Tom Wilson

Thomas Edmonds Wilson was the pathfinder of the Canadian Rockies: a cultural broker between the Canadian Pacific Railway surveys, the Stoney Nakoda, and the “Golden Age” of mountaineering. His life tied together the North-West Mounted Police, the last spike at Craigellachie, and the invention of Banff National Park as a place of imperial leisure.

CPR packer and the Bath Creek rescue. As a packer for the mountain surveys, Wilson managed strings of horses for the engineers. He worked under Major A.B. Rogers (“Hell Bells,” “the Swearing Major”) and in July 1881 saved Rogers from drowning in a glacier-fed stream near Kicking Horse Pass; later named Bath Creek. That rescue helped secure the route that led to Rogers Pass and the southern CPR line.

1882: The “discoveries.” On 21 August 1882; Wilson’s 23rd birthday; he was camped near the Pipestone and Bow confluence. Hearing thunderous rumbling, he asked the Stoney Nakoda camped nearby; the guide Edwin Hunter (“Goldseeker”) explained it was “Snow Mountain” avalanching into the “Lake of Little Fishes” (Ho-run-num-nay). Hunter led Wilson to the lake. Wilson later said: “As God is my judge, I never in all my explorations saw such a matchless scene.” He named it Emerald Lake for its colour; it was renamed Lake Louise in 1884 to honour Princess Louise. That same season, tracking stray horses in the Yoho valley near Field, he came upon another vivid lake and also called it Emerald Lake (it kept the name). He was the first non-Indigenous person to view Takakkaw Falls. Wilson’s “discovery” was an act of colonial documentation; the lake was already known to the Stoney Nakoda, and Hunter’s role was essential.

Rebellion and the last spike. In 1885 Wilson joined Major Sam Steele’s Scouts during the North-West Rebellion, pursuing Big Bear’s forces. He was present at Craigellachie on 7 November 1885 when Donald Smith drove the Last Spike of the CPR. He had packed for the surveyors who found the pass and now witnessed the line completed.

King of outfitters. Tom Wilson & Co. became the premier outfitting operation in the Rockies. In 1884 he had already blazed two trails to Lake Louise and escorted the first white woman (Mrs. James Ross) there; by 1887 he had opened a new trail for the CPR and facilitated the first log chalet at the lake; the forerunner of the Chateau Lake Louise. His outfit trained the next generation of guides: Bill Peyto, Jimmy Simpson (who would build Num-Ti-Jah Lodge), Fred Stephens, and Billy Warren. He outfitted the mountaineering elite; including James Outram and Edward Whymper for attempts on Mount Assiniboine; and assisted in the recovery of Philip Stanley Abbot’s body from Mount Lefroy in 1896, the first mountaineering fatality in the Canadian Rockies. He advised Mary Schäffer and provided horses and guides for her search for Maligne Lake. Walter Wilcox’s party, with Wilson’s support, first reached Moraine Lake in 1899.