Cyril G. Wates

Who was Cyril G. Wates?

Cyril G. Wates was born in Brixton, England and immigrated to Edmonton, Canada in 1909 where he worked for City of Edmonton Municipal Telephone System as an engineer. He joined the Alpine Club of Canada in 1916 and would go on to climb more than fifty peaks. He was the first to ascend Mt. Geikie in the Canadian Rockies, responsible for the Alpine Club’s book “Songs for Canadian Climbers” and named Mt. Minotaur located in British Columbia, south of Geikie Creek. He served as president of the Club from 1938 to 1941 and oversaw the construction of a cabin in the Tonquin Valley in Jasper National Park in Alberta, that is now known as the Wates-Gibson Hut. He received a Fellowship in the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in 1939.

Wates was an accomplished amateur astronomer who served as president of Edmonton Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. He also wrote for academic journals and magazines such as Scientific American and the RASC Journal and was awarded the Chant Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada for “for outstanding amateur contribution to astronomy in Canada” through his work in 1943. The year before, Wates had built a 12.5 inch reflector telescope that he donated to the University of Alberta for their future observatory. The University now offers the Cyril G. Wates Memorial Prize and Scholarship for mathematics.