Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 1.djvu/51

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Such a noteworthy event as the attainment of his eightieth birthday by the founder of the first Alpine Club of Canada, at the summit of Rogers pass in 1883, and the Patron and Honorary President of the Alpine organization formed last year at Winnipeg, cannot fail to be of the very deepest interest to all our members, and, owing to his many scientific and commercial achievements, to the British Empire.

Thanks to the four sons of Sir Sandford Fleming, we have secured the privilege of presenting to the public with this volume a reduced facsimile of a birthday address presented to their father by his descendants on the day when he reached the mature age of eighty years, January 7th, 1907. The original is a beautifully illuminated sheet, about double the size of the appended copy, which is merely in outline. It furnishes a terse but eloquent autobiography.

We are indebted, in part, to these gentlemen for the explanation which follows. Two of them accompanied their father across the mountains. Major Frank Fleming in 1872, and Sandford Hall Fleming in 1883. The first by the Yellow Head pass, the second by the Bow river and Rogers passes.

They mention that their father at first hesitated to give his assent to the publication of the address, for the reason that however interesting it might be to him and to his children, and however much he and they might appreciate the proposal to incorporate it in the Canadian Alpine Journal, it was after all "merely a family matter, a record of service on the one hand and of loving family devotion on the other, in itself of