History
The hut was named after the journalist Elizabeth Parker, one of the founding members of the Alpine Club of Canada (ACC).
For many years, climber and surveyor A.O. Wheeler had a desire to begin a Canadian alpine club "similar to the European and other big alpine clubs of the world". In 1902 Wheeler tried to garner support for the idea through the country's leading newspapers. Elizabeth Parker, then on the staff of the Winnipeg Free Press, chastised him for his lack of patriotism. Wheeler then asked Parker to support his plan for a truly Canadian club. Largely due to the efforts of Elizabeth Parker and the Winnipeg Free Press, the Alpine Club of Canada was formed in Winnipeg on March 27, 1906. Mrs. Parker was one of six original honorary members.
The present Wiwaxy cabin, built in 1912 by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was the first hut in the Lake O'Hara area. In the same year the ACC was granted a 2-acre (8,100 m2) lease for a future hut on the south shore of Lake O'Hara. In 1919, the CPR built the present Elizabeth Parker hut, and by 1923 had built a further 11 huts in the meadow. In 1923 - 1924, the CPR moved all but the first two huts down to the lake shore, and seven years later donated the last two in the meadow to the ACC. The club exchanged its lakeshore lease for a lease on the meadow, and in 1931 reopened the Elizabeth Parker hut for the use of its members.
The Elizabeth Parker hut has seen substantial renovations and upkeep over the years. It has had a new floor, a new roof, new timbers and new foundation logs, as well as completely new interior furnishings. The outhouses are new, a stove was added to the Wiwaxy cabin, and the entire meadow around the hut has been rehabilitated and reseeded. The Alpine Club has worked very hard to restore the appearance of the hut as closely as possible to its original state. The Canadian government designated the Elizabeth Parker hut as a Federal Heritage Building in 1997.
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“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)