A dramatic period performance about the life and work of Mary Vaux will be brought to life by Shirley Truscott on July 26 at Banff’s Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies.
The presentation creates a vivid portrait of a remarkable woman, who, with her brothers, conducted the first long-term studies of glaciers in Canada.
Together with photographs from the Whyte Museum’s archives, Truscott portrays a pioneer glaciologist in the hour-long, three-part presentation explaining Vaux’s life and career.
“The presentation was created for the Whyte Museum, with a lot of photographs to illustrate the program coming from the museum’s archives,” Truscott said. “It’s a play in three scenes that talks about her time spent in the mountains when she was younger and up to middle age, with the third part showcasing the slideshow.”
The visuals are mostly from the Vaux Family fonds, courtesy of the Museum archives, both black and white and copies of original hand-coloured lantern slides.
“These people were amateur glaciologists, she and her brothers did the first long-term studies of glaciers in Canada, and were making a terrific contribution to science between 1887 and on into the 1920s,” Truscott said.
“Vaux was originally from Philadelphia, she was working with her brothers and they were doing studies together. The family continued the studies as long as they could, but her brother Will was tragically killed in Pennsylvania, with George marrying, so in the end she was doing the studies alone with the help of her guides and A.O. Wheeler of the Alpine Club as well.
“She came back every year for quite a few years. She was born in 1860 with the family being part of the large Quaker community in Pennsylvania. They were quite independent people who believed in equality and peace and believed in equal rights for women and believed in doing practical work. For them that turned out to be science, when amateurs could make a real contribution in the early days of natural science.
“Glaciology wasn’t her only interest, she was also interested in botany and did some wonderful paintings of botanicals. A lot of the photographs I’m showing are their own photographs from the Vaux family fonds; they were also very keen on photography as well.
“They would document their glacier measurements year after year and also photographed glaciers and landscapes, and when Henry Vaux Jr. comes to talk, we’ll be discussing the differences he has seen from the photographs of today of the same areas.”
A Portrait of Mary Vaux takes place Sunday, July 26 at 3 p.m. at the Whyte Museum with admission by donation.
On Aug. 13 at 7 p.m., Henry Vaux Jr., author of Legacy in Time: Three Generations of Mountain Photography in the Canadian West, will present a free talk on his photographic documentation of Rocky Mountain glaciers, comparing his photographs to his family’s taken a century before.
