The Mountain Legacy Project
- Cassandra Spires
- Jun 15
- 2 min read
Following footsteps from the past
“They paved paradise, put up a parking lot." – Joni Mitchell
The Mountain Legacy Project is a collection of some of the most urgent and compelling photographic representations of time. Directed by Eric Higgs and founded by Higgs and Jeanine Rhemtulla, the project’s mandate is to “explore changes in Canada’s mountain landscapes over time through photographic comparisons.”
The project is home to a collection of over 120 000 historical mountain photographs from nineteenth- and early twentieth-century systematic surveys, 20 000 of which are available online, as well as over 10 000 new comparative photographs. Participants both care for the archival collection and build on it, revisiting the coordinates of historical images to create new comparison images. While the project’s primary contributors are graduate students, members also include research assistants, external contractors, and volunteers. Katelyn Fryer, the project’s archivist and librarian who assisted with this article, began as a research assistant.
The work has many aims, but a core aim is to document the effects of climate change and to make the findings as widely accessible as possible. The website features a tool called Explorer, which enables users to peruse the collection using an interactive map that spans Alberta, British Columbia, and the Yukon. A map is populated by clickable “stations,” which are the sites of the photographic pairs in the collection. Browsing through the stations, users will find stark visual contrasts between the historical mountain photographs and their contemporary counterparts.
Recently, the field team had the opportunity to re-photograph the Athabasca Glacier, located at Station 40. A photograph by R.C. McDonald in 1938, more than 85 years ago, clearly demonstrates the marked change. Ten years ago, Bill Graveland wrote an article titled “Athabasca glacier melting at ‘astonishing’ rate of more than five metres a year,” which posited that the glacier may disappear completely within a generation. This visual comparison provides alarming evidence of the rapid recession.
Looking forward, members of the Mountain Legacy Project, currently based at the University of Victoria, are working to rephotograph early twentieth-century images of Jasper National Park and Waterton Lakes National Park through partnership with the Stoney Nakoda First Nation. Mountain Legacy Project also works in close partnership with Library Archives Canada to digitize and care for the collection. The Mountain Legacy Project, founded in 1998, continues to grow and build on its body of work, creating visual comparisons both powerful and alarming that serve as a call to action for the viewer.
This feature was produced with the generous support of the
Photographic Historical Society of Canada. www.phsc.ca
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