July 28, 2022
I have to apologize for not having written very much about the progress of Capturing The Summit. I’m about to write about events that happened back in the spring! Better late than never, I suppose.
It had been difficult to find a way to get to the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, located in Banff. Alberta. Travel restrictions due to the pandemic and commitments here in Vancouver did not allow for a research break for awhile. But over the course of March 2022, tucked in among a road trip into the Rockies with family, it happened. And it was worth it!
For anyone who has not stopped in at the Whyte Museum Archives & Special Collections, it is a treasure trove of mountaineering lore, housing the Alpine Club of Canada Library and much else besides. But as I only had a couple of days to search their textual and photographic records of the Mount Logan Expedition, I was keen to hit the ground running. With me was my eldest son Michael, who was a great help in sorting through many file folders holding photographs and correspondence going back to the 1920s.
Telling everything here may give too much away in advance of the book’s planned release in the spring, but needless to say Michael and I uncovered important information about why Hamilton Mack Laing was brought on board as naturalist and cinematographer for the expedition. Laing’s reputation as a self-sufficient naturalist brought him to the attention of H.F. Lambart, deputy leader of the expedition, and even though Laing was not a mountaineer, his abilities as a naturalist, writer and photographer made him the right choice in the eyes of the expedition, to capture the expedition on film as it made its way to the Logan massif.
The staff at the Whyte Museum Archives & Special Collections were friendly and helpful and researching a mountaineering expedition surrounded by the magnificent peaks of the Rockies made for an extraordinary experience back in March.
