THE ROAD TO THE ROCKIES - Travel Diary by Dave Abbott
As a child in Ireland, I was always intrigued by Canadian Pacific's posters advertising Canada. Ships, planes or trains were always displayed against a backdrop setting of the Rocky Mountains. Towering alpine peaks with gazillions of snow looked humongous, even mightier than the Alps. I thought Canada consisted of prairies and jagged snow-capped craggy peaks.
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THE FAIRMONT BANFF SPRINGS HOTEL is nestled in the heart of the Canadian Rockies.
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So, when I recently received an invitation to spend three days driving through the Rockies from Calgary to Edmonton via Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper, I accepted with alacrity.
The allure of mountains is difficult to explain unless you're a climber or painter. It's difficult to climb them, safely. Scrambling to the top of one, risking life and limb to hoist a flag and take a few pictures. Seems an awful lot of work for such a small reward. It's even more difficult to do justice by capturing the grandeur on a small-framed canvas.
Nonetheless, mountains, especially the Rockies, are compelling. They're also intimidating and awesome and make ordinary mortals pale in significance. Confronted by the sheer physicality as one moves through and past them, they are not welcoming. The sheer majesty, the enormity of these frozen monoliths, is an alien landscape.
British Columbia has much in common with Alberta, physically, intellectually, and culturally. We claim to be political "orphans" of Canada. Our sense of isolation, caused in part, by geography and an exploratory history that sets us apart from the preppie Eastern Establishment.
We share the Rockies with pristine lakes and open spaces, indigenous wildlife, hockey, beer, and Tim Horton's, with an independence that begins west of Portage and Main.
The last time I had been in Calgary was for the Winter Olympics in February 1988. Today, the city is a work in progress, undergoing numerous facelifts, botox and liposuction treatments.
There's a new 450 kilometre parkway system, where thousands of locals go cycling, in-line skating or jogging, reflecting a youthful entrepreneurial spirit triggered by the booming oil and gas industry.
Towering steel-glass blocks of offices housing oil barons and multi-national corporations proliferate downtown alongside lurid Miami-like high-rises. The plethora of commercial cathedrals screams "noveau riche" and "now hiring" signs are on every street corner. This is Texas west, flush with money that keeps growing with demand at the pumps.
We lunched at the Divino's wine and cheese bistro and later strolled Eight Avenue. Chic bistros and restaurants, and the occasional "head shop," provide window dressing for neo-Eddie Bauer fashionistas, ranchers in cowboy hats and cool dudes dressed in black BOSS suits.
A few of the older sandstone buildings are restored; including a Bank renamed the James Joyce Pub that personifies the Irish-Scottish Celtic Heritage of Alberta.
Calgary's skyline, framed by the Rocky Mountains, provides an excellent jumping off spot for Canada's spectacular glaciers, alpine lakes and snow-dusted mountains.
Our journey through the Rockies from Calgary to Edmonton was highlighted by stays at Fairmont Hotels in Banff Springs, Lake Louise and Jasper Park Lodge, often considered destinations in themselves.
Their historic backcountry locations reflect Alberta's mountaineering roots clearly influenced by Swiss guides and climbers. The road to Banff is a series of undulations of grasslands that rise and fall all the way to the Rockies providing a gradual preview of what lies ahead.
My Fairmont Banff Springs hotel room, which looks like a castle, was a corner attic perched precipitously over a valley thousands of meters below. It was stimulating to be ensconced in Banff National Park surrounded by wilderness that was ours to explore.
We left the next morning for Lake Louise where a legend of the Canadian Rockies was recorded in 1882 by Tom Wilson, an explorer with Canadian Pacific Railway, who first came face-to-face with a scene that left him spellbound. "As God is my judge," he wrote in his diary, "I never in all my explorations saw such a matchless scene." He was writing of the Lake named after Queen Victoria's daughter Princess Louise.
The Chateau Lake Louise was built in 1913 and was fashionable with celebrities and the wealthy among them Douglas Fairbanks, Lionel Barrymore, Marilyn Monroe and Alfred Hitchcock.
Shortly after leaving Lake Louise, we hit the Icefields Parkway. Two hundred and thirty kilometres of continuous World Heritage Site scenery completely protected in two national parks. The speed is leisurely and there are ample pull-offs.
The road goes past seven icefields and six of Canada's highest mountains, on the way to Jasper. And being the month of October, wildlife was evident with intermittent sightings of wolves, elk, moose, deer, mountain goats and bighorn sheep.
We also saw charter busloads of Koreans, Japanese and Chinese all of them in love with cowboys and the Rockies.
After this road trip I know why Canadian Pacific used pictures of the Rockies - they appeal to the child in all of us.
After 20 years in the business +50 pony-tailed Cameron Malcolm, head honcho of Out an' About Tours, enhanced our three-day Rockies trip. His Scottish-Irish heritage makes him a great storyteller: www.outanabouttours.com.
Visit These Websites
When You Travel to Alberta
Travel Alberta: www.TravelAlberta.com.
Fairmont Hotels: www.fairmonthotels.com.
Columbia Icefield: www.columbiaicefield.com.
Dave Abbott is heard three times daily on the Jim Pattison Radio Network at 600AM on the dial. Website: www.irishlaughter.com, or e-mail: abbott@telus.net .
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