Nov. 16, 2011 - Issue #839: Ox

The trickle down

Does mountain culture run downhill in Banff?

By adulthood, most of us have forgotten the exhilarating experience of running full tilt down a hill. Other activities may substitute for this sensation, but few recreate the same raw quality as hurtling forward on your own two feet, carrying momentum to the near point of falling, chest out, legs churning to keep up.

I remember an old church hymn about building houses on the sand. Attending the Banff Mountain Festival (from October 29 – November 6) at the Banff Centre feels different: high on a hill embedded in rock, like faith of unclear denomination, far from the churches of my youth. How do we rekindle the desire to run and rediscover that sensation?

The settled history of Alberta stretches back some 150 years. Banff is even younger, settled after the discovery of hot springs and a subsequent first wave of tourism-driven commerce back in the late-1800s. The advent of culture is more recent still, or at least the articulation of this culture. But whatever that culture was then or is now, it owes a lot to the landscape and, significantly, the Rocky Mountains.

"At some point it became apparent that what we were experiencing was a kind of tribal gathering of people from around the world who were really passionate about mountains," says Bernadette McDonald, director of mountain culture at the Banff Centre from 1988 to 2006. But that doesn't mean the notion of mountain culture was always readily accepted.

"You wouldn't believe the conversations that happened in my office over the years—'Mountain culture, what does that mean?' In fact, someone once said to me, 'Isn't that kind of an oxymoron?'"
The idea for a festival germinated out of a meeting of the executive of the Banff chapter of the Alpine Club of Canada back in 1974, recalls alpine historian and author Chic Scott. They were kicking around ideas for what to do in the shoulder season, and Scott suggested a film festival. "I planted the seed and John [Amatt, festival director from 1974 to 1984] raised the baby," he quips.

What started as a weekend event grew over the years into its present nine-day gathering of filmmakers, writers, artists, adventurers and, of course, the audiences who support it. Over 10 000 attend the festival each year.

Then there's the festival as international export. The Banff Film Festival World Tour boasts more than 600 dates in 32 countries around the world, from Antarctica to Japan to Wales, reaching over 245 000 people.

"What happens here [in Banff] is the import," McDonald describes. "The export is recreating those mountain culture experiences in hundreds of places, sometimes on very flat ground. Which is interesting because initially we weren't sure it would work.

"It turns out it doesn't matter if it's Edmonton, AB, or Madison, WI, or the South Pole, there is a core group of people who are passionate about the mountains whether they are personally active, environmental advocates, painters, writers, filmmakers or photographers. That community is huge."
Yet despite this success, Scott argues there's something missing. "Personally I feel that the Banff Mountain Festival has been remiss in promoting Canadian mountaineering and Canadian mountain culture," he says. "There has been very little Canadian content.

"It's a first rate show ... but I think there are ways we can incorporate more of our story—and people want to learn that. People come from all over the world and they go away without learning anything about Canada. Although we are very modest and very interested in the big international stories, we want to hear a little bit of our story too."

That story has its origins in the small mountain towns where culture and sports cross-pollinate. While festivals like Banff's capture a Kodak moment of mountain culture, how honest are they to the spirit of the community? Scott feels that perhaps such events can become too manufactured.

Ensconced at the lofty Banff Centre, it's easy to forget that down below there is a town grappling with the realities of day-to-day living in the mountains.

As Robert Sandford points out in The Weekender Effect, those realities aren't getting any easier, as more and more people place greater demands on communities and fragile ecosystems.

"The most important thing about Banff to me is the people I meet on the street," says Scott. "Remember that book you got when you were six years old and it was the little town and there was the fireman and the baker? Well, we almost have a community like that here."

When it comes to the value of mountain community, McDonald wholeheartedly agrees. "That ridge down the western edge of Alberta helps define us and it's incredibly important to acknowledge the fact that we are a mountain province," she asserts. "Some of the best biologists, artists, climbers and experts in the world in certain fields live in that little corner [of our province]."

It's knowledge, McDonald stresses, that's one of the key exports of the festival, through grants awarded to budding artists, giving them access to filmmaking and writing programs. For embattled mountain communities, the ability to tell their own, engaging stories is critical, argues Scott. "We have to start telling our own stories and we have to support that if we want a genuine community with real things."

That may be the next great challenge for a festival born and bred in the Alberta mountains, which has now become one of the province's most esteemed cultural products. John Porter, renowned alpinist and former producer of the Kendall Film Festival, has called it, "The best mountain festival in the world."

As the trend of escalation in "extreme" culture suggests, being the best means never letting up; never falling prey, as festival-award-winning short film The Wolf and the Medallion analogizes, to the cultural wolves of complacency, exhorting its audience to "never stop running."

That is how I end up racing downhill, full tilt, breath coming in frosted gusts, shoes kicking up gravel at the road's edge, legs moving of their own accord faster and faster, shedding origins and objectives, direction and denomination. I think about the short span of life and the future I'm passing on to my children, I think about the Alberta they will inherit and the culture they will know and be influenced by. As we sow, so shall we reap.

And I run on.

More stories in Snow Zone »

vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus