As much as any single person, Elizabeth Parker was responsible for the formation of the Alpine Club of Canada.
For many years, climber and surveyor A .O . Wheeler had a desire to begin a Canadian alpine club “similar to the European and other big alpine clubs of the world representing mountain ranges such as the Canadian Cordillera,” but could not rouse sufficient interest and support, meeting instead with skepticism and indifference. In 1902, in a conversation at Glacier House, Rogers Pass with Charles Fay, Wheeler decided to form a Canadian chapter of the American Alpine Club, which Fay was in the process of forming . When Wheeler tried to garner support for the idea through the country’s leading newspapers, Elizabeth Parker, then on the staff of the Winnipeg Free Press, chastised him for his lack of patriotism. Wheeler asked Parker to support his “plan A”, a truly Canadian club, and got the support in spades. As Wheeler said of the Club’s co-founder: “Her cultured and forcible style of writing, her keen sense of vision and invariable accuracy of statement was one of the most helpful factors of the Club’s foundation.” Largely due to the efforts of Elizabeth Parker and the Winnipeg Free Press, the Alpine Club of Canada was formed in Winnipeg on March 27, 1906; Mrs. Parker was one of six original honorary members.
The present Wiwaxy cabin was the first hut in the Lake O’Hara area, built in 1912 by the Canadian Pacific Railway. This was the same year that the ACC applied for and was granted a two-acre lease for a future hut on the south shore of Lake O’Hara, the site of the Club’s 1909 annual camp. In 1919, the CPR built the present Elizabeth Parker Hut, and by 1923 had built a further 11 huts in the meadow. In 1923/24, the CPR moved all but the first two huts down to the lakeshore, and seven years later donated the last two in the meadow to the ACC.
The Club was able to exchange its lakeshore lease for a meadow lease, and in 1931 was in business with a hut at Lake O’Hara – the Elizabeth Parker Hut.
As you can expect with log buildings, the Elizabeth Parker Hut has required substantial renovations and upkeep. Over the years the hut has seen a new floor, a new roof, new timbers and new foundation logs, as well as completely new interior furnishings. The outhouses are new, a stove in the Wiwaxy Cabin has been added and the entire meadow around the hut has been rehabilitated and reseeded. Over the past couple of years, the Huts Committee has worked very hard to restore the appearance of the hut as closely as possible to its original state. The Canadian government designated the Elizabeth Parker Hut as a Federal Heritage Building in 1997.
“her memory is preserved by the very popular tribute inscribed with her name, the ‘Elizabeth Parker Hut’, maintained in one of the most charming centres of the Canadian Rockies, close by beautiful Lake O’Hara ” (Quotation from Elizabeth Parker’s obituary by A . O Wheeler, CAJ #29
