Town of Banff

Jon Whyte - Historian

Throughout his life, Banff-born Jon Whyte committed himself to the celebration of local culture and to the encouragement of mountain writing.

Strongly influenced by his early heroes, Carl Rungius, Ike Mills and Jimmy Simpson, his first work devoted to the Canadian Rockies was the film, Jimmy Simpson, Mountain Man, a 1968 portrait of this 19th century immigrant who became a pioneer outfitter and guide in the region. Jon then turned to publishing, launching Summerthought Press with Peter Steiner, and releasing the classic Canadian Rockies Trail Guide: A Hiker’s Manual, now in its sixth edition.
 
Jon was a prolific writer. He wrote or contributed to more than 20 books on the Rockies, including Lake Louise: A Diamond in the Wilderness (with Carole Harmon), Great Days in the Rockies: The Photography of Byron Harmon (with Bart Robinson and Carole Harmon), Indians in the Rockies, and  Carl Rungius: Painter of the Western Wilderness (with E.J. Hart).

In 1983, he was the first recipient of the Stephan Stephansson Award for poetry, presented by the Writers’ Guild of Alberta for his work Homage, Henry Kelsey. He believed that poetry was the best medium to capture the nuances and legends of a culture or, as he put it, "The scope of this country, the overwhelming vastness, the lustiness …"

Jon was described by Poetry Canada Review as "one of the two outstanding radical innovators in Canadian poetry".
 
Through his weekly column, "Where Man and Mountain Meet", published in the local Crag and Canyon newspaper, Jon Whyte was regarded as the conscience of the rapidly-changing Town of Banff. Here he documented regional culture and criticized the commercialization which he felt was destroying Banff’s unique character and charm.

In 1980, he became Curator of the Banff Heritage Collection of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, founded two decades earlier by his aunt and uncle, Catharine and Peter Whyte. He immediately set about improving the public’s access to museum artifacts and documents. After his death from cancer on January 6, 1992, Jon was honored posthumously for his commitment to history and for his refined sense of mountain place