Byron Harmon

1874 - 1942

“I am working in that part of Canada which stands on end.” *

A great photographer combines the ephemeral with the practical requirement of being in the right place at the right time. This can be serendipity, but is also hard work. For a landscape photographer timing, weather, light, and place must collaborate, as though by magic. In the early twentieth century these conditions were only achieved through planning, foresight, and patience. Photographic equipment was heavy and cumbersome. Photographic film required long exposure times with a camera mounted on a tripod.

A Wilderness of Photographs

Byron Harmon was such a photographer. In the Canadian Rockies he found an unlimited palette of spectacular scenery, wildlife, unusual individuals to cast as characters in his scenes, and enough danger and adverse conditions to imbue his images with veracity, intrigue, wonder and legitimacy. In the mountains travel was on foot, on horseback, or snowshoes, travelling with pack-trains which carried supplies and equipment for weeks of travel. Trails and bridges were few.

Byron Harmon was the most celebrated photographer of Canadian mountain wilderness of his day. His film footage was viewed around the world.

Pioneer Ancestors to Modern Technology

He was born in Tacoma, Washington in 1874. Both his maternal and paternal grandparents were homesteaders on Whidbey Island, in Puget Sound, who arrived, in 1852, to take up Dominion Land Claims. These ancestors were involved in the Puget Sound Indian War of 1855-56. His paternal grandfather, Hill Harmon, was a minor shareholder in the first lumber mill in Oregon Territory, at Steilacoom on the Hood Canal. Priscilla and Jacob Smith were pioneer homesteaders—first on Whidbey Island, then near Olympia, WA.

Byron grew up in this uneasy frontier culture, learning the skills of living off the land which would later serve him in his chosen profession. He witnessed the development of the west, the suppression and oppression of Indigenous cultures, and participated in the birth of a modern age of technology.

Tintype to Photo-gravure

In his early twenties Byron began his career as a self-taught photographer; he built his first camera from diagrams in a magazine. He opened a studio in Tacoma and was active in photographic endeavours around the city in the 1890’s.

In the late 1890’s Byron Harmon left Tacoma to become a travelling tintype photographer. Tintypes were images exposed on coated iron plates, individually exposed and processed to create a one-of-a-kind image. They replaced the more costly Daguerreotype process offering shorter exposure and processing times.

Indians of the Western Prairies: Photo-Gravures.

Byron Harmon photographed Indigenous tribes throughout the American west, some of whom were still involved in colonial wars. In 1901, back in Tacoma, he published reproductions of his tintype photographs in, Indians of the Western Prairies: Photo-Gravures. This 8.26 in x 5.21 inch “viewbook” consisted of 24 pages, printed on one side, lace-bound, with drawings of native artefacts and landscape fragments embellishing the page layout of his small tintype images.

I know of the existence of only one copy of this book, missing its cover, which is in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.

The Canadian Rockies: a New World to Photograph

Byron continued to search for a locale which would fulfill his photographic aspirations. He suffered from asthma at the coast and this played some part in his also looking for a healthier climate to live in. He first came through Banff, then a newly-formed community, on the CPR train from Calgary in 1903. While soaking in the recently completed Cave and Basin Hot Springs, he met Tom Wilson, a guide and trapper with fingers in every local pie. Wilson coaxed him to settle in Banff, promising he would be the first professional photographer of Canadian Rockies wilderness.

Byron Harmon Photos Begins

By 1905 he had opened his studio, Byron Harmon Photos, at 108 Banff Avenue. A year later he was advertising, “the largest collection of Canadian Rockies photographs in existence”.

One of his earliest commissions was for the Federal Department of Agriculture. He travelled and photographed both rural and city scenes in western Canada. This work included Indigenous portraits, some of them taken on glass plate negatives. He took portraits, photographed town events, and built up a thriving business.

He also worked on commission for the Canadian Pacific Railway and eventually produced a line of postcards and related souvenirs titled, Along the Line of the C.P.R.

The Alpine Club of Canada

1906 was a propitious year for Byron Harmon. Arthur O. Wheeler, a Dominion surveyor and enthusiastic mountaineer, with Elizabeth Parker, a nationalistically-inclined reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press, founded The Alpine Club of Canada. It was embraced with enthusiasm by climbers across Canada and abroad.

Byron was immediately appointed its official photographer. He attended every annual climbing camp of the ACC as well as special expeditions organized by Mr. Wheeler to entertain foreign climbers by introducing them to little-explored wilderness areas. These excursions furthered Wheeler’s goals of widening his survey activities and furnished fresh opportunities for Harmon’s camera.

