Jasper National Park has played host to its share of celebrities over the decades, from politicians to royalty (Hollywood and actual), but one of its most famous visitors was also one of its first, who enjoyed his time there so much he returned nine years later for another visit.
In 1914 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — famous around the world as the creator of the great detective Sherlock Holmes — was invited by the Canadian government to tour Canada, with the trip culminating in a visit to what was then called Jasper Park. The park had been established by a federal order in council in 1907, under the name Jasper Forest Park, but "Forest" was dropped in 1911, when the park came under the administration of the newly-formed Dominion Parks Branch, part of the federal Department of the Interior.
The creation of the park had been spurred by news of the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, which was to run from Fort William (now Thunder Bay), Ontario to Prince Rupert on the B.C. coast. Its route would take it over the Yellowhead Pass, and construction began in 1905. By 1911 track was being laid through Jasper Park, and a town originally named Fitzhugh was laid out around the Grand Trunk's railway station. In 1913 the town name was changed to Jasper, in honour of Jasper Haws, a Maryland-born fur trader who worked for the North West Company. In 1815 he had taken command of a North West Company trading post in the area, which came to be known as Jasper's House.
It was in 1913 — the year of the name change — that Conan Doyle was originally invited to travel to the area, but he was too busy to accept. The offer was repeated in early 1914, as the author was completing his fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear. The invitation came from no less a person than Col. Maynard Rogers, who had been appointed superintendent of Jasper Park in 1913. Rogers arrived in March, and quickly set about making his mark: one of his first decisions was that there would be a uniform "rustic style of architecture" within the park.
James Bernard Harkin, commissioner of the Dominion Parks Branch, was impressed with Rogers, observing that he had “proved equal to the task of transforming a wilderness … into a park,” and noting that “even in one year he accomplished striking results.” Rogers — who had first met Conan Doyle during the Boer War more than a decade earlier — had clearly wasted no time trying to get the author to Jasper, and when 1913 proved to be a wash he repeated the offer a year later. In a letter to ACD he wrote:
"The Grand Trunk Railway System will have a private railway car to meet you at Quebec or Montreal, will send you wherever you want to go in Eastern Canada, furnish you with the best on their steamers on the Great Lakes, have another car waiting for you at Fort William, and send you all over the western portion of the trip on their lines."
Conan Doyle and his wife Jean left England on May 20, 1914 aboard the White Star liner Olympic, sister to the Titanic. One of his fellow passengers had the surname "Baskerville", and the Brooklyn Eagle reported that "Sir Arthur said he did not know him, and doubted if he was one of the owners of the famous hound belonging to a family of that name." (The third and most famous of the Holmes novels, The Hound of the Baskervilles, had debuted in 1902, nine years after ACD had "killed" his famous creation in the short story "The Final Problem".)
The ship arrived in New York on May 27, and the couple were there for just under a week. One of the highlights of the stay, at least for Conan Doyle — a noted sportsman who was an excellent cricket player — was attending a baseball game between New York and the Philadelphia Athletics. The couple arrived in Montreal on June 3, boarded the SS Harmonic in Sarnia on June 5 to travel the Great Lakes, and arrived in Fort William on June 5. ACD was impressed with the town, and predicted (correctly) that it would one day merge with its neighbour, Port Arthur; the two towns became Thunder Bay in 1970.
For the entire rail journey, Sir Arthur and Lady Jean had the private Pullman car "Canada" at their disposal; a self-contained unit consisting of a living-room, dining-room, and bedroom. They left Fort William on June 7, and made their way west, arriving in Jasper on June 11, 1914; they would remain there until June 20, enjoying a restful break and touring the area.
For Conan Doyle, visiting the Rocky Mountains was a dream come true. He had grown up listening to, and reading, stories of adventure set among the trappers and adventurers in the North American wilderness, and in his account of his 1914 trip, "Western Wanderings", he wrote:
"A line of low distant hills breaks the interminable plain which has extended with hardly a rising for fifteen hundred miles. Above them is here and there a peak of snow. Shades of Mayne Reid, they are the Rockies — my old familiar Rockies! Have I been here before? What an absurd question, when I lived there for about 10 years of my life in all the hours of dreamland. What deeds have I not done among redskins and trappers and grizzlies within their wilds! And here they are at last glimmering bright in the rising morning sun. At least, I have seen my dream mountains. Most boys never do."
