Henry James Warre's and Paul Kane's Sketches in the Athabasca ...

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figure 2.17M.P. Bridgland. PyramidMountain and AthabascaRiver Valley from Old FortPoint, Stn. no. 26, Photono. 216, direction southwest,1915 (detail).[Courtesy Jasper National Park.Retrieved from http://bridgland.sunsite.ualberta.ca/main/search.php.]but Kane has foreshortened his perspective a great deal, for only amodern photograph, shot from the east bank of the Athabasca River andwell downriver from the bridge to Jasper Park Lodge and Maligne Lake,let alone from the mouth of Cottonwood Creek (Fig. 2.15), can depict theflat area known as Larocque’s Prairie in anything like the alignment withthe background peaks that Kane drew in this sketch. A photograph shotfrom the same bank of the river as Larocque’s Prairie provides only aslight correlation to Kane’s view, so disturbed has that particular landscapebeen over the intervening decades. 24The same bench that appears in the sketch of Larocque’s Prairiefigures prominently in the next watercolour in the sequence (Fig. 2.16).Misidentified even by Kane for his exhibition in Toronto in November1848 as the “Cascades” range (in today’s western Washington state), thiswatercolour was made from the far (southeast) bank of the AthabascaRiver. 25 “The Athabusca in the mountens,” as Kane called it in his landscapelog, looks across the river and up to Pyramid Mountain and any orall of mounts Cairngorm, Kinross, Zengel, and Buttress. Kane’s vaguedescription of the sketch helps today’s visitor to Jasper understand howlittle of the English-language toponymy of Jasper had been created by the1840s. 26The prospect point of this sketch appears to be downriver from,lower, and closer to the river than what is today called Old Fort Point,but the detail of a photograph (Fig. 2.17) shot by Dominion LandSurveyor Morrison Parsons Bridgland in 1915 from the hillock at OldFort Point provides sufficient orientation to permit the general locationI . S . M a c L a r e n 57
of Kane’s sketch. The advantage of Bridgland’s photograph over acontemporary one is that, although his did not precede the arrival of thetwo railways on the northwest bank of the Athabasca, only 60 yearsseparated it from the time of Kane’s sketch. Certainly, the two versionsresemble one another in the general configuration of Pyramid Mountainthat they depict. Kane has again lowered and foreshortened his perspective,with the result that the bench assumes a heightened prominence,but its orientation to Pyramid Mountain is discernible in Bridgland’sphotograph. For the purposes of comparison, however, a photographshot in October 2006 (Fig. 2.18) provides further clarification of Kane’ssketch. The standpoint for this photograph is an open flat on the rightside of and about halfway along the road leading from the bridge acrossthe Athabasca River to Jasper Park Lodge. The flat sits up from the river,atop a steep, moderately high bank. Across the river and on the rightside of the photo, the draw, or gully, in the bench is located just a fewmetres from the railway rock-cut that lies just east of the turnoff fromHighway 16 to the bridge; the gully of Cottonwood Creek, and theturnoff from Highway 16 into Jasper townsite, is less than one kilometrewest but too far away (to the left) to appear in the photograph. Meanwhile,the draw or gully to the left of centre in the photograph isunnamed and has no creek; Jasper cemetery is located where that gullyemerges from the bench. It appears to be the one that Kane features inthe centre of the middle ground of his sketch.The location of another “sketch in the mountens” (Fig. 2.19) in theAthabasca sequence remains to be determined. It was thought initiallyto resemble the view of Roche Ronde (north of and behind JasperHouse) from Rocky River, with the shoulder of Disaster Point andSyncline Ridge extending in from the right. However, the descent intowhat appears to be a nearly dry riverbed is too great to secure this identification.Moreover, the order suggested by Kane’s pencilled number—37—in the upper left corner suggests a location at least as far upriver asLarocque’s Prairie and today’s bridge. A likelier possibility is somewhereup the Whirlpool River valley, although investigations to date have notyielded a likely candidate. The difficulty with any place very far up theWhirlpool is that the lower reaches of the landscape in the picture planeappear insufficiently snow-covered. After sketching number 36, presumablyon 7 November after camping at Larocque’s Prairie the previousnight, and then proceeding to Old Fort Point, Prairie de la Vache(Buffalo Prairie), past La Montagne de la Grande Traverse (Mount Edith58 Henry James Warre’s and Paul Kane’s Sketches in the Athabasca Watershed, 1846
Page 1 and 2: 1 The University of Alberta PressEd
Page 3 and 4: Published byThe University of Alber
Page 5 and 6: 7 Laying the Tracks for Tourism 233
Page 7 and 8: figure 2.1Henry James Warre, RockyM
Page 9: figure 2.3Henry James Warre,Jasper
Page 13 and 14: figure 2.7Paul Kane, Jasper’s Lak
Page 15 and 16: figure 2.9Paul Kane, AthabascaRiver
Page 17 and 18: Solomon Creek (downriver) and Fiddl
Page 19 and 20: the order in which he made the sket
Page 21: figure 2.15I.S. MacLaren. Athabasca
Page 25 and 26: figure 2.20Paul Kane, Snow Scene in
Page 27 and 28: figure 2.22I.S. MacLaren. Committee
Page 29 and 30: Appendix 1Kane’s Field Notes, 30
Page 31 and 32: Author’s NoteI thank Bob Hallam a
Page 33 and 34: subject to Jasper House. (The entry
Page 35 and 36: 28. George Simpson, Fur Trade and E
Page 37 and 38: Royal Ontario Museum: 92 ETH, 42-50
Page 39 and 40: Canadian Congress on Leisure Resear
Page 41 and 42: ———. Report of the Panel on t
Page 43 and 44: 2: 82-140. London: Samuel Curtis, 1
Page 45 and 46: Hart, E.J. Diamond Hitch: The Early
Page 47 and 48: ———. A History of Canada’s
Page 49 and 50: Nelson, J.G., and R.C. Scace, eds.
Page 51 and 52: Speares, Betty. “Mary, Mary, Quit

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