A Wedding, and a New Business

Byron married Maude Moore in 1907. Maude was from a ranching family who had moved west when the CPR was completed, then homesteaded near Okotoks, outside of Calgary.

The young couple purchased Austin Moore’s livery stable at 113 Banff Avenue and renovated it into a photographic gallery, gift-shop and fountain lunch, with Byron’s studio at the rear. The grand opening was in 1909. Because they couldn’t afford two pot bellied stoves, blankets were hung between the gift shop and photo gallery for warmth in the winter months.

New Technology

At first all of Byron’s images were exposed and printed individually on large sheets of photographic paper, then dried between blotting paper rolls placed in galvanized metal tubes above the furnace. They were hand trimmed and stamped on the back, “Byron Harmon Photos, Banff, Canada”.

Eventually he could afford to order a Photo Gravure postcard printing machine from Europe. Imagine going from exposing and developing one-of-a-kind tintype photographs to printing four thousand postcards a day in under fifteen years!

Film, the New Art

I don’t know when Byron began working as a cinematographer, or even how he learned this new craft but in 1911 ‘The Harmony” theatre opened in Banff. In 1913 a new, purpose-built movie theatre, designed by Harvey Wright of Chicago and erected beside the existing Harmon building at 111 Banff Avenue, was opened to the public. As well as offering exciting new dramatic and documentary films, The Harmony screened Byron's film sequences of Canadian Rockies scenery and activities such as snow-shoeing and climbing. The projectionist was an acrobat who performed between reels. Local talent nights were featured.

To put this in perspective, film production in Hollywood was only beginning in 1910. Harmon was in the vanguard of movie production. He sold stock footage to Canadian Pacific Railway, Canadian Government Motion Picture Bureau, (precursor of The National Film Board of Canada), Fox Movietone News, Pathé and other international film distribution companies.

Children! Then War

Byron and Maude’s first child, Aileen, was born in 1912 and Lloyd in 1914.

World War 1 had an almost immediate negative effect on the prosperous tourist economy of Banff. After 1914 Alpine Club activities were greatly curtailed; many male members enlisted. Byron and Maude held fund raising activities for the Red Cross in the theatre as business worsened. The Harmony had a rival, The Lux Theatre, which was opened in 1912 by Norman Luxton, owner of Banff Crag and Canyon newspaper. Byron was a supporter of an alternate newspaper, The Rocky Mountain Courier, which was active in Banff from 1915-1920; Luxton suspected Harmon of being a secret shareholder. Vitriolic articles appeared in the Crag. Neither theatre could afford to open more than three days a week in the worsening economic climate. Finally Harmon and Luxton were forced to put aside their differences and co-operate on their fund-raising activities to support the Red Cross and the war effort, agreeing to operate in alternating winters.

A Birth and A Fire

On January 09, 1917, Byron and Maude’s third child, my father Don, was born.Then disaster struck. The Harmons building burned to the ground leaving only the fieldstone pillars standing.The Banff Crag & Canyon reported on the fire; no mention was made of Don Harmon’s birth:

The fire king collected his annual harvest in Banff yesterday morning when the Harmony block was reduced to a heap of ashes. The fire broke out at 12:40 AM and in a few moments the entire building was a mass of seething flames. The firemen were quickly on the job, the water pressure was excellent, and there was little to no wind blowing which materially helped the fire fighters in their efforts to save adjoining buildings...Nothing was salvaged and the work of years was destroyed, also all the pictures and postcards manufactured for next season’s trade. Some of the negatives, the moving picture maker, and films in a fire proof structure at the rear were saved.

Rebuilding, How to Survive?

By June 1917 the building at 113 Banff Avenue had been replaced; this time it was designed by Calgary architect Rex Arlo Millar, who had worked for the CPR. The remainder of the building, as we know it today, was not completed until 1920; the movie theatre was not rebuilt.

Following the fire, Byron’s efforts to find new customers redoubled, as did his determination to replace what had been lost with new photographs and films. The war had taken its toll on business in Banff—but the fire was a disaster.

Harmon opened a temporary studio then travelled east and south looking for new customers.

Promoting Banff

The Crag & Canyon reported on Jan. 18, 1918: Byron Harmon returns from New York, “full of peace and joy”, having the satisfaction of knowing that through his visit Banff will receive a lot of advertising.