The Jasper Park that Conan Doyle visited in 1914 boasted few amenities for tourists, but the author was quick to see the potential of the park, and to praise the vision of those who had created it in order to preserve it for future generations. In "Western Wanderings" he wrote:
"Jasper Park is one of the great national playgrounds and health resorts which the Canadian Government with great wisdom has laid out for the benefit of the citizens. When Canada has filled up and carries a large population, she will bless the foresight of the administrators who took possession of broad tracts of the most picturesque land and put them for ever out of the power of the speculative dealer. . . This new Jasper Park, which only awaits the forthcoming hotel to be a glorious place for the lover of nature, is the latest and wildest of all these reserves. Two years ago it was absolute wilderness, and much of it impenetrable. Now, through the energy of Colonel Rogers, trails have been cut through it in various directions, and a great number of adventurous trips into country which is practically unknown can be carried out with ease and comfort. . . There is no shooting in the park — it is a preserve for all wild animals — but there is excellent fishing, and everywhere there are the most wonderful excursions, where you sleep at night under the stars upon the balsamic fir branches which the packer gathers for your couch. I could not imagine an experience which would be more likely to give a freshet of vitality when the stream runs thin. For a week we lived the life of simplicity and nature."
During his stay Conan Doyle was shown "everything of note," but he added that they did not see the entire park, "for it is half as big as Belgium." He made a day trip to the nearby town of Tête Jaune Cache in British Columbia, during which he was photographed atop a pile of railway ties beside a sign marking the B.C./Alberta border. He was also able to see the Fraser, "already a formidable river, rushing down to the Pacific." He spent a day helping to lay out a golf course near the proposed hotel in Jasper, but the course was never built, as the site of the hotel was changed to a better location.
There were two churches being built in Jasper, he noted, "The pastor in each case acting as head mason and carpenter. One, the corner-stone of which I had the honour of laying, was to be used alternately by several nonconformist bodies. To the ceremony came the Anglican parson, grimy from his labours on the opposition building, and prayed for the well-being of his rival. The whole function, with its simplicity and earnestness, carried out by a group of ill-clad men standing bare-headed in a drizzle of rain, seemed to me to have in it the essence of religion."
The church Conan Doyle mentions was known as the "Union Church", with a congregation made up mainly of Presbyterians and Methodists, although all were welcome to attend. By 1928 the United Church of Canada had been formed, bringing together Presbyterian, Methodist, and Congregational denominations, and the Union Church became the United Church. After receiving a paint job a decade or so later, the church became known as "The Little White Church on the Corner", and in 1965 the building was sold to the Baptist Church. Now known as Jasper Park Baptist Church, the building survived the July 2024 fire that destroyed some 30 per cent of Jasper's buildings.
On his last day in Jasper, June 19, Conan Doyle threw out the first pitch in a baseball game between Jasper and Edson. To say he had made a great impression on all who met would be an understatement. A reporter for the Edmonton Sun wrote "He is a man who can talk on practically every subject of the day, politics, religion, war, or suffragism. During the interview it was with ease he shifted the conversation from one to the other. . . He is the kind of man that becomes interested in whatever he sees and being the possessor of a wonderful memory, he recalls all things."
ACD certainly recalled his 1914 trip to Jasper with fondness, and predicted a bright future for the park. He told a reporter for a Winnipeg newspaper that "Canada is going to have a great park [in Jasper] though when the place is finished. Col. Rogers is working hard and doing wonders, but it will take considerable time to get that immense territory in shape. The scenery is magnificent, the great trees, winding creeks and rivers. It is real wild country."
The country was still wild, but there were considerably more in the way of amenities, when Conan Doyle visited Jasper again in 1923. While he was still writing the occasional Sherlock Holmes short story, his later years were largely devoted to the cause of spiritualism, which he had taken up in earnest during the First World War. He had travelled to America on a speaking tour in 1922, lecturing about the spiritualist cause, and returned to North America on another lecture tour in 1923. This trip also included Canada, and another stop at Jasper, where he was once more accompanied by his wife Jean, as well as their three children: Denis (14), Adrian (Malcolm), who was 12, and Lena Jean (known to the family as "Billy"), who was 10.
In his book about the tour, Our Second American Adventure, ACD once more extolled the beauties of Jasper Park, which he said was "not sufficiently known" in England. He encouraged his fellow countrymen to be more adventurous when planning their holidays, noting that many would think nothing of spending hundreds of pounds for a vacation in the south of France, which would provide only "the most conventional change of surroundings. . . [with] nothing fresh or novel to carry away, as a permanent record."
The same sum, if spent on a trip to Canada, would produce a vastly different result, argued Conan Doyle. "The packer, the packhorse, the bed of fir boughs, the tent beside the stream, the great unknown ranges, and as a base of supplies and a permanent residence if need be, as good an hotel as man could desire. The paragraph sounds like an advertisement written to order, and yet it is but a cold statement of our own unbiased view. Man, woman, and children, we all look on Jasper as the wonderland.
