Page:Canadian Alpine Journal I, 2.djvu/215

Rh The annual meeting was held around the camp-fire on the evening of July 9th. The chief businesbusiness [sic] of the meeting was a resolve to build in the near future a Club House at Banff, where the Club's headquarters ought to be. Some fifty members promised to contribute $10.00 each to the scheme. A suitable site of three and a half acres on the side of Sulphur Mountain has been generously leased us by the Dominion government; and we expect soon to have there a building worthy of the Club, which shall give us a new visibility and a home to our growing library. Such a Club House will be a headquarters at which to rally our members for alpine work in the mountains, and from which to organize camps at advantageous points; so that members may make up parties and go from one to the other at times suitable to them, finding good accommodation at each. The President at the last annual meeting threw out a suggestion which is likely to take tangible shape at no remote day, namely: that a series of camps in different climbing-centres be established each summer, for the better convenience of the whole Club, which is growing too large for a single annual session of only one week's climbing. This is a matter of development, and is dependent upon the erection of a Club House.

A happy and hearty transaction of the meeting was the standing vote, bestowing honorary membership upon the Rt. Hon. James Bryce, a past President of the English Alpine Club, a veteran mountaineer, who has been honored by having one of the loftiest mountains in the Rockies named after him.

Resolutions of thanks were cordially passed to the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, the Alberta Government and the Federal Government for generous assistance to the Camp, without which it had not been possible to provide so excellent a school of mountaineering. There is no doubt about the interest which such gifts yield in something more than money to the nation. I quote Milton's words applied by Tyndall to mountaineering: "Such exercises constitute a good means of making them healthy, nimble, and well in breath, and of inspiring them with a gallant and fearless courage, which being tempered with seasonable precepts of true fortitude and patience, shall turn into a native and heroic valour, and make them hate the cowardice of wrongdoing."

A kindly feature of the meeting which was adjourned to the following evening, were two resolutions of appreciation presented to the Secretary and Mrs. Wheeler, the wife of the President, who in addition was presented with the perpetual freedom of Camp and Club House. These resolutions were afterwards beautifully illuminated on vellum, Mrs. Wheeler's being placed in a silver casket accompanied by a silver key. The President also, received a gold watch-chain and compass in token of the Club's appreciation of his arduous toil in the interest of organized mountaineering in Canada.

After the Camp in Paradise Valley had dispersed, the President received an invitation from the Alpine Club of England to be its guest for three days at its Jubilee on the 16th, 17th and 18th of December, 1907, and though greatly pressed for time, Mr. Wheeler was able to accept the invitation and make a hasty visit to the Club in London, where he was received with warm