Peaks and People

Welcome back to Behind the Exhibit! If you haven’t read Part I yet, start here . Archives & Library intern Amie Lalonde  After planning the content and structure of my exhibit, it was time to start digitizing photographs and textual materials. Over several weeks, I scanned: 303 individual pictures, two albums (that resulted in 480 digital images), 23 documents, and digitized 1 audio file. These 806 digital images came from eleven different archival collections including: the Moore Family fonds, Jim Brewster Family fonds, Pat Brewster fonds, Fred Brewster fonds, Peter and Catharine Whyte and foundation fonds, George Paris fonds, George Vaux X fonds, Helen Wells fonds, and the Banff School District No. 102 fonds. The digitization of archival photographs serves two main purposes:  One is increased access to a portion of the vast photographic collection held in the Archives and Library. While only a fraction of the digitized photographs ended up in the d...

Mountain Women: The Lives of Pearl Brewster Moore and Edmée Moore Reid of Banff  by Amie Lalonde Amie Lalonde joined the Whyte Museum in November through the Young Canada Works internship grant. Amie is a recent graduate from the University of Toronto where she completed her Masters in History in June 2017. Amie’s work in the archives includes, yet is not limited to preservation, arrangement and description of collections in the archives, Amie’s main project is to digitize and curate a digital exhibit on Pearl and Edm é e Moore. Amie has  researched and pulled images and text from various collections to create the online exhibit. This exhibit will provide visitors, local and non-local alike, with a valuable peek into the lives of two Banff women and the community that surrounded them. The Stories Mountain Women: The Lives of Pearl Brewster Moore and Edmée Moore Reid of Banff started off several months ago with an idea to tell the stories of two women born and r...

Lizzie Rummel’s Legacy at Skoki Lodge One of the things that you might notice while reading SkiBig3: How Did We Get Here?  series is that at each step of the way someone made a unique impact on a place. For Mount Norquay, it was Cliff White whose determination to develop skiing in the Canadian Rockies shone through to build that first cabin and establish the first ski club. Cliff then shifted his gaze towards Lake Louise and the Skoki Valley where he would, once again, launch a dream; this time of a backcountry ski lodge. In 1931, Skoki Lodge opened and was initially run as a club operation. The first season saw 48 signatures in the register, almost all of them Banff residents. At this point the lodge did not appear to have a manager. Over the years, and for many different reasons Skoki would be managed by a number of different people, including our founders Peter & Catharine Whyte. However, this post will celebrate a woman whose hospitality, knowledge of the mounta...