Selby Walker and the Canadian National Parks Association:

Protectors of the Banff Environment

Manuscript for paper presented at NASSH, 2000 by Susan Markham-Starr

Introduction

This presentation draws from a set of documents of the Canadian National Parks Association, including bulletins and correspondence that I have reconstructed over the past 16 years from the collections of 13 individuals and organizations in six archives in Canada.^[1] The existing presented and published information about the CNPA is scarce and not always accurate.^[2] The significance of this paper to our understanding of history is the contribution that it will make to the history of the mountains, and to the understanding of the role that interest groups have played in the preservation and promotion of such places for sport and recreation activities.

The initiatives of Selby Walker and of the Canadian National Parks Association are inextricably linked. For most of the life of the Association, Walker was its spokesman and when he died, the Association ceased to operate. This presentation reviews the work of Walker and the Association in attempting first to protect Banff National Park, and later to expand and protect Canada’s national parks system.

The Walker Family

William James Selby Walker was born in 1879 to Colonel James Walker and his wife Euphenia. The Colonel, who had distinguished careers in military, police and civilian life, was declared in 1975 to be Calgary, Alberta’s “Citizen of the Century”. The Colonel arrived in Calgary region in 1880 with the North West Mounted Police at the age of 24.^[3] Over the course of the next 56 years he managed the British American Horse Ranch Company (the Cochrane Ranche), acquired a sawmill, set up a pony express service, became Calgary’s first Immigration Officer, and then its first Justice of the Peace and Notary Public, set up Calgary’s first telephone operation, was the first president of the Exhibition Association, was chairman of the first civic committee, helped organize the first school, organized the first scouting and cadet groups, and after years of being associated with the military he volunteered to go overseas into World War One at age 68.^[4]

This was a daunting act for Selby to follow, but in his own calm, quiet way he made major contributions to local and national advocacy for the protection of Canada’s natural environment.

This Place - Banff

The area that we know call Banff National Park was originally 10 square miles reserved by the federal government in 1885, to protect the land “from sale or settlement or squatting.”^[5] The motives for this reservation were not altogether altruistic ones to conserve or to preserve the natural environment, but rather to control use of the hot springs, as noted in the first legislation:

that whereas near the station of Banff on the Canadian Pacific Railway, in the provisional District of Alberta, North West Territories, there have been discovered several hot mineral springs which promise to be of great sanitary advantage to the public, and in order that proper control of the lands surrounding these springs may be vested in the Crown, the said lands in the territory including said springs and in their immediate neighbourhood, be and they hereby reserved from sale or settlement or squatting.^[6]

Over the next two years the concept of what this parcel of land could be for Canadians expanded, from the 1885 conception of hot springs and their sanitary advantage, to a more broad

class=Section2>

definition of park land use. The 1887 Rocky Mountain Park Act stated that:

The said tract of land is hereby reserved and set apart as a public park and pleasure ground for the benefit, advantage and enjoyment of the people of Canada....^[7]

The Park’s boundaries were expanded to include an area of 250 square miles in 1887, and then to 4,900 square miles in 1902; then reduced to 1,800 square miles in 1912, and expanded again to 2751 square miles in 1917.^[8] Through the years of expansion and contraction there were many disputes over the role of the park - should it conserve the natural environment or should that natural environment be used for the economic benefit of the region and the country? When the park was established, the Prime Minister of the time, John A. Macdonald declared that parts of it would be “a perennial source of revenue, and if carefully managed it will more than many times recuperate [visitors] or recoup the Government for any present expenditure.”^[9] There were various ways to recoup the Government’s treasury - tourists were one, but so were the timber, mineral and water resources. And it was the potential use of the water resources of the Spray River and Spray Lakes that was the catalyst for the rallying of opposition to resource use, and the organization of that opposition into an advocacy group, the Canadian National Parks Association.

