Northern Rivers: The Columbia Icefield and Jasper National Park 145 The West Slope: Flowing Toward the Pacific 13 The Roof of the Canadian Rockies: Mount Robson Provincial Park 187 14 Small, Remote, but Utterly Wild: Hamber Provincial Park 201 15 The Geography of Wonder: Yoho National Park 215 16 The Road to Radium: Kootenay National Park 243 17 Matterhorn of the Rockies: Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park 257 part three The West We Want: Creating a Culture Worthy of Place 18 Respecting and Honouring the Great Bear: The Grizzly as a Symbol of the West We Want 273 19 Seeing What Is Hidden in Plain Sight: Triumphing Over Diminishment and Loss 299 20 Expanding the World Heritage Site Designation: Managing for Future Integrity Instead of Loss 313 21 Creating a Culture Commensurate with Place 321 Notes 339 index 347 Foreword What World Heritage Status Means for the Canadian Rockies Shortly after HRH Prince Philip officiated at the unveiling of the plaque at Lake Louise to commemorate the inscription of the Cana- dian Rocky Mountain Parks on the World Heritage List, several reports appeared questioning the event. A Calgary Herald editorial asked, “Does this mean we are ceding control over our national parks?” (26 Septem- ber 1985). Subsequent letters to the editor wondered if this meant that the parks were to be renamed and all development in the parks halted. Confusion as to the meaning of inscription on the World Heritage List is found all over the world and clearly an educational shift is needed to explain it. What is the World Heritage Convention? Some resources, both of nature and human culture, serve as bridges between the past and the future. Their importance to humankind tran- scends artificial and transitory boundaries devised for political reasons; they are relevant to all cultures and societies. Such resources do not “belong” only to the nations in which they are located or to the people who live in the twenty-first century. They are a part of the heritage of all of humanity and the legitimate inheritance of future generations, and as such their stewardship should be a matter of global concern. ix These are the noble ideals enshrined in the World Heritage Conven- tion, or as it is more properly known, the International Convention for Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. The adoption of this convention in 1972 united, for the first time, concern for inter- national recognition and protection of the world’s cultural and natural heritage. It placed this concern within a permanent framework that provides a legal, administrative and financial basis through which to implement the convention. At the time of this writing 186 countries have become signatory to the convention and 878 properties have been placed on the select World Heritage List. Of these some 679 are cultural sites, 174 natural, and 25 of mixed designation. Canada at present has 15 sites on the World Heritage List, nine for reasons of exceptional natural qualities and six for extraor- dinary cultural heritage. These include L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site and Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland; the old town of Lunenburg and Joggins Fossil Cliffs in Nova Scotia; Miguasha National Park on the coast of the Gaspé Peninsula and the Historic District of Old Québec in Quebec; Dinosaur Provincial Park, Head- Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, Wood Buffalo National Park and the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks in Alberta; SGaang Gwaii in British Columbia; Nahanni National Park in the Northwest Territories; and Kluane/Wrangell-St. Elias/Glacier Bay/ Tatshenshini-Alsek, which border Alaska and Yukon Territory; and the Rideau Canal in and around Ottawa. Canada also has nine sites on the Tentative List for World Heritage Sites. These include Áísínai’pi (also known as Writing-On-Stone) in Alberta, which has the largest concentration of rock art on the Great Plains of North America; Atikaki/Woodland Caribou/Accord First Nations in Manitoba and Ontario, which is regarded as the quintessen- tial Canadian Shield wilderness preserved in a landscape that speaks to the traditional lifeways of the Anishinabe; and Grande-Pré in Nova Scotia, the emotional and spiritual centre of the Acadian people. The list also includes Gwaii Haanas, the home of the Haida and old-growth coastal rainforests, diverse marine life and remarkable biodiversity, and Ivvavik/Vuntut/Herschel Island (also known as Qikiqtaruk) in the Yukon, which protects remarkable mountains, boreal forests, tundra and wetlands in the context of living Aboriginal adaptation to extreme environments. Also being considered is the Klondike in the Yukon and British Columbia, the most comprehensive and intact of all the cul- tural landscapes that illustrate life before, during and after the world’s Ecology & Wonder x great nineteenth-century gold rushes; Mistaken Point in Newfound- land, which possesses the world’s earliest record of multi-cellular life in ancient oceans; and Quttinirpaaq National Park in Nunavut, which testifies to the earliest evidence of human occupations of the north- ernmost tip of North America. The list ends with Red Bay National Historic Site in Labrador, which is the most complete and best-preserved example known of a sixteenth-century Basque whaling station in North America. A growing number of the world’s most outstanding natural areas have been granted World Heritage status. These include well-known places such as the Galapagos Island, Iguazu Falls, Great Barrier Reef, Serengeti and Sagamartha (Mount Everest) national parks. Other not- so-well-known World Heritage Sites include Srebarna Nature Reserve in Bulgaria, Kahuzi-Biega National Park in Zaire, the Willandra Lakes Region in Australia and Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve in Honduras. There are also three properties on the List of World Heritage in Danger, all in Africa. There is also a second list of areas where the very reason they were designated as World Heritage Sites is under threat. It should also be noted that not all properties nominated are inscribed. Of thirteen sites proposed in 1984, just before the mountain national parks in Canada were designated, only seven natural site submissions were eventually approved. The above, however, does not answer the question of what the Con- vention means. By ratifying the World Heritage Convention, Canada and the other 185 signatories accepted five basic principles of the Convention: 1. To hold in trust for the rest of humanity those parts of the World Heritage that are within its boundaries; 2.