Vaux Family. Legacy in Ice. The Vaux Family and the Canadian Alps by Edward Cavell.

Whyte Foundation, 1983. History of the prominent Quaker Vaux family of Philadelphia, avid amateur photographers of the Canadian Rockies in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Profusely illustrated with photographs by Mary Vaux, George Vaux, and William Vaux. Wraps, approximately 96 pages, oblong 12 x 9 inches, not issued in hardcover. Very good.  Summary:

Legacy in Ice: The Vaux Family and the Canadian Alps (1983) is a 98-page historical and photographic monograph written by Edward Cavell, the former curator of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies. Published by Altitude Publishing for the Whyte Foundation, the oblong volume documents the massive photographic and scientific contributions of the Vaux family of Philadelphia to the early exploration of Western Canada.

The book traces the family’s deep, four-decade obsession with the Rocky and Selkirk mountain ranges, which began in 1887 during a transcontinental trip on the newly completed Canadian Pacific Railway.

Key Content and Themes

• The Quaker Naturalists: The text centers on siblings George Jr., William Jr., and Mary Vaux. As devoted Quakers with an intense interest in mineralogy and the natural sciences, they did not view the mountains merely as a recreational playground, but as a vast, divine laboratory demanding rigorous documentation.

• Pioneering Glaciology: The Vaux family are recognized as Canada’s first glaciologists. Appalled by the lack of existing data, they systematically mapped, measured, and tracked the retreat of major ice masses—most notably the Great Glacier (now known as the Illecillewaet Glacier) in British Columbia. Cavell explores how their precision mapping laid the groundwork for modern North American climate and glacial science.

• Exquisite Large-Format Photography: Illustrated with crisp, duotone and black-and-white plates, the catalog showcases the stunning imagery the family captured on heavy glass-plate negatives. Lugging massive cameras up treacherous mountain trails, they produced some of the earliest, most geometrically precise landscape photographs of Yoho, Banff, and Glacier National Parks.

• Photography as Scientific Data: Cavell emphasizes that the family used the camera as a strict instrument of truth. By returning to the exact same rocky perches year after year to re-photograph the timberlines and ice borders, the Vaux family pioneered the use of repeat photography to visually prove environmental change over time.

Significance

Legacy in Ice serves as both an essential regional history and a testament to the intersection of early photography and environmental science. Cavell successfully frames the Vaux family not just as talented tourists or artists, but as crucial historical figures whose turn-of-the-century visual records remain an invaluable baseline for modern scientists studying climate change and glacial recession in the Canadian West.