By Andru McCracken

Susan Feddema-Leonard, a Grand Cache based writer and researcher, has recently produced a giant tome called People and Peaks of Willmore Wilderness Park. It turns out that the history of the guide outfitters in the Willmore mingle deeply with the guide outfitters from Mount Robson, like the Hargreaves family, and outside of this new book, has scarcely been recorded.

Feddema-Leonard said she is filling a void in the written record of the history of this area.

“There is the odd written journal, but there was nothing that focussed on who the Hargreaves were. Even though I was in the outfitting business, I knew the names but I wasn’t sure who they were,” she said.

Now the story of those families has been committed to print and photographs.

Local woman Ishbel Cochrane, who grew up on Mount Robson Ranch, has been a key to all sorts of treasures for Susan, and she believes that without this project, Ishbel’s voice and story would have eventually vanished along with many other voices.

“I know for a fact is that there would have been so much lost (without this book),” she said.

For part of her research she used audio tapes, some of which were so badly made and preserved that it took a tremendous amount of time and the latest digital audio software to recover something from them.

She said that the book isn’t just about outfitters either; it’s also about mountain people.

“The most colourful characters come through in this book,” she said.

She said people from Mount Robson, Jasper, Grand Cache, Edson, Hinton, and even Grand Prairie used the Willmore area.

The material that makes up the book wasn’t gathered from archives or museums. Feddema said she had to go further afield to find the information. The book uses very little material from museum collections; instead it was recovered from people’s homes and personal albums.

“It was buried really deep, not in an archive,” she said.

For Feddema-Leonard, a public history of the Willmore Wilderness gives teeth to the outfitters, and their battle to continue their long history in the wilderness.

While she has deep sympathies with the environmental movement and their respect for the land, she also sees poor land management guided by ideology more than common sense. She also sees that goals of the environmental movement, like achieving UNESCO World Heritage site status, can sometimes strip locals of control, surrendering the governance of that park to an international body.

For someone steeped in guide outfitter traditions, she does not want to see Willmore become inaccessible.

“Parks are being hijacked by environmentalists,” said Feddema-Leonard, bluntly. “They have gone to such an extreme that at Mount Robson you can’t take a horse in there.”

The irony for Feddema-Leonardis that it was guide outfitters who went to great lengths to make the areas accessible.