Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 1.djvu/13

4 all parts of the Dominion was a surprise, and ought to have been a rebuke to us who had loudly lamented Canadian indifference to a sport for which Nature had provided so vast a playground on our own immediate territory. We had awakened out of sleep, and would redeem the past by a vigorous mountaineering organization. But whatever the Alpine Club of Canada achieves of climbing, of discovery, of purely scientific work; whatever the Club may eventually become, it must never forget how great and splendid service, and affectionate withal, has been rendered to our mountains and Canadian mountaineering by the members of the Appalachian Mountain Club, the American Alpine Club, and the Alpine Club of London. They have done the work, and published the tidings in a series of publications that already make a considerable library of Rocky Mountain literature. When the Canadian Alpine Club was organized, it counted itself honored to confer honorary membership upon some representatives of these Clubs, and happy to receive others as active members. The first life-member on our list is Professor Herschel C. Parker of Columbia University, one of the boldest pioneers of them all.

What does the Alpine Club of Canada propose to do? Does it take itself too seriously? There may be learned cosmopolitan alpinists whose many years' experience of hardy holidays among the glaciers and upper snows of the mountain ranges of the world, would incline them to look with patronage, if not incipient scorn, upon an organized effort to popularize the exclusive sport. They might say that to popularize was to vulgarize. Not so. Mountaineering is too toilsome, too hard a sport, and demands qualities of mind and character quite other than vulgar. Many pastimes and sports, many vocations and avocations may become vulgarized. But it must be obvious to any who know ever so little about the glaciers and