Tales from the Canadian Rockies, edited by Brian Pat- ton, McClelland and Stewart Inc., 302 pp., paper. v ua Taras Bartara Black BOOK REVIEW f E WERE woken in the night by a ef W tremendous rain shower that battered the roof of our tent, testing its modern claims to water resistance. Hastily, we dug trenches around the tent to tame the mounting rivers of rainwater. In the morning, Mt. Robson was ‘masked by a forbidding wall of grey cloud. That haughty peak never showed itself once on our camping trip. My tale from the Rockies is hardly one of hardship — unlike the early mountaineers who ex- plored, faced unimaginable predicaments, and often died in the Canadian Rockies, and whose voices fill this collection. Brian Patton’s compilation, Tales from the Canadian Rockies, «$ by no means a literary collection. tt aims to outline the historical development of the Rockies, and te capture the spirit of the place that held so many people in awe. Some of the writings labor under wordy pretensions, or are con- siderably dry, but the turn-of-the- century prose adds a particular historical flavor to the book.’ In his account of the ascent of Mt. Brown, for instance, botanist David Douglas poetically describes the spectacular scenery: “The sensation | felt is beyond what | can give utterance to. “Nothing, as far as (he eye could perceive, but mountains such as | was on, and many higher, some rugged beyond any description, striking the mind with horror blended with a sense of the wondrous works of the Almighty.’’ The collection begins, in a rather politically correct way, with native legends. Since natives were not in the habit of keeping copious written records, the collection is more symbolic than representative of native life, But the native sense of sanctity and gratitude for this ‘‘gift of the Creator,’’ the Rockies, sets up an interesting contrast to the subse- quent probings of the Europeans who hack through the bushes, eager to chart the Creator's hand- iwork, ironically, it is through the writ- ings of the Europeans that we learn about the natives’ extraor- dinary “‘bush’' knowledge, for many white men relied on natives to lead them through dangerous mountain passes, breaking trail through the unruly underbrush (then naming discovered peaks and passes after themselves). While the natives seemed to have adapted to the harshness of the land, the white man seems to have thrown himself headlong into it, sometimes disastrously. Exploration parties tolerated bad or no food and “venomous species of winged insect which ... might have bee;i taken for a cross between the buildog and the housefly.” The cuisine was, to use a mod- ern term, “challenging.” Hudson’s Bay Co. governor George Simpson describes a makeshift meal of two stewed par- tridges and pemmican made into “a kind of burgoo.”’ Jesuit missionary Father Pierre de Smet, however, commends cuisine a la sauvage, which, in his case, consisted of a dish contain- ing two bear paws, roast por- cupine and meose’s muzzle, which he “found delicious.” What emerges, especially from the turn-of-the-century section of the collection, is the indomitable spirit of humans, their ingenuity and stamina when faced with the most extreme conditions. Celebrated Rockies guide Tom Wilson, for instance, trekked 70 miles through snow-swept valleys and gorges to eat Christmas dinner with his family and lost some toes in the undertaking. And Chief Kinbasket, acting as . trailblazer for a CPR party who were searching for a pass through the Rockies, fell prey to a grizzly which “stripped the flesh and muscles from one of his thighs.” He wasn’t found till the next morning, but he survived. Later sections of the book offer accounts from mountaineering expeditions and memories of Banff and the Rockies before it was transformed into a tourist mecca. In an entry dated August 1897, MAKE MoTHERS Dh ¥ tah kHET Sikh Ae aly ent? Wty Nor Pat ER ON FRIPAY OB SATAY Migr wits Wwe PIANIST, 82, BRUMEM al Satuepay oR Siniaay.” TRéat Mon 7o ME C85 BAVEDICT OF HER Cercle ale S £ Mites Oe other t MPR. é Wan) 26 -883F ee BOVE Alice Huntington laments the changes wrought on her beloved Banff. At the basin, a favorite swim- ming hole, she complains that “The sanctity of your dip is in- vaded by curious onlookers” (in pre-tour bus days yet...). Earle Birney’s famous poem, David, reads fresher than ever, situated among stories of other mountain climbing mishaps and triumphs. And Andy Russell, in a more re- cent account from 1961, describes his experiences searching for the mighty grizzly during his film- making effort in the Rockies, prov- ing that the rugged wilderness of the Rockies has a lasting effect on the small human beings that scramble in its valleys. 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