Before anyone posted a mountain photo online, somebody had to convince the public that the Rockies were worth the trip. The Canadian Pacific Railway had a plan, and part of it involved a movie camera.
In 1920, a company called Associated Screen News of Canada was announced in Montreal. Charles Urban proposed it, and CPR president Edward Wentworth Beatty signed on as a partner. The railway put in $250,000, and the company’s films largely promoted CPR travel and immigration. In other words, a railway decided that if people wouldn’t come to see the scenery, the scenery would go to them, on a theatre screen.
Now meet the man in the middle of this story. Byron Harmon was born in 1876 near Tacoma, Washington, and he settled in Banff in 1903. He opened a photography business, became the official photographer of the Alpine Club of Canada from 1906 to 1913, and, over about three decades, took part in the life of the town as a founder of the Banff Board of Trade and the Rotary Club.
The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies in Banff holds the Byron Harmon fonds, with about 10,500 photographs, much of it film and glass negatives from 1907 to 1942. And yes, there’s moving-picture history in there. The museum’s description says Harmon produced motion pictures for commercial sale alongside his still photographs, during expeditions such as Tonquin Valley in 1918 and Lake of the Hanging Glaciers in 1920 and 1922. Picture him hauling a heavy camera up into the high country. That’s commitment.
The Associated Screen News filmography ties the two threads together. Banff-based cinematographer Byron Harmon shot most of the company’s Rocky Mountain footage. Railway films such as Canadian Rockies Holiday (1938) and The Radiant Rockies (1940) helped shape the way outsiders pictured Banff and Lake Louise. Even in 1952, the CPR was still at it with a film called Banff’s Golf Challenge, directed by Ross Beesley.
Associated Screen News did plenty beyond the mountains, too. Its monthly Canadian Cameos series, proposed by Gordon Sparling, ran from 1930 to 1954 with 84 episodes, and it introduced Canada’s first sound theatrical films. The company kept going until it stopped production in 1957.
Why does any of this matter to you? Because it explains why the Rockies look the way they do in your head. Snow-capped peaks, a grand hotel, a lake of impossible blue. Those pictures had help. Photographers and cameramen spent years framing them, and a railway backed the films that carried them to theatres. It worked, too. Today Banff National Park is one of the best-known places in Canada, and the footage is part of the reason.
If you live in Calgary, this is closer to home than you might think. The Rockies are our back garden, the place we drive to for a weekend, and the pictures that once sold them to faraway audiences are part of how the whole region got its fame. Next time you head west on the highway and the peaks pop up on the horizon, remember that somebody once carried a camera up there so strangers could see it first.
It also helps explain why Hollywood eventually showed up. By the time the big studios arrived with their stars, as we covered in our story of Hollywood in Banff and Jasper in 1953, the mountains had already starred in years of promotion. The cameras knew the way.
The history lives in archives now. If you’re curious about what sits in those boxes, our guide to where to dig into Calgary’s past is a good map, and the Whyte Museum’s online archive lets you search Harmon’s work by name.
Here’s your homework. Search “Byron Harmon” on the Whyte Museum archive site, scroll through his Banff photographs, then look up Canadian Rockies Holiday and The Radiant Rockies. You’ll see the mountains the way a 1938 audience did, and you might catch yourself wanting to book the next train.
Sources: Wikipedia, Associated Screen News of Canada; Whyte Museum Archives, Byron Harmon fonds; Wikipedia, Byron Harmon.
Keep going with From film censors to film ratings, how far Alberta has come or The Provincial Archives of Alberta Is a Film Library Too, whichever calls to you.
Keep going with LHI Productions films collect 11 Rosie Award nominations and Hoot Gibson and the Hollywood crew that crashed Stampede 1925.
Quick answers
In 1920 Associated Screen News of Canada was announced in Montreal, with Charles Urban proposing it and CPR president Edward Wentworth Beatty signing on as a partner. The railway put in $250,000, and the company’s films largely promoted CPR travel and immigration.
Byron Harmon was born in 1876 near Tacoma, Washington, and settled in Banff in 1903. He became the official photographer of the Alpine Club of Canada from 1906 to 1913. The Associated Screen News filmography says he shot most of the company’s Rocky Mountain footage.
Railway films such as Canadian Rockies Holiday (1938) and The Radiant Rockies (1940) helped shape the way outsiders pictured Banff and Lake Louise. In 1952 the CPR was still at it with Banff’s Golf Challenge, directed by Ross Beesley.
