Travel Letters: Canadian Rockies, Hiking + Painting

8 up in the Opabin meadows where we go so much with the Leicks? in September. We found an awfully nice place to camp on a sort of ledge above a creek. Very protected and mountains all around. It looked as if it might rain but we had the tent up and a meal in us before it did rain about four thirty or so. We had a transcript with us which we read very thoroughly during a heavy shower. Then about severn we had some Vitone? and went to bed. It rained a good part of the night but we didn't get a bit wet or even damp. Pete had a moose try to get into his sleeping bag but Vic had a worse time the next night when a pack rat actually got into his sleeping bag and we were all awakened by some mild curses. Vic hung up every thing he could and put the rest under his pillow but the rat managed to carry away our bacon and but it its place a stick They always put something back in place of anything they take.

Yesterday was a lovely day and we sketched pretty steadily Pete doing four and I three. Though mine were pretty rotton? We could see boats on the lake and Vic called them the Swiss navy and we never realized that Barbara & Jackie were in one of them. They came up on Sunday. We were late going to bed last night, it was 8.30 when we {pencil: 'X'} crawled in {pencil: 'X'}

Today started out by raining hard but by sleeping until 8 the sun was out when we got up. We packed up after breakfast as everything was dry and we didn't want a shower to get things so damp that we couldn't

{Centre aligned} 9 {Centre aligned, printed in blue} LAKE O'HARA CHALET-BUNGALOW CAMP {Centre aligned, printed in blue} HECTOR, B.C. {Left aligned, printed in blue: '.........193'} pack them very well. I also mended Pete's pants. You would have laughed could you have seen us. He was stretched out on his tummy while I endeavoured to patch the two holes he had made sliding over rocks. They were pretty obvious and I really made quite a nice job.

We went across the meadows to sketch and just as we were almost finished a black cloud came over the mountain. You really have no way of telling how bad a storm it will be until its right over you and the first thing we knew it was hailing and then a perfect down pour. We had our umbrellas for shading our sketches and really we must have looked funny. Pete & I sat on our pack with our heads sticking through the hole in the poncho and holding umbrellas over us. Vic even had his head under his poncho and there we sat like hens sitting on eggs only we didn't cluck. The storm passed over eventually and while Vic & I cleaned up all the food we could Pete finished his sketch and then we came on down to the camp.

It was too funny for as we came in The Pevinishes? who we know were just leaving and they were hating to go and wanted to know where we had dropped from. They had to feel our packs and wonder how we had even carried them. The joke is thet look bigger and feel heavier when you lift them with one hand

10 than they are on your back.Victor has a hard time lifting his onto his back but can carry it long distances without much trouble. There were some other people inside looking out at us queer creature s and really it was funny.

We have our old cabin on the lake shore and it will be hard to leave tomorrow morning for Lake Louise. We evidently have struck the best weather they have had for five weeks. So we really are lucky. The Links are coming back this September so itvwill be as nice as ever up here then. The camp seems ours during the last few weeks of the season.

I mustn't write more now but will write you from Banff though there may be a trip to Calgary in between.

Loads of love always.

Catharine.

{Top left, handwritten in red: '48'} Wednesday. July 27, 1932

Dearest Mother

We got back here in Banff late yesterday afternoon after the most successful painting trip we have had yet and really we were feeling awfully strong and fit. For climbing does develope muscles.

There were two letters from you here and one from Jean and I was so distressed to hear that you had had another awful attack of eczema?. Somehow I had hoped that the change of going to Rockport would start it getting well again and then with noone in the house to think of you would soon be feeling quite your old self again. Maybe being at a distance makes me more optimistic about its improving. Pete wondered yesterday if it would help if you could come out here for two or three weeks for the house is settled enough now so that you could really stay with us. But then I wondered if you would weren't too sick to make the trip. Would you like me to come home for a while? For if it would help any I'd love to. If you would wire after? you get this letter for me to come. I'd leave on the next train. I'll send this letter air mail so you will have it soon and then if you send a wire the minute it arrives I'd be in Concord in a few days. It really would be awfully nice to be home even if it was hot I have shelled peas here but there seemed to be so few to do compared with the large bowls of them we used to shell on the piazza when it was cool in the morning. I'd love to see the garden again too and after

2. all Concord is pretty darn nice even if it is a bit hot in summer. Maybe you could tell me how to cook a few things too for my repertoire is very small and Im rather timid about trying things in the cook book. You know June is one of the nicest months in a way though you never can depend much on the weather. Still it is usually nice. I was thinking that next year if you could come out then we could have lots of fun around the house. You could help me landscape garden the place for some how I never get around to it myself, and then there seeems to be more time to do things. This summer we have accomplished so far much more than we did all last year for then as you know we never got properly started. The only way to paint is to get off by ourselves in the mountains and go to it. And this year both at Yoho and on this last trip we have really done a lot.

Yesterday when we got in there was word that they wanted to see us at the hotel so we went up right after supper and were busy until midnight seeing people about things. More things seem to {Left of text in margin, handwritten in pencil: 'X'} happen all the time. Mr Pollard wanted us to splice the ski movie which has been shown four times in the last week at the hotel and had broken in several places. We also are cutting off the bottle scene for the general public. Then he was incensed because some nights paintings of an Indian had been hung with ours at the hotel and its a dreadful thing painted from a photograph by a Canmore miner and it makes