Canadian National Parks Association Collection
available at
http://openarchive.acadiau.ca/cdm/landingpage/collection/CNPA
The Canadian National Parks Association (CNPA) was established in 1923 and became a national pressure group led by W. J. S. (Selby) Walker. The initiatives of the Association and of Selby Walker, a committed conservationist, were inextricably linked. For most of the 29-year life of the Association, Selby Walker was its executive secretary and spokesman, and when he died in 1952 the Association ceased to operate. For a list of primary source locations and secondary source background materials please follow this link. For a list of background materials sorted by theme please follow this link.
The documents that are inventoried in the following lists can be viewed and downloaded from the CNPA collection at http://openarchive.acadiau.ca/cdm/landingpage/collection/CNPA.
Each researcher will have their own strategy for wending their way through the collection, but here is my suggestion:
Review the inventory lists which are in .pdf format to find the document(s) that interest you - for example Bulletin #1
Note the "Accession #" for the document(s) - for example the Accession # for Bulletin #1 is B001
Go to the CNPA collection in Open Archive http://openarchive.acadiau.ca/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/CNPA
Search for the document(s) by using the "advanced search" function and searching in the Canadian National Parks Association collection by the Accession # - for example B001 will take you to an image of that document
Click on the image of that document and you will be provided with information about:
the date of the document, listed as "creation date" - Bulletin #1 was dated January 1, 1924 (01/01/24)
the length of the document, listed as "extent" - Bulletin #1 is 4 pages long
the description of the document, listed as "scope and content" - in the case of Bulletin #1 this list includes the headings of the Bulletin
the portion of the collection in which this document resides, listed as "forms part of" - Bulletin #1 is part of the CNPA/NPAC Bulletins, Newsletters, Circulars, Financial Statements, Executive Circulars, whose Accession numbers all begin with "B", ex. B001
You can now find your way to a .pdf file of the document. Each document was scanned, saved as a .tiff file, converted to a .pdf file and lastly subjected to the "recognize text using OCR" process in Adobe Acrobat
At this stage, you can read through the document or search it by your choice of words - for example in Bulletin #1, searching for "national park" finds 57 instances and searching for "wheeler" (as in A.O. Wheeler) finds 3 instances.
At this stage, you are now on your own as to how you use the documents in your research, but please give credit to this website and the Acadia University Open Archive collection.
Inventory Lists
CNPA/NPAC Bulletins, Newsletters, Circulars, Financial Statements, Executive Circulars B001-B089
Correspondence C001-C110
C001 to C020 = Major Longstaff files
C022 to C033 = Spray Lakes Power Project
C034 to C038 = Clubs and Societies
C039 to C042 = Mt. Castle
C043 to C076 = Youth Hostels Association
C077 to C095 = National Parks Highway Association
C096 to C110 = Alpine Club of Canada
J.W. Dafoe documents JWD001-JWD002
Selby Walker documents SW001-SW007
National Council of Women documents NCW001-NCW027
Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies Archives documents WMC001-WMC013
Federal Forestry department documents F001-F024
Federal Health and Welfare department documents HW001-HW039
National Parks documents PC001-PC056
Federal Transport department documents T001-T012