be situated on a beautiful meadow at the foot of the Horseshoe glacier, at the base of Mt. Hungabee, which closes the valley on the south. These delightful summer outings are no idle holiday. There is no foolishness in mountaineering; it is too vigorous a pastime. Even the nonsense that may escape at intervals around the camp-fire takes on a sober coloring from the grim old heights, that have kept watch for ages over these gaily-flowered alpine meadows and sombre green wooded valleys.
During the Christmas season, the President made an Eastern tour, giving illustrated lectures at Winnipeg, Toronto, Woodstock. Collingwood and Ottawa, thereby awakening interest in mountaineering and adding somewhat to the Club's exchequer. In Ottawa, he addressed the Canadian Club on Canadian mountaineering.
On January 11th, a meeting was held at Winnipeg to discuss the affairs of the Club. The meeting was adjourned to Calgary for the 17th of January. It was decided to publish the first issue of the Canadian Alpine Journal under the auspices of the Club, and $800.00 of the Club's revenue was voted for this purpose. It was also decided to contribute $50.00 to help pay for the handsome marble monument recently erected in honor of Sir James Hector at Laggan station by his friends in Canada, the United States and England.
The affairs of the Club are in its own hands under the Executive, which advises and acts independently, if the Club may so direct. Election to membership is by vote of the whole Club through the ballot. The standard of qualification may not be lowered, but as climbing becomes more general, it will certainly be raised. The Alpine Club of Canada is as democratic as the Church itself: any man of good character who fulfils the conditions of active membership, is eligible.
The first annual meeting was held on the summit of the Yoho pass by the light of the camp-fire, when the President gave an address and the Secretary and Treasurer presented reports. The officers were all re-elected, and Mr. S. H. Mitchell was appointed Assistant Secretary. Mr. Mitchell is both efficient and willing, and has borne the burden of the Secretary's work ever since. Very few days pass without letters of enquiry or applications for membership.
The Club is growing fast, but not too fast. The only royal road to membership is by the "Associate" way of twenty-five dollars a year. It is a worthy way and an honorable for men whose circumstances will not permit them to qualify, by way of crag and precipice and glacier; and it is money invested in nationhood, yielding a far-off interest, not of tears but of noble, patriotic temper. For the Alpine Club of Canada will, more than any national sport in the Dominion, weld together the provinces in the bonds of brotherhood; and furnish training in the more Spartan virtues of times of peace. It will not be many years before it will have entrenched itself deep in every province between the two oceans, when its membership will be in the thousands, and each and every Canadian mountaineer make the Club's motto his own—"sic itur, ad astra."
