This exhibition chapter introduces 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.

MB wrote the first history of the Canadian national park system in 1936, but spent much of the following decades struggling unsuccessfully to build a career as an author. It was only when writing about parks that she had the passion to see things through.

Campbell, Claire E.  A Century of Parks Canada, 1911–2011. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2011.

Hart, E. J. (Ted). J. B. Harkin: Father of Canada’s National Parks. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2010.

History of Parks Canada Electronic Library. 

In the 1920s, MB rode horseback, hiked, and drove through the national parks of Western Canada. From this research, she wrote the most distinctive and enduring series of guidebooks that the Canadian park system has ever produced.

The 1936 speaking tour of England by the famous nature writer Grey Owl brought MB Williams back into the orbit of Canada’s Parks Branch. Letters to her provide the first evidence ever seen that the Canadian park system knew Grey Owl’s secret— that he was not Indigenous, as he pretended, but an Englishman born Archie Belaney.

MB’s letters between her and her family reveal her everyday life in Ottawa in the 1910s and ‘20s and in prewar London, England. And those letters from major figures in Canadian and national park history— or from her only known sweetheart— reveal much, too, including what she thought worth hanging onto.

Joining the Dominion Parks Branch on its first day of operation in September 1911 did more than mean Mabel Williams would be a witness to history; meant she would be a participant. She played a key role in developing and communicating a philosophy for national parks in Canada.