The mountains are calling

“The mountains are calling and I must go,” said naturalist John Muir in 1873. That sentiment holds true for many of us today. But with many small towns asking visitors to stay away, a trip to the mountains may not be in the cards this summer. How will we vista seekers cope?

Luckily, we can still explore the Canadian west through UVic’s Mountain Legacy Project. The project’s new map-based tool features side-by-side image comparisons of stunning mountain scenery—past and present.

UVic environmental scientist Eric Higgs, who leads the project, has documented 150 years of ecological and cultural change in western Canada. His team recaptures historical photos first taken by mountain surveyors from 1861 to 1958. They use modern camera equipment to capture fresh images of the same mountain vistas in exactly the same locations as the original photos, and then compare the results.

Mary Sanseverino, a keen mountaineer, photographer and computer science instructor now retired from UVic, has been involved in the project since 2011. “The importance of the work is, to my mind, in the name of the project,” says Sanseverino. “We make use of the important photographic legacy left to Canada by the early surveyors. We walk in their footsteps, stand where they stood, repeat their images and, through our research, pay their legacy forward to the future.”

For new stories on mountain culture and Indigenous ways of knowing, read Mountain Legacy’s new blog on Indigenous territory acknowledgement and for other research stories visit Mountain Legacy.