University of Calgary professors are digitally preserving an endangered heritage site important to the history of Canadian mountaineering.
Today, Western Canada is known for its vibrant mountaineering culture, but this was not the case in the years following the completion of the transcontinental railway in 1885. So the Canadian Pacific Railway brought Swiss mountain guides to the Rockies to share their mountaineering knowledge and to promote tourism.
Edelweiss Village—six Swiss-style lodges on 20 acres of hillside—was built north of Golden, British Columbia, between 1910 and 1912 to house these guides and their families.
With the village now up for sale for $2.3 million by the descendants of the original guides, University of Calgary professors are working to digitally capture the site and ensure it is not lost to time.
According to the National Trust for Canada, the village of Edelweiss is one of the 10 most endangered places in the country. That’s because the site is north of the town of Golden in Shuswap Regional District of Columbia — a rural region with no heritage laws — so potential buyers would not be required to preserve the buildings.
The Swiss Edelweiss Village Foundation has been set up by a group that hopes to purchase and preserve the location, but so far that is not guaranteed.
Digital storage is a useful alternative
For Prof. Peter Dawson, digital preservation is the next best thing when a site cannot be preserved physically due to cost or environmental factors. Using a ground-based laser scanner, Dawson and his team capture data on heritage sites to create virtual replicas that can be accessed online by the public.
University of Calgary professors are digitally capturing the Swiss village of Edelweiss to ensure it is preserved. The National Trust for Canada considers the village one of the 10 most endangered heritage sites in the country. (Ose Irete/CBC)
The Digital Heritage Archive focuses on “massive” heritage sites such as the Swiss Village. These are sites that have significance for individuals and communities, although they do not have official designations of significance.
“Our mission is basically to digitally preserve these local heritage sites so that there is some record of them if something ever happens to them. But also for the public, through the public face of the archive, to learn about their history and their importance to that particular community,” Dawson said.
Public awareness is essential
Dawson says public awareness is key to heritage conservation. Digital archives help generate awareness by making these sites accessible to people who do not have physical access to them.
To make the archive attractive to the public, Dawson worked with Prof. Denis Gadbois of the university’s Department of Art and Art History. Gadbois uses photography to create virtual tours of heritage sites that go beyond simply cataloging their attributes.
“Just digital preservation will help to make a replica or just preserve that history, but it won’t necessarily create the visual history that you would need for people to understand the beauty and the story of it,” Gadbois said.
An illustration of the Edward Fuese Hut, one of the Edelweiss Village buildings, created by the University of Calgary Digital Heritage Archive. (Digital Heritage Archive)
Hope for physical preservation
Johan Rodwitt is one of the founders of the Swiss foundation Edelweiss Village. He moved to British Columbia from Switzerland and says it was amazing to see the village and the impact of Swiss immigration in Canada.
He believes that the village is important not only to the heritage of both countries, but also to mountain culture on a global scale. It was a shock to him to see that the site was for sale.
“I was a little surprised. How can such an inheritance be sold? I come from Europe [and] I think of old monuments [there] – you will never have heritage items to sell.”
Rodwitt says the original plan was to capture the site digitally so people in Switzerland could see it. The organization is now working to raise funds to purchase and preserve it.
He says the organization has raised a third of the funds for an initial deposit of $100,000 through crowdfunding and will continue to negotiate with sellers.
Rodwitt says he’s grateful for the support the organization has received from Alberta and British Columbia, as well as Switzerland. The crowdfunding is phase 3 of their six-phase plan to purchase and revitalize the area with a sustainable cultural tourism concept.
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