Mapper of Mountains

M.P. Bridgland in the Canadian Rockies

by I.S. MacLaren

$39.95

Adventure and interesting facts about Jasper National Park await you in this biographical story by I.S MacLaren.  This book is as pleasing to the eye as it is to the mind with the attractive chapter-starting pages and beautiful photographs.  Throughout the book they show off the artistic nature of Bridgland’s work and remind the reader how wonderful it is to be in Jasper.

Mapper of Mountains is a compilation of facts and anecdotes relating to the time surveyor Morris Parson Bridgland spent in the Canadian Rockies.  He was the first photo topographical surveyor in what we now call Jasper National Park and the book follows his life and legacy.  He also wrote the first guide to Jasper National Park in 1917 in which tourists could see different routes to mountains and also day trips and hikes.  He was a hardworking, quiet man whose love of mountaineering and photography came together to form his life long career, an occupation that seemed much more of a passion, than a profession.The book begins with a foreward from the subject’s niece and hooks you right away with her memories of her Uncle Morris.  MacLaren’s text continues with some background information on the state of surveying as it pertained to the Canadian Rockies at that time.  It then takes a more biographical turn with the story of Bridgland’s ancestors and his life before the mountains took him far from his Ontario home.  He studied at the University of Toronto and later came to Calgary to assist on his first survey in 1902. 

After a few years assisting surveyors and working to establish the Alpine Club of Canada, the true adventure begins when his work as a guide and leading mountaineer lead him to Jasper and the photographic surveying of Jasper National Park. Electrical storms, loss of working crew and the unpredictable Jasper weather add to the adventure Bridgland faces in his daily climbs.  After traveling through the life of M.P. Bridgland the book focuses on the Repeat Photography project that finally brought Bridgland’s 735 original glass plates out of hiding.  The Repeat Photography Project’s recent photos taken in the summer of 1998 and 1999 are a constant reminder of his life’s work and are a memorial to the drive and determination it took to map the mountains of Jasper National Park.

An adventurous reader will read this book and want to go ascend a mountain, the new Jasperite will be intrigued about their mountain surroundings and everyone will be entranced by the beautiful imagery and story the book leaves in your mind and in your heart.