Sian Griffiths 

Canada’s national parks: from Hollywood beauties to beautiful beasts – in pictures

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the world's oldest national parks service: Parks Canada. Here's a selection of photographs of some of the country's 42 national parks
  
  


Canada parks : canada banff kids
During the 1880s, railway workers stumbled across a hot springs cave in Alberta’s Canadian Rockies. When the railwaymen tried to commerically exploit the springs - long known to First Nations people - the Canadian government stepped in and Canada’s first National Park, Banff, was created in 1885. Soon, luxurious hotels like the Banff Springs were built to attract visitors. ‘If we can’t export the scenery, we’ll import the tourists,’ said one railway boss. Parks Canada was created in 1911 to bring the small number of national parks - like Banff - under government direction Photograph: Parks Canada
Canada parks : canada banff climbers
Banff’s 3,464m Mount Victoria is one of the most photographed Canadian landscapes. Mountaineering in the area was cultivated earlier in the century when local hotels employed Swiss guides to escort wealthy European and American climbers - including female American mountaineering pioneer Georgia Engelhard, (pictured above with her guide, Ernest Feuz), around the area's snow-capped peaks and ridges. Today, the region is world famous for its ski resorts, mountaineering and hiking - the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge being among the most recent famous visitors to enjoy the area’s natural beauty
Photograph: Parks Canada/WJ Oliver Photograph: WJ Oliver/Parks Canada/WJ Oliver
Canada Parks: Marilyn Monroe in
Hollywood discovered Banff national park decades ago when it made films such as the River of No Return, a 1953 western adventure starring Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum. The actress starred as a singing and guitar-strumming showgirl who ended up stranded with farmer Robert Mitchum and his son. They endure a treacherous journey over rapids to escape the wilderness. The film was shot on location in and around the national park - including Lake Louise - and neighbouring Jasper national park. The chateau-like Banff Springs Hotel became the crew’s base Photograph: Alamy
Canada Parks: Mount Victoria reflected in Lake Louise
Mount Victoria reflected in Lake Louise, Banff national park, Alberta Photograph: David C Tomlinson/Getty
Canada Parks: Grey Owl famous for animal conservation
In the 1930s, Grey Owl, an aboriginal trapper-turned-conservationist, pictured right, became the Parks Service’s first naturalist. After he died, he was exposed as a fraud: born Archibald Belaney in Hastings, Sussex, he had moved to Canada in 1906, learnt Ojibwe - an aboriginal language - and assumed the identity, as well as the accent, of a First Nations man. But he has also been recognised for his important contribution to conservation. Grey Owl’s cabin - which he shared with his wife and two beavers - can be visited in the Prince Albert national park Photograph: AP
Canada Parks: Pond reflection, Prince Albert National Park, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Located in the geographic heart of Saskatchewan in the Canadian prairies, Prince Albert national park was created to protect the northern coniferous or boreal forest in 1927. There are remnants of ancient grasslands at the southern end of the park, too. Along with roaming herds of bison, it's also home to Canada's only fully protected pelican nesting colony. Other residents include lynx, timber wolf, black bear and over 200 species of birds. Visitors can observe nature as Grey Owl (previous picture) did from his isolated lakeside cabin in the park Photograph: Alamy
Canada Parks: Climbers on Athabasca Glacier
North of Banff, Jasper national park is one of Canada's oldest (1907) and largest, embracing 11,000 square kilometres of ice, rock and forested Canadian Rocky Mountains scenery. It's home to some of Canada's highest mountains, including 3,700m Mount Columbia. Hikers can enjoy 1,000km of trails, thousands of campsites and wildlife including grizzly bears, cougars and bighorn sheep. A big draw for visitors is the Columbia icefield - up to 360m deep - which sits astride the continental divide of North America. It feeds many glaciers including the Athabasca, pictured, the most visited glacier on the continent Photograph: Raymond Gehman/Corbis
