Notes
You have to commend author Chic Scott for taking on a five-year journey to delve into 130 years of history on one of Banff’s most well-known and important families.
Mountain Romantics: The Whytes of Banff offers the reader an extensive historical look into a family that carved an immense personal imprint into the Bow Valley and continues to do so to this day. Within the 232 pages, Scott includes personal photos, paintings, artwork and a family tree to accompany the personal history and legacy of the White/Whyte family.
“Brad White and I had been talking about it for a number of years and I was involved in writing the biography of Hans Gmoser, this was around 2007-08, and we got to talking, mainly led by Brad, but Kristin and Cliffy too, and other White/Whyte siblings asked me to write a book on the family,” Scott said.
Scott already had access to an immense amount of material from the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, of course, but a lot of it came from old-fashioned research and personal interviews.
“I did about 40 interviews with family members and friends. I received a lot of the pictures from the family that are not yet in the Whyte Museum, particularly from uncle Peter,” Scott said. “That’s a confusing part of the book, there’s about four or five Peters; this was not Peter Whyte the painter, this was another Peter who lived in Smithers, but he had a lot of great photographs and Cliffy White, who’s in sort of the last chapter of the book, had lots of great slides from his father.”
White/Whyte family members have been depositing their family collections in the museum for 50 years, which was both a blessing and curse for Scott in being able to comb through and research such a vast collection of historical records.
“You want to get it right. With the various books that I’ve done, the ski and climbing histories, everyone uses them now as a resource and if I get them wrong then everybody will get them wrong for the next 500 years. So yes, I went to a lot of trouble to insure that it’s accurate,” Scott said. “We spent several hundreds of hours just going through the book checking all the grammar and spelling, the construction of it making sure that everything’s consistent … I think I have a reputation for attention to detail and we certainly tried hard on this book.”
Scott says he was quite looking forward to tackling the project due to having developed personal relationships with family members over the years.
“I knew Jon Whyte quite well and I worked at Sunshine Village back in the ’70s as a lift operator, so I knew Clifford J. White who was the president of Sunshine Village and he was always very nice to me,” Scott said. “I knew his three children, Brad, Cliffy and Tristan and Tara, the one that died back in 1976, so I knew the family and I always had a good relationship with the family, so I enjoyed the project.”
Scotts says he didn’t find the project daunting – just “big” with a lot of generations, a lot of people and a lot of material to cover.
“I would say of the material I collected, maybe only 20 per cent got into the book, and with almost every chapter I could have written a book about that chapter,” Scott said. “I collected a lot of material and, of course, the hardest part often with these books is what to cut out because you can’t put everything in the book.
“As an author you’re in love with every detail that you’ve collected and you want to put them all in the book, but you can’t, so that was the hard part.”
Having been a resident of the valley and already having personal ties with family members, Scott was a perfect candidate to tackle the legacy, including the dark periods inflicted upon family members.
“Every family has dark parts of their history and the Whyte family does and it’s all in the book and the kids did want me cover it. They said, ‘tell the story, warts and all.’
“There was a generation there, either the painter and his brother Jackie and his sister Lila, I think they were all alcoholics, and Peter, it’s well known that he died of alcoholism,” Scott said.
“Then Tara, Brad, Cliffy and Tristan’s sister was murdered and it’s in the book too – a very sad story and it’s amazing the kids lived through that without being psychologically destroyed because their sister was murdered and their mother committed suicide.
“What I say is it was a little bit of a catharsis for them. They have this complex history and you know how sunlight is the best disinfectant? Just to get the story out into the open and recognize it for what it is, I think, it was a little bit of a cleansing and catharsis for the kids.”
A book launch for Mountain Romantics: the Whytes of Banff will take place Nov. 29, from 1-4 p.m., together with the open reception of the Founders’ Gallery, highlighting the art of Peter and Catharine Whyte.