Enter The Canadian National Parks Association

Selby Walker was present at the 1923 annual meeting of the Alpine Club of Canada at which the Canadian National Parks Association (CNPA) was founded. Reacting to the proposal by Calgary Power Company to dam Banff National Park’s Spray River and convert the Spray Lakes into a reservoir, a group of the Alpine Club’s executive members orchestrated the creation of this Association which was similar in spirit to the National Parks Association in the United States.^[10] I use the word “orchestrated” very deliberately, because this Association grew out of concerns for park conservation,^[11] was planned at the executive’s winter meeting in Vancouver,^[12] and announced in the brochure for the ACC annual camp.^[13] The Commissioner of the National Parks system was invited to the camp and to the inaugural meeting.^[14] Nothing was left to chance.

The CNPA's objects were:

(a) The preservation of the National Parks of Canada in their entirety for the use of the people of Canada and of the world, and the prevention of detriment to them through the invasion of commercial interests.

(b) The spreading of propaganda with the object of attracting people to them.

(c) The preservation of their natural beauties for the benefit of mankind, and of the fauna and flora intact, for educational, scientific, artistic and recreational purposes. To maintain them inviolate as symbols of the great heritage we possess in this wide-spreading Dominion of Canada.^[15]

Inviting J.B. Harkin, the Commissioner of National Parks, was a wise decision on the part of the organizers. Harkin was a fierce advocate for preserving the parks, while also promoting their use by the citizens of Canada. His aims matched some of the objects of the Association, as noted in this extract from his papers:

What is needed in Canada today is an informed protest against any vulgarization of the beauty of our National Parks or any invasion of their sanctity. .Negative or passive good-will that does nothing is of little use. We need “fierce loyalties” to back action.^[16]

It may be suggested that he was hoping that the Association possessed some of those “fierce loyalties” and would engage in “informed protest.”

The first executive of the Association was drawn from Alpine Club of Canada members at the Larch Valley camp and other members who were subsequently convinced of the value of the Association’s work. Some of the propaganda used in this convincing included personal letters from the first Secretary, A.O. Wheeler, with phrases of moral suasion such as “I know that you are tremendously interested in the conservation of our National Parks for the people of Canada and of the world, and I sincerely hope that you will be able to help in this cause in this way.”^[17]

The Association's membership was composed of individual and club members. Through club memberships the CNPA was able to spread its "propaganda" to all members of a given club, such as a Rotary Club, Canadian Club, Council of Women or Automobile Association, anywhere in the country. Its individual members lived not only in Canada, but also in the United States, England and Scotland.^[18] At one time it claimed to represent 100,000 members,^[19] although most of those “members” may not have known that they were a member of the CNPA though organizations such as the Gyro Club of Vancouver, the Canadian Club of Regina or the Natural History Society of Manitoba.^[20]

W.J.S. (Selby) Walker

Selby Walker’s 28 year involvement with the CNPA began at its very first meeting. He was on the first Association executive, acting as its Western Vice-President from 1923 to 1926. He then became its President from 1926 to 1927. In mid 1927 he became the Association’s Executive-Secretary, a position he would hold for the next 24 years.

During those 24 years Walker was a realtor and insurance agent by trade, and a committed environmentalist in his volunteer activities. His daughter, Mary, suggested that “he was much more interested in the National Parks Association than he was in insurance.”^[21]For all of this time, the Association was essentially a one-person volunteer operation. Walker wrote most of its correspondence to both supporters and opponents of the Association. His daughter stated that “he read constantly,”^[22] and the contents of his reading often found their way to the correspondence as he engaged in what Harkin would have considered “indignant protest” against both inaction and mis-action. He lobbied individuals and government departments. He produced almost all of its publications including a newsletter and bulletin service - about 150 issues over the years. They were produced sporadically - in his daughter’s words “when the spirits moved him,”^[23] have inconsistent numbering and often have no dates - typical of a one-person volunteer operation - but they are a splendid resource to give us a picture of the times and the issues facing Canada’s national parks.

