To celebrate Women’s History month, we will explore how Women have interacted with and responded to the environment of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The Wild Spirit: Women in the Rocky Mountains of Canada, is a deep look at the past women who have explored the Rocky Mountains and the creative ways they have captured their experiences. In this meeting, we will learn about and celebrate some of the women who have for a time called the Rocky Mountains home.
ABOUT THE BOOK
In 1912, Mary Vaux, a botanist, glaciologist, painter, and photographer, wrote about her mountain adventures: “A day on the trail, or a scramble over the glacier, or even with a quiet day in camp to get things in order for the morrow’s conquests? Some how when once this wild spirit enters the blood…I can hardly wait to be off again.” Vaux’s compulsion was shared by many women whose intellects, imaginations, and spirits rose to the challenge of the mountains between the late-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. This Wild Spirit explores a sampling of women’s creative responses–in fiction and travel writing, photographs and paintings, embroidery and beadwork, letters and diaries, poetry and posters–to their experiences in the Rocky Mountains of Canada.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Colleen Skidmore is a photography historian and Professor at the University of Alberta. Her research focuses on women’s photographic practices and archives made by women or about women, and how photography shaped ideas of women in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century North America, especially in Canada. She has also served in a variety of roles in senior academic administration, including appointments as Interim Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Vice-Provost and Associate Vice-President (Academic) at the University of Alberta. She is the author of Searching for Mary Schaëffer: Women Wilderness Photography (UAP).