Canada Parks: Big Bend Campsite
Jasper is the world’s largest Dark Sky Preserve (DSP), according to the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. What makes Jasper a particular attraction for stargazers is that 97% of it is solid wilderness - and that it is accessible by road. Big Bend Campground is one of many great vantage points from which visitors can scan the night skies or revel in spectacular moonlight-bathed natural scenery
Photograph: Yuicki Takasaka Photograph: Yuicki Takasaka/PR
Canada Parks: Point Pelee National Park
Created in 1918, Point Pelee is Canada's smallest national park at just 15 square kilometres - also the country's most southerly point. This forest oasis boldly juts out into Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes. It tapers off into a distinct sandspit which has occasionally been washed away: a few years ago the 'no swimming' sign marking land's end was found 100km away across the lake - and across the US border - on an Ohio beach. The park is popular with kayakers and canoeists, who enjoy exploring the waterways of the marshes to the sounds of grasshoppers and in the company of blue herons Photograph: Francesca Yorke/Getty
Canada Parks: A polar bear at Ukkusiksalik National Park
One of Canada’s newest (2003), Ukkusiksalik national park, Nunavut, is perched on Hudson Bay’s north-west coast just 160km south of the Arctic Circle. It’s named for the soapstone found in the park, a traditional homeland of the Inuit, who still hunt seal and caribou in this extensive region. The Park is also a great place to view the aurora borealis - or northern lights. On cold, crisp nights between October and April, brilliant sheets of green, red and purple lights dance high above the snowy landscape Photograph: www.alamy.com
Canada Parks: Salt Plains and Boreal Forest
At 45,000 square kilometres, Wood Buffalo national park is Canada’s biggest, stretching north across the Alberta-Northwest Territories border. It was established in 1922 to protect roaming wood bison. The park is so huge that its managers didn’t realise that it contained the world’s biggest beaver dam, detected by satellite last year. The protected landscape ranges from dense boreal forest to nearly 400 square kilometres of marble-coloured salt plains - left behind after a prehistoric sea evaporated. This visually striking feature is just one reason the park was named a Unesco World Heritage site Photograph: Mike Grandmaison/Corbis
Canada Parks: The airstrip at Tanqueray
Quttinirpaaq is Canada’s northernmost park - a mountainous, treeless environment which hugs the north Greenland coastline. Created in 1986, the park receives just a handful of visitors, who mostly arrive at its small airport, which comprises a hut, a landing strip and a windsock at Tanqueray
Photograph: Parks Canada Photograph: PR
Canada Parks: Quittinirpaaq National Park
It costs money and effort to reach Quttinirpaaq national park, but visitors will be rewarded with spectacular views of glaciated mountains, pristine waterways and even wildflower meadows. This seemingly lifeless environment supports polar bears, seals, Arctic fox and musk oxen
Photograph: Nunavut Tourism Photograph: Nunavut Tourism/PR
Canada parks : canada, Wapusk, Canada
Wapusk, which means 'white bear' in Cree, is one of Canada’s newest national parks. The 11,500 square kilometre park, created in 1996, sits on the western edge of Manitoba’s Hudson Bay. Over 1,000 of the famous white bears live on and around the sea ice - ideal for hunting ring seal. Last year, most of the 1,300 tourists visiting Wapusk, inaccessble by road, viewed the bears' denning areas by helicopter
Photograph: Parks Canada/Norbert Rosing Photograph: Norbert Rosing/Parks Canada/Norbert Rosing
Canada Parks: Sea Lions in Gwaii Haanas National park
By the 1980s, the Parks Canada portfolio included National Marine Conservation Areas (NMCAs) aimed at protecting adjacent oceans and the islands and species in them. In 2010, a NMCA reserve was added to Gwaii Haanas national park, making this 5,000 kilometre 'Galapagos of the North' the only place on earth protected from mountaintop to sea bed. The pristine waters surrounding Gwaii Haanas teem with marine life as diverse as salmon, sea otters, sea lions and red urchins. No fewer than 17 species of whale, including humpback and killer, frequent the area
Photograph: Kelly Funk Photograph: Kelly Funk/Corbis
 

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