Mighty Mountain Gals (Canada)

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MAGGIE TABBERER TALKS TRAVEL WALKING VICTORIA’S GOLDFIELDS ROCKY MOUNTAIN GALS QUEENSLAND RAIL RIDE

CANADA

Mighty mountain gals Move over blokes, these girls have their place in the Rockies too. They don’t make movies or sing folk songs about them, but these gals have earned their place in history. By Roderick Eime

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Calvert, on the other hand, was born age of 72. She skied well into her 60s, ertainly the heavy lifting and just as Dorothy was settling into her earned her pilot’s licence at 63 and daring feats of endurance and remote mountain bedsit and went on received Canada’s highest civilian discovery are attributed to the to become Canada’s first female park honour, the Order of Canada. famous males of the North American warden. An accomplished climber and She once wrote: “I have decided that frontier, but Banff’s Whyte Museum author, Kathy spent 30 years working life is a balancing of things. If you want of the Canadian Rockies has not in the parks as a warden and rescue one thing you have to give up another, forgotten the other 50 per cent of the team leader. you just can’t have or do all you want, population with its recent exhibition One of the pioneering heroines and it means trying to figure out which ‘Women Adventurers in the Rockies’. of the Canadian Rockies is most of the alternatives to choose.”

The exhibition tells the story of ten certainly Mary Schäffer Warren who The job of a mountain warden was notable women, five contemporary rose above the meagre and five from the past expectations of late who embody the spirit ‘I defy the annals of chivalry to furnish century women of the North American the record of a life more wild and perilous 19th to become a famous mountain frontier so than that of a Rocky Mountain man.’ explorer, traveller typified by the towns and adventurer in her of Banff, Whistler, – Francis Parkman (1823-93) own right. Born into a Kamloops, Jasper and American author and historian. wealthy Pennsylvania Calgary.

Quaker family in 1861, Catherine Robb Whyte, as the Mary Sharples was a precocious child a man’s job, and in Dorothy Carleton’s name suggests, was one on the who excelled at school but lacked the day, her job description was to keep founders of the Whyte Museum along practical skills other girls took for house and family for her husband, Ed. with her husband, the artist and local granted.

Despite her confession of: ‘I’m not chap, Peter Whyte. A philanthropist, In 1889, Mary took a trip across a real adventurer like those other patron of the arts and a considerable Canada, an event that proved the women’, Dorothy brought up a family talent herself, Catherine was active in turning point in her life. She met in a one-room cabin in the Canadian the community and stayed active until her future husband, the doctor and back country from 1946. Kathy her death from cancer in 1979 at the 74 Get Up & Go

OPPOSITE: Catherine Robb Whyte, 1977 (Whyte Museum). INSET: Mary Schäffer Warren (seated, white jersey) with her team in the Rocky Mountains (Whyte Museum).

botanist Charles Schäffer, and fell hopelessly in love with the Canadian Rocky Mountains. But it wasn’t until after her husband and both parents died suddenly in 1903 that Mary came into her own. Her delicate financial position and her tenacious commitment to complete her husband’s life work saw her become increasingly self-reliant and independent.

“All this taught me such a bitter lesson, to count my pennies, to lean on noone, and make the best of the crumbling fortunes,” she said of that time. Four years later she had published and illustrated the work Alpine Flora of the Canadian Rockies with the help of botanist Stewardson Brown and a young guide Billy Warren who she later married.

Mary passed away in 1937 but her considerable legacy includes not only exquisite illustrations but also a valuable photographic record created out of necessity. She is credited as being Jasper National Park’s first tourist and with the rediscovery of

Maligne Lake. Her failing health prevented her from continuing the close brushwork required for the detailed illustrations; instead she became expert at hand-colouring her photographs to the point where they were exhibited internationally.

Mary Schäffer Warren continues to be an inspiration to young people and women in particular. She has been the subject of numerous books and documentaries and her images can be found throughout the Canadian Rockies.

Another woman who does not feature in the Whyte Museum’s display, but nevertheless played a significant part in the opening up of the Canadian frontier, was Susan Agnes Bernard, the second wife of Canada’s first Prime Minister and later, 1st Baroness Macdonald of Earnscliffe. Lady Agnes became a media celebrity, not just for her forthright and plain-speaking style and high profile spat with rival, Princess Louise, but also for her most unusual thrill-seeking passion.

In 1886 she assured the new transcontinental railway’s permanent media coverage by riding on a chair nailed to the cowcatcher of the locomotive for more than 1000km.

Even as the hardened traditionalists might argue the significance of the female contribution to Canada’s history, there is little doubt they enhanced the spectacle and glamour of an era typified by grandiose male chest-beating and stereotypical derring-do. •

Travel facts Visit significant frontier towns aboard the famous Rocky Mountaineer with any of the four enriching itineraries offered. [@] Visit: www. rockymountaineer.com; [@] www.tourismwhistler.com; [@] www.hellobc.com; [@] www.whyte.org

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