"I sit and write on the balcony of my log hut, which sounds simple and primitive, but it is none the less provided with electric light, heat radiators, and hot water. There is a row of them, in each of which one enjoys one's own family privacy, and then at the end of the row the low-lying wooden hotel with good table and good service. In front of me is the most remarkable lake of any I know, and I have a good many on my visiting-list. Its colours are never the same from hour to hour — emerald-green, copper-green, lapis-lazuli blue, pure olive, and then suddenly a touch of pink which turns it all into one huge opal. Its still surface is broken now by one dark, moving spot. It looks human, but no swimmer would stay long in those chill waters. It is a beaver. And there is another one over yonder. And there on the bank, that careless pile of sticks, is their house. You could throw a stone into it from my writing-table."
He recounts how Billy found herself walking parallel to a bear and alerted her brothers, who got a camera and took pictures, and how Malcolm reported that there was a four-foot pike in the lake. "You need not walk a hundred yards to see wild Nature, for wild Nature comes to you in Jasper."
Nevertheless, Conan Doyle decided to venture deeper into Nature via a three-day trip on horseback, accompanied by his wife and children. He noted that it was a "rather strenuous" experience, especially for an "elderly man who was utterly out of condition" (ACD was 64 at the time), but said it was "very glorious" none the less.
"We did forty miles of very rough trails in the three days, and saw no soul during that time, nor any house, save a solitary Warden who lives alone with his wife, deep in the forest, keeping guard over its interests, especially in the matter of fire. We visited the head-waters of the Athabasca River and saw the wonderful falls, seldom reached by tourists. . . It is an awesome place to look down at, and the dark woods around are awesome too, but they echoed now to the happy laughter of the children. It was a wonderful memory in their young lives."
Conan Doyle was struck by the beauty of the area: the brown path through the green trees, the sunlight and shadows, the great river roaring beside them and the still green lakes, and "everywhere the flowers. There were 'roses, roses, all the way'. . . Surely the wild-rose should be the emblem of Alberta. [Conan Doyle was once again prescient; Alberta adopted the wild rose as its floral emblem in 1930.] Vivid scarlet lilies and 'Indian paint-brushes' flowered among the mosses and low tangle of cranberry bushes and Indian tea shrubs with small white blossoms. It was a panorama of beauty. And then at night the camp-fire glaring upon the overhanging trees and the roar of the falls to lull one to sleep upon a bed of spruce branches, with all the clamour and contention of the world as far away as if it were a distant dream."
The author lamented that "motor-cars" had driven much of the wildlife at Jasper off the main roads and into the forests, but added that bears were often seen around the hotel, rummaging for food. "I explained to Colonel Rogers that while he was right no doubt to forbid any injury to the bears, one would like to be assured that there was a reciprocity agreement."
He also noted that Rogers had recently imported a herd of elk to the park. "There were some wild bull elks over the hills seventy miles away, yet in a few weeks they had found and mixed with the new herd, crossing two ranges 4,000 feet high on the way. Science has much to learn as to such methods of communication."
He concluded his account of his second Jasper visit by noting that it was a sad night when they left.
"As we looked back there was Edith Cavell Mountain, white and serene, with the great white angel-shaped glacier upon her brown breast. One bright star twinkled in a violet sky. 'It is rotten leaving Jasper. Insects, bears, horses, people, we love them all.' So spoke Malcolm and voiced the sentiment of all."
Always alert to the possibilities for a good setting for a story, Conan Doyle had told a Winnipeg reporter in 1914 that he was trying to formulate ideas for a novel set in Western Canada. He was quoted as saying "I intend to write something about this country if I can get a good idea. I have gathered plenty of descriptive material and I have an idea for the characters I want, but I have not formulated the plot yet. No, it will not be a Sherlock Holmes story, and I hardly think it will be about the Royal North West Mounted Police. I am greatly interested in the study of nature in this country and it is probable that my theme will touch largely on your great forests and undeveloped territories. However, my plans are still unfinished and I cannot tell what I will evolve finally."
Alas, the idea remained unfinished, and Conan Doyle never wrote his Canadian story. He did, however, put pen to paper on June 18, 1914 to write an evocative and moving poem about his visit to Jasper Park, "The Athabasca Trail".
My life is gliding downwards; it speeds swifter to the day
When it shoots the last dark Cañon to the Plains of Far-away,
But while its stream is running through the years that are to be,
The mighty voice of Canada will ever call to me.
I shall hear the roar of rivers where the rapids foam and tear,
I shall smell the virgin upland with its balsam-laden air,
And shall dream that I am riding down the winding woody vale,
With the packer and the packhorse on the Athabasca Trail.
The poem goes on to describe the cities of Eastern Canada and the "little prairie hamlets . . . noble cities still to be," before concluding:
Mother of a mighty manhood, land of glamour and of hope,
From the eastward sea-swept islands to the sunny western slope,
Ever more my heart is with you, ever more till life shall fail,
I'll be out with pack and packer on the Athabasca Trail.
