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MB Williams: Living & Writing the Early Years of Parks Canada

This exhibition tells the story of Mabel “MB” Williams, an extraordinary, ordinary woman who became devoted to national parks and engendered that devotion in others. Historian Alan MacEachern documents her role in shaping the philosophy of Canada’s Dominion Parks Branch (the precursor to Parks Canada) in the early to mid-twentieth century. Digitized photographs and letters from Williams’s life, her guidebooks and other publications, and audio interviews with Williams herself reveal her influence on, and love for, Canada’s national parks.

Alan MacEachern

About the author

MacEachern, Alan
MacEachern, Alan

Western University, Canada

Show more
Alan MacEachern teaches History at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. The founding director of NiCHE: Network in Canadian History & Environment, he has written extensively on Canadian national parks, including Natural Selections: National Parks in Atlantic Canada, 1935–1970 (2001); “Canada’s Best Idea? The Canadian and American National Park Services in the 1910s” (2016); and, for Arcadia, “Banff is …Hell? The Struggle of Being Canada’s First, Most Famous, and Most Visited National Park” (2016). He has also previously written on “M.B. Williams and the Early Years of Parks Canada” (2011). MacEachern was a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in 2016. He can be reached at amaceach@uwo.ca.

Browse the exhibition

Exhibition Overview
Introduction
Becoming MB
A Great Land Waiting
The Letters of a Life
Out-Grey-Owling Grey Owl
Everything After
Further Reading
The Collection

The Collection

The Collection

This exhibition tells the story of Mabel “MB” Williams, an extraordinary, ordinary woman who became devoted to national parks and engendered that devotion in others. Historian Alan MacEachern documents her role in shaping the philosophy of Canada’s Dominion Parks Branch (the precursor to Parks Canada) in the early- to mid-twentieth century. Digitized photographs and letters from Williams’s life, her guidebooks and other publications, and audio interviews with Williams herself reveal her influence on, and love for, Canada’s national parks.

MB Williams: Living & Writing the Early Years of Parks Canada

This exhibition tells the story of Mabel “MB” Williams, an extraordinary, ordinary woman who became devoted to national parks and engendered that devotion in others. Historian Alan MacEachern documents her role in shaping the philosophy of Canada’s Dominion Parks Branch (the precursor to Parks Canada) in the early to mid-twentieth century. Digitized photographs and letters from Williams’s life, her guidebooks and other publications, and audio interviews with Williams herself reveal her influence on, and love for, Canada’s national parks.

Alan MacEachern

About the author

MacEachern, Alan
MacEachern, Alan

Western University, Canada

Show more
Alan MacEachern teaches History at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. The founding director of NiCHE: Network in Canadian History & Environment, he has written extensively on Canadian national parks, including Natural Selections: National Parks in Atlantic Canada, 1935–1970 (2001); “Canada’s Best Idea? The Canadian and American National Park Services in the 1910s” (2016); and, for Arcadia, “Banff is …Hell? The Struggle of Being Canada’s First, Most Famous, and Most Visited National Park” (2016). He has also previously written on “M.B. Williams and the Early Years of Parks Canada” (2011). MacEachern was a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in 2016. He can be reached at amaceach@uwo.ca.

Browse the exhibition

Exhibition Overview
Introduction
Becoming MB
A Great Land Waiting
The Letters of a Life
Out-Grey-Owling Grey Owl
Everything After
Further Reading
The Collection

Guardians of the Wild

The 1936 Guardians of the Wild, the first book written by M. B. Williams, is also the first history of the Canadian national parks system. It was written and published in Great Britain, and Williams never mentions her own part in that history.

Jasper National Park

This 1928 book by Mabel Bertha Williams is considered one of the finest parks guidebooks of the 1920s. With fine illustrations and photographs, it details the general character of the Jasper National Park as well as its historical, geographical, and biological information.

The Environment & Society Portal is a project of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, an institute founded in 2009 as a joint initiative of LMU Munich and the Deutsches Museum. Read more about the Portal in English and in German.