Wilderness and Waterpower
How Banff National Park Became a Hydro-Electric Storage Reservoir
- Publisher
- McMaster University, Alberta Historical Resources Foundation, University of Calgary Press, Aid to Scholarly Publications Program
- Initial publish date
- Jan 2013
- Subjects
- Environmental Policy, General, Environmental Economics
- Categories
- About Alberta
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781552386378
- Publish Date
- Jan 2013
- List Price
- $34.95
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Description
This engaging book explores how the need for electricity at the turn of the century affected and shaped Banff National Park. Today’s conservationists and energy researchers will find much to think about in this tale of Alberta’s early need for electricity, entrepreneurial greed, debates over aboriginal ownership of the river, moving park boundaries to accommodate hydro-electric initiatives, the importance of water for tourism, rural electrification, and the ultimate diversion to coal-produced electricity. It is also a lively national story, involving the irrepressible and impetuous Max Aitkin (later Lord Beaverbook), R.B. Bennett (local legal advisor and later prime minister), and a series of local politicians and bureaucrats whose contributions confuse and conflate issues along the way.
About the authors
Christopher Armstrong is co-author, with H.V. Nelles, of The Painted Valley: Artists Along Alberta's Bow River, 1845-2000.
Christopher Armstrong's profile page
H.V. Nelles is the L.R. Wilson Professor of Canadian History at McMaster University and Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus at York University. Both have written and published extensively on Canadian history and are widely recognized as two of the foremost scholars in the field.