Women Climbers

My Brown Bag History topic for today is Women Climbers. I'll be talking about several women who came here to climb in the Selkirks and Rockies, including Mary Jobe Akeley, Mary Schaffer, Mary Vaux and several others. A.O. Wheeler cites several early climbs by women in his work, "The Selkirk Range." When he and Elizabeth Parker and others formed the Alpine Club of Canada in 1906, several of the initial members were women and by 1917, half of the members were women. One of those original members was Eva Hobbs, a Revelstoke schoolteacher. Eva had come to Donald with her family in the early 1890s, and at the age of 17, she became a schoolteacher and was sent to remote places such as Retallack to teach. She later taught at Hope, and sent a letter home to her mother saying, "They call this place Hope, but I call it Despair." She was obviously feeling lonely and homesick at the time. Shortly after Revelstoke's new Central School was built in 1903, she secured a teaching position in Revelstoke and moved here, where her family had relocated when the divisional point at Donald was closed down.

The principal of Central School was A.E. Miller, who was very keen on encouraging his teachers to stay physically fit and to be active in the outdoors. He was one of the early residents who discovered the joys of Mount Revelstoke and he encouraged his teachers to climb there as well. Eva Hobbs began hiking and climbing, and when the Alpine Club of Canada was formed in 1906, she was eager to join and participated in their first annual camp at Yoho. When the Revelstoke Mountaineering Club was formed in 1909, Eva Hobbs was the Vice-President. The club was responsible for building the first chalet at Balsam Lake, on Mount Revelstoke, that summer, and on a break from building, some of the members decided to go on a hike to Miller Lake, named after A.E. Miller. Once there, they decided to push on a little further, and Eva, being an experienced climber, went on ahead, being impatient with some of the other women, who needed a helping hand from the men. She was the first to see the lake that now bears her name. Eva later married local engineer Phil Parker and they raised their family in Revelstoke. Their twins, Charlie and Helen, were both very active in local sports. In the 1960s, Eva and Phil Parker were interviewed, and the original tape and the transcript are now in Revelstoke Museum and Archives.