Ecology and Wonder in the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks Heritage Site
Distributed for Athabasca University Press
Ecology and Wonder in the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks Heritage Site
The greatest cultural achievement in the Western Canadian mountain region is what has been preserved, not what has been developed.
Protecting the spine of the Rocky Mountains will preserve crucial ecological functions.
Because the process of ecosystem diminishment and species loss has been slowed, an ecological thermostat has been kept alive. This may well be an important defence against future climate change impacts on the Canadian west.
Ecology and Wonder is a must-read for those who appreciate Western Canada’s breathtaking landscape.
380 pages | © 2010
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements xv
Overview Map xx
Invocation The Magnificent Seven xxi
Part OneThe 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 TwoThe 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 North