Byron knew the key to his own success, perhaps even the survival of his business, was to promote Banff. He invited prominent magazine writers from the USA, and sometimes famous climbers, to join him on “movie trips” into the mountains. This was the same format A. O. Wheeler had perfected years before.

Between 1917 and 1919 Byron organized several such excursions which were subsequently featured as photo spreads in US newspapers and magazines. The Crag reported in 1919, “Byron filming in the mountains with the editors of N.Y. Tribune, McClure's Magazine, Atlanta Constitution, and Chicago Tribune, guided by Bill Potts.”

The World After World War 1

At last the European war ended. The climbing community of the Allied Nations determined to show their support for peace and co-operation among nations with The Congress of Alpinism at Monaco which took place May 1-10, 1920. It was organized by the French Alpine Club and sponsored by the Prince of Monaco, himself an enthusiastic mountaineer and oceanographer.

Byron, with photographer and writer Julia Henshaw, represented the Alpine Club of Canada and the Canadian Government in Monaco. Harmon and Wheeler had designed and produced the displays, described by Julia Henshaw in her report on the Congress in the 1920 Canadian Alpine Journal:

The exhibits in the Assembly Hall were placed on large screens lining the two sides of the room, and here Canada came first—a very long way in the lead. Six sections were occupied with the various exhibits of the A.C.C., four of them filled with the beautiful photographic enlargements of Canadian Alpine scenery, climbing, big game and camping, the work of Mr. Byron Harmon, one was filled with topographical maps by Mr. Wheeler and one with photo-topographical surveys prints also by Mr. Wheeler. On the opening day it was impossible to approach Mr. Harmon’s photographs, so dense was the admiring crowd in front of them, and throughout the following week one never entered the Assembly Hall without finding a group of people looking at them. The praise bestowed at Monaco upon the A.C.C. exhibits, consisting of photographic - enlargements, maps, moving pictures, coloured lantern slides, scientific papers and illustrated lectures, left nothing to be desired, and must have amply repaid Mr. Wheeler and Mr. Harmon for the task of preparing, collecting and arranging such a magnificent display of the scenic beauties of the Dominion.

A Keen Promoter

Byron also displayed this work on the Floor of the House of Commons in Ottawa, and on board ship crossing the Atlantic. Following the Congress he gave talks and showings in England and Scotland, having to turn down invitations from the continent. His photographs were syndicated in papers throughout the British Isles.

The Purcell Mountains

In the early 1920’s Harmon returned to the Purcell Mountains, which he had first photographed in 1910 with famous British climber, Tom Longstaff, on one of the ‘special excursions’ organized by A. O. Wheeler. These trips took him outside the borders of Canadian National Parks with their restrictive regulations.

At Lake of the Hanging Glaciers in 1920, and again in 1922, with his friend and guide Conrad Kain, he created dramatic scenes for his films using dynamite to precipitate avalanches and flares to illuminate mysterious ice caves.

Opening the Banff-Windermere Highway

In 1923 Byron guided John Murray Gibbon, with a group of artists and magazine writers, to the source of the Kootenay River. This was the year the Banff-Windermere Highway opened, allowing easier access to this previously remote location. Around the campfire, the enthusiastic party dreamed up The Trail Riders of the Canadian Rockies, an organization which came into existence the following year with the financial support of the CPR and still holds annual trail rides.

Gibbon was Chief Publicist for the CPR, an author, and promotor of Canadian arts and culture, who founded the Canadian Author’s Association, and is credited with promoting the image of Canada as a cultural mosaic.

Columbia Icefield Expedition

To celebrate his twentieth year in the Rockies, Byron organized an expedition, two years in the planning, to photograph and film the Columbia Icefield. This remote area presented a unique opportunity to document the hydrographic apex of North American with its dramatic landscape. Harmon considered this project the culmination of his life's work.

He invited adventure-travel writer Lewis R. Freeman, who he had met in 1922 at Lake of the Hanging Glaciers, to join him. Soapy Smith of Morley was the outfitter, Rob Baptie the horse wrangler, and Ulysse La Casse the cook. No guide was needed as Byron had travelled most of this route many times in the past.

Byron knew Freeman would be invaluable in publicizing the trip. Indeed, Freeman placed a long article, The Mother of Rivers, with National Geographic Magazine in its April 1925 edition and also published a book, On the Roof of the Rockies, about this trip. (See the separate article on this website about the Columbia Icefield Expedition.) Harmon’s film was sold to Fox Movietone News.

