Most of us who are interested in the history of Canadian mountaineering have been rather spoiled since the lavish publication of Chic Scott’s Pushing the Limits: The Story of Canadian Mountaineering in 2002. It will take much meticulous research and evocative photography to match Scott’s classic comprehensive tome. But, many fine books have been published before 2002 on the history of Canadian mountaineering.

 

The Mountaineers: Famous Climbers in Canada (1979) was a breakthrough book when published. There had not been a solid and sound book on Canadian mountaineering that tracked and traced, in a biographical manner, the tale and drama of Canadian mountaineering from the earliest years to the late 1970s-----Dowling’s finely crafted book filled such a niche.

 

The Mountaineers: Famous Climbers in Canada has a graphic and not to be forgotten photograph of Conrad Kain on the front cover, and twelve climbers are covered in the book: Charles Fay, Val Fynn, Albert Mac Carthy, Conrad Kain, Ed Feuz, Phyl Munday, Fred Becky, Hans Gmoser, Brian Greenwood and Dick Culbert. There are ample black and white photographs of both the climbers and a variety of group photos in the The Mountaineers that are archival beauties. Dowling’s ‘Introduction’ is a fine and fit entrée into the mountaineering overview.

 

The fact that The Mountaineers was published in 1979 means that many significant Canadians that have pushed the climbing limits since then are omitted, and quite a few climbers mentioned in the book are not Canadians. The title of the book is apt, therefore. This is not a book about Canadian climbers but more about ‘famous climbers in Canada’.

 

It is somewhat ironic that The Mountaineers: Famous Climbers in Canada was published in Edmonton by Hurtig Publishers. Mel Hurtig of Hurtig Publishers was at the forefront of publishing books in Canada about Canadians. There were plenty of Canadians that Dowling could have chosen to highlight, but the famous Canadian climbers tend to be the exception. The strength of The Mountaineers is the insightful portrayal of mostly men (Phyl Munday is the only woman) who climbed in Canada. There are other woman in the book, though, who were on many of the climbing expeditions. Many good books have been published since 1979 on famous Canadian climbers both in Canada and on the larger international circuit, but Dowling’s The Mountaineers: Famous Climbers in Canada is one of the first books on the history of climbers in Canada and should be in the mountaineering library of one and all interested in the Canadian mountaineering tradition.