This one-person volunteer operation, with some help from his daughter Mary, worked ceaselessly to promote the mandate of the Canadian National Parks Association. The lobbying efforts included extensive letter writing campaigns to anyone whom he perceived able to have positive impact - newspaper editors, public servants, politicians, and fellow advocates. His wife, Ruth Walker, described the work that he did as writing to “big name people” all across the country encouraging them to join the CNPA “so that their names would carry weight” with the federal government.^[24] He also gave numerous lectures and slide presentations encouraging people to visit the national parks, apparently based on the strategy that if these people appreciated that national parks they would oppose any commercial exploitation of these parks and would make their opposition known to the decision makers.^[25] He used some very good advocacy strategies, including getting the coal operators onside when the Calgary Power Company was attempting to get permission to dam the Spray River and Spray Lakes to produce hydro-electric power.^[26] His argument was that producing electrical power from hydro would mean cutting the amount of coal used to create electricity. The coal operators then used their political influence to attempt to stop the Calgary Power Company initiative.^[27]

Those same decision makers had mixed views of Walker’s efforts. In 1936, one national parks official viewed the Association as being “of great value to the work of the National Parks.”^[28] A decade later, another official noted that “Mr. Walker in Calgary seems to have been running an almost ‘one man’ show for some years largely devoted to criticising Canada’s National Parks administration because it does not equal that of the United States.”^[29] There must have been some impact of the Association’s work as an advocate for national parks, as it appears that there were at least two organizations vying to position themselves as the advocate for national parks - at one point, in 1944, the president of the Canadian Forestry Association was promoting a reorganization of the National Parks Association in affiliation with the Forestry Association and suggesting that “a change-over [could] be brought about as a bloodless operation in time.” And if this did not happen, other organizations would move to the forefront in advocacy and the “National Parks Association possibly [would] simply disappear.”^[30] Was that wishful thinking?

Selby Walker was a shy, mild-mannered man who lived in the shadow of the “Citizen of the Century,” but made his own substantial contribution as the voice and pen of the Canadian National Parks Association. He was described by a newspaper as “a retiring man,”^[31] by his daughter as “an introvert” who “wrote much better than he talked,”^[32] and by his wife as “a quiet man who lived in his father’s shadow.”^[33] His intense commitment to the mandate of the Association as explained by his daughter was that "he did it because he felt it was terribly, terribly necessary."^[34] When he became seriously ill in 1950 and died in 1952, the Association disintegrated. The obituaries in the Calgary newspapers and in the Alpine Club Journal all noted his tireless work for the causes of nature and conservation, noting that “he was always willing to give his assistance to any worthy cause,”^[35] and as a “founder” and “the moving spirit” of the CNPA. ^[36]

The rest of the CNPA

While Walker was the stable force in the Association as its executive-secretary for 24 years, its executive and its mandate changed periodically. The executive positions were often held by officials of allied organizations - for example, the Alpine Club of Canada, the National Council of Women, and the Canadian Automobile Association. In the early years, representation from the Alpine Club focussed the Association on the protection of national parks - their domain in Western Canada. While the first mandate of the Association was to oppose a proposed dam in Banff National Park in Alberta, that mandate changed several times over its 29 year life. When the federal government changed the park boundaries in 1930, the proposed dam was no longer in the park, and the primary issue that had led to the formation of the Association was now a nonissue.

An organization faced with the reality of its mandate no longer being a high profile issue can either fade away or change its mandate to reflect the varied interests of its executive and issues of the time - the CNPA took the latter course of action, that of change. The National Council of Women's representation on the executive brought attention to the wise use of both human and natural resources, and thus a focus on leisure and the unemployed, in addition to parks. The long tenure of representatives from the Automobile Association coincided with increasing interest in travel and tourism, and the attendant concern about scenery that characterized much of the later years of the Association. Concerns about wise forestry practices corresponded with those interests in tourism and the need to have pleasant looking scenery. While these interests could be broadly described as being in the “public interest”, they often represented the “self interest” of the individuals and groups who were on the executive.

A review of the letterhead of the Association shows this changing mandate. Through the 1920's the Association was to “support the preservation of our national parks.”^[37] Through the 1930's and early 1940's it promoted “an hour a day every day in the open air” and billed itself as being an organization of “patriotic Canadians from coast to coast in support of national parks and tributary highways”; then “patriotic Canadians in support of national parks, tributary highways and forestry”; and then “a non-political organization...supporting national parks, tributary highways, recreational travel and modern forestry.”^[38] The Association’s view of itself as being “nonpolitical” is one with which most of us would not agree - they may not have been allied with any one political party, but they were certainly engaged in political activity.

