CANADIAN NATIONAL PARKS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 January 1942, Page 6

CANADIAN NATIONAL PARKS

HUGE MOUNTAIN PLAYGROUNDS. OTTAWA. “Canada’s Mountain Playgrounds,” a new publication of the National Parks Bureau, Department of Mines and Resources, presents a profusely illustrated story of a Canadian mountainland that has been aptly termed “Fifty Switzerlands in One.” This booklet provides the reader with glimpses of the natural wonders of seven national parks in Western Can-ada-Banff, Jasper, Waterton Lakes, Yoho, Kootenay, Glacier, and Mount Revelstoke. It also traces briefly the history df Canada’s National Park system back to 1885, when a small area surrounding hot mineral springs at Banff, Alberta, in the Rocky Mountains was set aside, by statute, as a public domain. This area formed the nucleus of the great chain of national parks that now stretches across Canada from the Atlantic Coast to the Selkirk Mountains in British Columbia. The national parks, which were originally established to maintain the primitive beauty of the landscape and to conserve the native wild life of the country, now also serve as national recreational areas, and are visited each year by thousands of Canadians and tourists from other lands.