Maps, at the most basic level, tell us how to get from point A to point B.
But maps also have the remarkable ability to tell a story, capture the imagination and incite passion; who hasn’t wanted to jump on a plane or disappear into the wilderness after studying a map?
For Canmore historian and water advocate Bob Sandford, maps tell him a story through time: Of where we came from and how we got here. Maps also remind him to look forward and consider the future.
“It is important to know where we came from and be able to apply that to what is happening today, the direction history is taking, and it is taking us towards islandization of what were once great wildernesses. But also, it is pointing in the direction of changes that we may not have anticipated or we may have desired,” Sandford said Tuesday (April 1).
“But I think there is wisdom in these maps to which we must attend. We have to pay attention to the direction the maps are showing us we are taking.”
The stories Sandford finds in maps of the Canadian West will be on display at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies as part of the upcoming exhibition Proximate Truth: Cartography from the Collection of R.W. Sandford.
The exhibition opens Saturday (April 5) in the museum’s Rummel Room with a reception beginning at 6 p.m. for members and 7 p.m. for the general public.
Sandford began collecting maps 40-some years ago while searching for books on Western Canadian history and exploration, each of which came with a map.
From there, Sandford said he began searching for specialty maps produced by the likes of geologist George Mercer Dawson and maps that showed the mythological mountains Hooker and Brown, said to be located in Athabasca Pass and believed for many years to be the fifth and sixth highest mountains in the world.
“One might wonder why you’d go to the trouble to collect early and contemporary maps of the Canadian West, but I find reading a map is like studying a foreign language embedded in what are initially inscrutable symbols.
“To learn what a map says can take time. It can take weeks, months, maybe even years, and what a map means changes over time. You look at a map of the Mackenzie River Basin and when you look at that and compare what is happening now, what the north means, it’s completely different.”
Looking at maps of the West stretching back in time, Sandford said they tell us first off that the West was not an uninhabited wilderness. It was, instead, a land filled with Aboriginal people, each with their own oral map.
The first maps produced by the West’s earliest tourists and explorers focus on waterways, while government survey maps speak of nation building and railway maps show how the West was settled. Modern maps of Western Canada show that settling the West is complete and wilderness is now found in islands.
But what he finds interesting is that we’re beginning to turn to maps that once more define watersheds.
“In the 250 years it took to settle the West and to complete the railway project, the Selkirks and Rocky Mountains have become islands in a sea of western change. More and more at the height of western prosperity and technological advancements, we’re returning once again to the West being defined by its watersheds. So it is very interesting to see the cyclic changes to where we live,” he said.
These maps are also a reminder that modern society is remaking the map of Western Canada and the question is, Sandford said, “what will the next map look like?”