The changing mandate can be attributed both to the external social, economic and political environments of the Association, and to its internal political structure. As the situation which the CNPA was formed to oppose changed, so did the Association. In 1930 the National Parks Act was changed to amend the boundary of Banff National Park, thus the proposed dam and reservoir were no longer in the Park. As the Depression of the 1930's proceeded, the CNPA focussed on several related topics: the role of leisure in the life of the unemployed, the fledgling travel industry, the need for highways to bring visitors to the national parks, and the possibility of using those highways as public works projects to provide relief work for the unemployed. Forestry became part of the Association's concerns as it advocated modern forestry practices which would make wise use of the resource, while maintaining the relatively pristine scenery adjacent to the highways - what we now refer to as "multiple use of resources." After World War Two the Association continued to integrate the potentially conflicting ideologies of protection and use by promoting both conservation of national parks and national park holidays.^[39]

During the 1930's and 1940's one theme runs through the Association's correspondence and publications - that theme includes leisure, recreation and fitness. At the bottom of each Bulletin was a cartoon first labelled “Walking has always been a popular recreation,”^[40] then “Hike for Health,”^[41] and later “An hour a day every day in the open air.”^[42] One interesting idea from Europe that the CNPA promoted in the 1930's was the German “Youth and Out Into the Open” movement, with the pro-German statement that “the German government is keeping Germany on its feet by encouraging young German men and women to keep on their feet.”^[43] The German movement was modified to suit the Canadian situation with support for 1937 attempt to establish a Federal Ministry of Recreation;^[44] support for the national health and physical fitness; and the need to deal with the post war population increase.^[45]

One way of analysing the work of advocacy groups such as the CNPA is according to the typology developed by Higgins. Higgins considers interest groups to be “either attempting to change some element of the status quo or trying to preserve some element of it in the face of a perceived threat.”^[46] The Canadian National Parks Association was formed as an effort to preserve an aspect of the status quo through its mandate to preserve parks and natural beauties, it attempted to preserve and protect the mountain parks in the face of efforts to dam a river and to extract resources. The Association's mandate continued in a preservation mode throughout the CNPA's life. However, when the first crisis was over, the Association's work expanded to include the promotion of outdoor recreation, health, fitness, tourism, forestry and planning concerns - all efforts to change the status quo.

Culmination and Beginning

This presentation marks the culmination of this research project and the beginning of efforts to interest current parks interest groups (such as the Friends of Banff National Park or the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society) in publishing the bulletins and correspondence in a form that will enable other researchers to continue this investigative work on the activities and impact of the CNPA. It appears fitting that this material about Selby Walker and the Association should be presented at NASSH in Banff - mere miles from the site of the founding of the Association 77 years earlier.

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[1]. The archives and collections are:

National Archives of Canada (NAC)

RG 29 Health

RG 84 National Parks

MG28 I25 National Council of Women

Provincial Archives of Alberta (PAA)

Charles Henry Grant Papers

Provincial Archives of British Columbia (PABC)

MS-0677 Frederick Victor Longstaff Papers

MS-1095 Frederick Charles Bell Papers

Glenbow Alberta Institute Archives (GAIA)

M1703 Women’s Canadian Club of Calgary

M2169 Canadian Hostelling Association

M2210 Coal Operators association

M4797 Alpine Club of Canada

University of Alberta Archives (UAA)

William Pearce Papers

Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies Archives (WMCRA)

Alpine Club of Canada Collection

Fred C. and Marcella E. Bell Collection

[2]. For example “Major Walker issued periodical bulletins....No trace of them exists in our Departmental Library” and “As far as available records show, it [CNPA] remained in existence until about 1937" in a letter from A.T. Davidson, Parks Canada to M. Andrews, Archives of the Canadian Rockies, December 2, 1976, WMCRA, 13.117 C16d Pam;

“while the Spray River cause was also lost, no large base of public support for the Canadian national parks emerged and the National Parks Association faded from view” in K McNamee, “From Wild Places to Endangered Species: A History of Canada’s National Parks,” in Parks and Protected Areas in Canada: Planning and Management, P. Dearden and R. Rollins (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993), 27; and

several statements by Henderson that the National and Provincial Parks Association of Canada was the first national parks advocacy group in Canada, in G. Henderson, “James Bernard Harkin: The Father of Canadian National Parks,” Borealis 5 (Fall 1994): 28-33.

