to stand for nomination both as a director on the executive committee and also for the club cabin committee. She was elected to the latter position. The following year Phyl was elected club librarian, a position she held for two terms.
The club leased land on Grouse Mountain and built a large cabin on it. The cabin, which was big enough to provide shelter for a number of hikers and to accommodate gear, food supplies, and cooking needs, became a weekend haunt for many members. Members using the cabin were asked to sign a guest book recording their visit and the dates, along with the names of visitors they brought with them. Phyl was very familiar with the cabin. Her first recorded visit was in August 1915 when Phyl and her brother Dick signed their names alongside that of her friend Peggy Worsley, who as club member authorized their visit. A few months later, after Phyl herself became a member, she began to bring her own friends and family to the cabin.
The club was egalitarian in nature and because it was relatively small and local, members didn’t have to travel far afield as did those belonging to the Alpine Club of Canada, whose activities centred on the Rocky Mountains. The BCMC’s regular weekend trips were inexpensive because everyone pooled their resources and shared food, and it was very informal. Beginning the trips on Saturday afternoon (after most office workers finished their shift) instead of in the morning allowed the majority of the members to attend.
Climbers were an unusual breed, and they kept their activities mostly to themselves and fellow climbers because in their experience the urban population had no interest in the outdoors and could not believe others desired to escape from the modern city and go to the hills. What attraction could there be to “set out into the wilderness” for no particular reason – not to log, not to fish, not to clear land, not to build a road – but merely to enjoy the experience?
Hiking – the outdoors, the challenges, the wonderful variety and wonder in nature, the camaraderie of like-minded souls – was a tonic for Phyl. Fellow club member Neal Carter echoed Phyl’s own feelings of delight to discover “that there was a whole Club of People who Liked to Climb Mountains; that They had a Cabin on the slopes of Grouse and Their Own Trail.” Another club member penned a verse in the style of Robert Service and the closing lines summed up the feelings of those early climbers.
But say, comrade mine, isn’t it fine,
Dog tired and loaded for fair,
To struggle back with a twisted pack,
And think of the joys up there.
Climbers like Phyl felt they could not survive without frequent opportunities to get out of the urban environment and retreat to the hills, to the snowy peaks of the mountains that surrounded Vancouver and extend north along the coast. Members climbed on all the local mountains – Grouse, Dam, Crown, Goat, Hollyburn, Cathedral, and The Lions. The club executive drew up a hiking schedule of regular weekend hikes and also the longer, three- or four-day trips. The trip director organized a rotation of members who each agreed to lead specific climbs.
Although the mountains surrounded the Vancouver suburbs, transportation to the extremities was limited. Each mountain required different access points. Once in North Vancouver, to go to Grouse Mountain (elevation 1211 metres), Phyl and her friends walked from the end of the Lonsdale streetcar line by trail. To go to Mount Seymour (elevation 1453 metres), the most easterly of the North Shore Mountains, they walked all the way from Lynn Valley. Some destinations required travel by B.C. Electric Railway interurban train into the Fraser Valley to get to areas like Golden Ears or the Chilliwack River and Mount Slesse (elevation 2375 metres) near the international border with the United States. The Lions (elevations 1599 and 1646 metres) northeast of the city, could be reached overland from Grouse Mountain or via the Howe Sound Crest Trail. A quicker way was to take a boat from English Bay or Horseshoe Bay and land on the beach at the foot of The Lions, then ascend straight from sea level. As her first big club climb, Phyl climbed the West Lion in 1916.
To get to the more distant peaks to the north, the club-chartered motor launch the Tymack left on scheduled Saturdays from pre-set locations at 2:30 p.m. precisely. The launch took the members closer to their climbing destinations by ocean, thus eliminating the time-consuming overland portions of the trip. Peaks such as Mount Tantalus (elevation 2603 metres) at the head of Howe Sound on the west side of the Squamish River, and Mount Garibaldi (elevation 2678 metres) sixty-five kilometres north of Vancouver, were not easily accessible.
Phyl met new friends in the BCMC, and many of these were young men. She and a girlfriend spent several happy afternoons joking with young men stationed at Point Grey to await their turn to head off to the battlefields of Europe. They played with the heliograph, a device for signalling by means of a movable mirror. The mirror positioned at the correct angle to the sun created flashes of light beams visible over a distance. The flashes, either long or short – dots or dashes – using Morse code, allowed Phyl and her friends to send silly messages back and forth between the girls near the club cabin on Grouse Mountain and the boys at Point Grey. Another station was on the top of the Vancouver Building on Granville Street, so they had a triangle for signalling. It was a lot of fun.
Phyl was often at the club cabin with hiking friends Peggy Worsley or Margaret Lewis. She also brought her Girl Guides on summer weekends. In 1916 along with BCMC executive member P.J. Park, Phyl climbed up with soldiers on leave from the 62nd Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, then stationed locally awaiting their orders to mobilize and go overseas to the fighting.
In September of 1919 Phyl’s Guides (between forty and fifty of them) travelled to Victoria on Vancouver Island to attend the first Provincial Rally, which was held in the Pemberton Woods near Oak Bay. Lady Barnard, wife of British Columbia’s lieutenant-governor, was the Girl Guides’ provincial president, and she took the salute to formally open the Rally. Each company spent a fun-filled competitive time showing off their skills in competitions to win the provincial pennant. The 2nd Vancouver Company and the 1st Burnaby Company together underwent formal inspection by His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales.
5
Bloomers and Britches
“Phyl,” began one of her colleagues at the hospital, “how can you be so perky at work every Monday when I know that you have been tramping in the bush and pushing your way through the forest climbing up some blasted mountain? Why aren’t you exhausted?”
“Oh, it’s not exhausting, I mean yes, it is exhausting, but it’s exhilarating at the same time. It’s hard work, but because it’s hard, you feel so great when you’ve accomplished your goal. I never tire of that. Oh, I know I’m contradicting myself, but until you do it, you won’t really understand how it can be.”
Phyl James and Don Munday on the windswept summit of Mount Blanshard, 1918. Don poses with his camera while Phyl holds up a handkerchief to disguise her ripped clothing.
Don’s first cabin on Dam Mountain. Here he and Phyllis stand beside the unfinished verandah, ca 1919–1922.
“I don’t know if I’d ever want to do that – climb mountains, that is. I’d get all scratched and muddy and rip my skirts.”
“We don’t wear skirts. That would be nonsense. We would have to stay on nice,
