The Alpine Club of Canada (ACC) was founded in 1906 in Winnipeg by Elizabeth Parker and Arthur Oliver Wheeler. Parker, a journalist for the Manitoba Free Press, became the club’s first secretary; Wheeler served as first president. The ACC was established as an independent Canadian organization; not a chapter of the American Alpine Club; with support from the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Philosophy. Parker wrote the opening article of the first Canadian Alpine Journal (1907), outlining the club’s focus on environmental protection, scientific study, and mountaineering as national character. Mary Vaux Walcott and Henrietta Tuzo were charter members (1906); the club decreed skirts prohibited on roped climbs. The 1907 Annual Camp in Paradise Valley, in the shadow of Mount Temple, cemented the club’s culture; Parker called it the “altar and hearthstone” of the ACC.

Camps. Wheeler pioneered the “Annual General Mountaineering Camp”; massive tent cities that democratized the Rockies. Early camps included Lake O’Hara (1909) and Consolation Valley (1910), near Moraine Lake.

Swiss instructors. Eduard Feuz Sr. and Christian Haesler Sr., hired by the CPR after Philip Stanley Abbot’s death in 1896, acted as official instructors at the ACC’s inaugural camp (Summit Lake, Yoho, 1906); helping “graduate” the club’s first members and shifting mountaineering from European elite pastime to Canadian sport.

Huts. The ACC operates backcountry huts including the Elizabeth Parker Hut at Lake O’Hara, originally a CPR cabin donated in 1931. The Abbot Pass Hut (demolished 2022) was operated by the club for decades.