[3]. D. Elphinstone, Inglewood Bird Sanctuary: A Place for All Seasons (Calgary: Rocky Mountain Books, 1990), 13.

[4]. Elphinstone, Inglewood, 13-18.

[5]. House of Commons, Order in Council No. 2917, November 28, 1885.

[6]. W.F. Lothian, A History of Canada’s National Parks, Volume 1 (Ottawa: Parks Canada, 1976), 20, citing Order in Council No. 2917, November 28 1885.

[7]. Lothian, History, 26, citing Statutes of Canada, 1887, 50-51 Victoria, c32.

[8]. A.R. Byrne, Man and Landscape Change in the Banff National Park Area before 1911, National Park Series: Studies in Land Use History and Landscape Change, ed. R.C. Scace, no. 1 (Ottawa: Parks Canada, 1968), 143.

[9]. House of Commons, Debates of the House of Commons, May 3 1887, 233.

[10]. A.O. Wheeler, “Canadian National Parks Association,” Alpine Club of Canada Gazette, December 1923, 6.

[11]. “Enter: National Parks Association of Canada,” Bulletin of the National Parks Association, October 9 1923.

[12]. “Proposed Agenda for Annual Meeting” PABC, MS677 Vol 393 f166A.

[13]. “Alpine Club of Canada Eighteenth Annual Camp,” NAC RG84 Vol. 102 U36-1 Vol. 3.

[14]. Letter from S.H. Mitchel to J.B. Harkin, NAC RG84 Vol. 102 U36-1 Vol. 3.

[15]. Wheeler, “Canadian National Parks Association,” 7.

[16]. J.B. Harkin, The History and Meaning of the National Parks of Canada, ed. H.R. Larson (Saskatoon: H.R. Larson Publishing Co., 1957), 15.

[17]. Letter A.O. Wheeler to F.V. Longstaff, December 14, 1923, PABC MS677 Vol 393 f166A.

[18]. Canadian National Parks Association, Constitution and List of Members, 1925.

[19]. “List of Organizations Protesting Against the Proposed Spray Lakes Project” NAC RG 84 Vol. 1956 U1 Vol. 4 Pt. 2.

[20]. Constitution and List of Members, 1925.

[21]. Mary Lynas, interview with S. Markham, June 4 1991.

[22]. Mary Lynas.

[23]. Mary Lynas.

[24]. Ruth Walker, interview for Century Calgary project, November 13, 1973, GAIA Century Calgary fonds.

[25]. Ruth Walker.

[26]. Letter W.J.S. Walker to R.M. Young, December 11, 1923, GAIA M2210 f110.

[27]. Letter Coal Operators Association to Premier J.E. Brownlee, December 21, 1926, GAIA M2210 f110.

[28]. Letter F. Williamson to R.A. Gibson, December 29, 1936, NAC RG 84 Vol. 107 U 125.

[29]. Memo to Mr. Smart, December 9 1946, NAC RG84 Vol. 171 U125-17 pt.1.

[30]. Memo Controller to Mr. Stead, October 17 1944, NAC RG84 Vol.171 U125-17 pt.1.

[31]. “W.J. Selby Walker, 73, Old Time Resident Dies,” Albertan, July 22 1952.

[32]. Mary Lynas.

[33]. Ruth Walker.

[34]. Mary Lynas.

[35]. Albertan, July 22 1952.

[36]. “Major W.J. Selby Walker,” Canadian Alpine Journal, 36 (1953): 128.

[37]. Canadian National Parks Association Bulletin, Number 4, January 1 1928.

[38]. CNPA Newsletter No. 48, CNPA Bulletin No. 56, NPAC Bulletin No. 115.

[39]. NPAC Bulletin No. 155, December 30 1950.

[40]. CNPA News Letter No. 39.

[41]. CNPA News Letter No. 48.

[42]. CNPA Bulletin No. 62.

[43]. CNPA News Letter No. 39.

[44]. CNPA Circular #34, January 15 1937.

[45]. CNPA Bulletin #150, December 31 1949.

[46]. D.J.H. Higgins, Local and Urban Politics in Canada, (Toronto: Gage Educational Publishing Company, 1986), 258.