The Master Promoter of Tourism

Byron’s photographs often appeared in full page spreads of articles promoting Banff and the Canadian Rockies. His films were widely distributed on news reels. Beginning in 1918, he promoted his work, and therefore the mountains, through exhibits of his photographs in department stores, presentations to clubs, lectures in Canada, the United States, Europe, and China, onboard ships—wherever he could convince a few people to look at his images.

He began to envision routes for new highways through the mountains, and to promote those which were already in the planning stages. His dream was for a motor route which would connect south-western USA to the Canadian Rockies as one continuous scenic highway circuit. His intimate knowledge of the entire landscape of the Canadian Rockies, Selkirks, and Purcell Mountains suggested variations to routes which would eventually be built: Trans Canada Highway, Banff / Windermere Highway through Kootenay National Park, The Big Bend Highway (which followed the Columbia River, which was later dammed), and the Icefields Parkway. He was interviewed on these subjects and created photographic exhibits of the scenery along these proposed routes which he exhibited in Canada and the USA. In some cases his innovative ideas would have provided easier construction, lower costs, and less perilous driving conditions than the routes eventually chosen and built.

Slowing Down, but Never Quitting

Byron’s major photographic work was completed with the 1924 Columbia Icefield Expedition. He photographed the scenery of the Big Bend Highway with my father in the late 1920’s. In the early thirties he photographed and filmed the new sport of skiing with his son, Lloyd and daughter, Aileen. He contrasted skiing with dog-sledding in photo essays at both Skoki in 1932 and Mt. Assiniboine in 1934.

Byron Harmon, my grandfather, died in 1942.

Carole Harmon

* from a letter by Byron Harmon published in Moving Picture World, 1913

A Bird’s Eye View

Throughout the years in which I have contemplated his photographs I have tried to imagine what drove and inspired my grandfather. In this twenty-first century I have looked at his work through the lens of colonialism and I wonder how current concerns such as climate change, Indigenous Reconciliation, and the need to protect endangered species would have influenced him had he the foresight to imagine our current worldview. In some respects I believe he was prescient.

My conclusions take beauty into account—he wanted to share the wonder of what was then considered an untrammelled wilderness which offered spiritual riches to those hardy enough to brave hardships of wilderness travel. Adventure, a guiding motivation in his time, is still a major attraction of mountain landscapes.

A Collage of Mountain Life

I view his large body of work as a portrait of a particular way of life, recorded at a time when wilderness was still considered romantic, unknown, and to some extent unknowable. Since the dawn of colonialism, accelerating since the industrial revolution, the ‘civilized’ world has increasingly encroached on and exploited wilderness. There was a growing awareness, in the early twentieth century, of growing tension between nature and industry.

I visualize my grandfather’s work as a huge collage, with each trip and expedition representing an aspect of life in the mountains. His visual story-telling relates one of the really significant narratives of his day with full awareness that it was passing away. Each trip he made depicted an aspect of this narrative, with the Columbia Icefield Expedition representing the journey itself. The scenic highway he envisioned in his later years, connecting Canada and the western USA, mirrored his own life’s journey.

Indigenous Portraits by Byron Harmon

On this website I have not included my grandfather’s beautiful and moving Indigenous portraits which he took throughout his time in the Canadian Rockies. Although he printed, displayed and sold them himself, it doesn’t seem appropriate to offer them for sale today. The negatives are in the Byron Harmon fonds and online in the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies Archives, with display prints for research purposes. In recent years they have been a resource to local Indigenous families as photographs of their ancestors.

A series of hand-coloured prints of fourteen portraits are on display in Buffalo Nations Luxton Museum in Banff which is run by the Stoney Nakoda Nations of Morley, Alberta.

A Mystery—Where Did All the Films Go?

Although cinematography was one of my grandfather’s major activities, there is little Byron Harmon film footage identified today: a few fragments in the Whyte Museum, probable resources in the National Film Board Archives of the National Archives of Canada which are unidentified and uncatalogued. The film he used—all film stock of that period in fact, consisted of a photographic emulsion on a flammable cellulose-nitrate base which deteriorated in closed storage such as film canisters. It’s possible little remains.

In a way I am glad, and perhaps this is why I haven’t tried harder to track it down. Early films hold little charm in our modern age; they seem quaint and often appear silly and unsophisticated, their plots naive.

My grandfather’s black-and-white still photographs still cast considerable magic.

Carole Harmon