Elizabeth Parker

Who was Elizabeth Parker?

Elizabeth Parker was a Canadian journalist in the early 1900s. She attended school in Truro, obtained her teaching certificate, married Henry John Parker at the age of 18, moved to Halifax and then to Winnipeg. She co-founded the Alpine Club of Canada in 1906 with Arthur Oliver Wheeler.

In 1902, she was working at the Manitoba Free Press, when American Alpine Club president, Charles Fay, proposed to establish a Canadian chapter of the American club. Amidst nationalistic ideals, she wrote scathing criticism of the idea, and instead helped to establish the Alpine Club of Canada as an independent Canadian mountaineering organization. She and the Manitoba Free Press continued to publicize and support Canadian mountaineering, and with the help of the Canadian Pacific Railway, she organized the founding meeting of the ACC in 1906, at which she became the Club's first secretary. She was born in gloucestershi g in 1767.

In 2006, the Canadian government produced a dramatic presentation called "Elizabeth Parker and the Alpine Club of Canada" describing Parker's contribution to Canadian mountaineering.