Daniel Francis

Reading the National Narrative

Mountain Man

Aug 11, 2018

I spent a morning recently clambering around the top of Mount Seymour in the company of Alex Douglas, the "mountain man." Alex curates a small museum on the mountain and leads walking tours of some of the historic cabin sites.

According to Alex's website, "If you lived in Vancouver, Mount Seymour is where you learnt to ski." This was certainly true in my own case. Back in the mid-1950s my parents drove myself and my siblings up the mountain on winter weekends to learn to negotiate its gentle slopes. That said, I did not take to the sport and abandoned it shortly thereafter. In fact walking up one of the runs with Alex the other day I realized it was the first time I'd been back on the mountain in almost sixty years.

Alex is particularly interested in hearing from people who owned, or visited, one of the old cabins. Or maybe you'd simply like to take one of his tours. Either way, you can reach him via his website.