Commentary
Two hundred years ago, scouts of the Hudson’s Bay Company ascended Alberta’s western rivers and set up a fur-trading post on the banks of the Athabasca River in what is today part of Jasper National Park. The park was named after Jasper Hawes, who was the first occupant of the Athabasca post, which became known as Jasper House.
In 1964, when I began my long-term wildlife observations in Jasper National Park, I wondered what the early residents of Jasper House saw. I wrote to the Hudson’s Bay Company headquarters in Winnipeg, and they sent a microfilm of the handwritten diaries of Michel Klyne, a Scotsman who was the postmaster of Jasper House in the late 1820s. His full-time hunter made three-day hunting trips, but more than once he returned empty-handed. As suggested by the late John Stelfox, Alberta’s chief biologist, hoofed animal populations were at a very low ebb in the 1800s. He attributed their scarcity to year-round hunting by white travellers and aboriginal tribes….