Henrietta Tuzo

Henrietta Laetitia Tuzo (née Tuzo) was the first recognized Canadian-born female mountaineer; a monumental figure in the history of Canadian alpinism. Born in Victoria, British Columbia, she was the daughter of Dr. Henry Atkinson Tuzo, a Hudson’s Bay Company physician whose work took him by canoe with fur brigades across the west. Raised partly in England, she returned to Western Canada in 1898, drawn to the mountains of her birth. In Banff she met John Armistead Wilson, a Scottish engineer who became a pivotal figure in Canadian civil aviation; they married in 1907 and settled in Ottawa.

First ascent of Mount Tuzo (1906). The defining moment of her career occurred in July 1906. Accompanied by Swiss guide Christian Kaufmann, Tuzo made the first ascent of Peak Seven in the Valley of the Ten Peaks; Sagowa in Samuel Allen’s Stoney nomenclature; 3,246 m above Moraine Lake. The route ascended the couloir between Mount Bowlen and Tonsa, crossed a high snowfield behind Peaks Four, Five, and Six, and reached the summit. The descent proved more perilous: a storm moved in, destabilizing slopes; Tuzo recalled that “huge boulders plowed down over our tracks” moments after they had passed. When the summit cairn was later located and the ascent confirmed, the Geographic Board of Canada renamed Peak Seven Mount Tuzo in her honour (1907); a rare distinction for a living female mountaineer.

ACC and advocacy. Tuzo was a charter member of the Alpine Club of Canada (1906). Her participation challenged Edwardian gender norms and proved that women were capable of high-consequence alpinism. After moving to Ottawa she remained a fierce advocate for the protection of Canada’s National Parks. Her son, John Tuzo Wilson, became a world-renowned geophysicist and key contributor to the theory of plate tectonics.