Paddling the Boreal Forest. Stone James Madison
of United Empire Loyalists who settled in the Eastern Townships of Quebec.
Albert Peter was the youngest of five sons in the family (we don't know if there were any daughters). He grew up in the New York Temperance Hotel4 his father owned, on Boulevard Saint-Henri. Given the name of the hotel, his parents were likely abstainers, with a strong Protestant work ethic. Nothing is known of his four brothers, not even their names.
In the 1870s, the Saint-Henri area was a distinctly lower-class neighbourhood with a highly transient population of about 2,500, speaking both French and English.5 As the industrial barons and the wealthy of Montreal lived elsewhere, the Low family certainly did not rub shoulders with them. With his father's German background, and his childhood in Saint-Henri, Albert Peter grew up speaking English, along with some proficiency in both French and German.6 Growing up in a hotel located in a working-class area of dressmakers, furniture dealers and leather goods makers, he would have met many interesting characters passing through what must have been a working-man's hotel. Montreal at that time was tough, and Albert Peter probably had a rough-and-tumble childhood. He was six years old when Canada became a country in 1867. Low attended the Montreal High School in the 1870s, the city's main English-language Presbyterian school. Given his later career, it is likely that Albert Peter was in the upper-school scientific division.7 Nothing is known of his school days and any school records pertaining to him were lost when the school burnt down in the 1890s.
The Montreal High School as it was when Low was a student there. The building burned down in the 1890s. Sketch taken from The Canadian Illustrated News, September 11, 1875. Courtesy of LAC photo collection, C-062862.
The course calendar for the Applied Science class at McGill in 1881 identifies five students. This 1878 photograph show six young men. A.P. Low is believed to be the individual on the right. The students are holding various surveying instruments. Courtesy of the McCord Museum, Notman photo 11–48018.
Albert Peter Low entered McGill College in 1878. Coming from such a modest background, he must have done well academically in high school to gain entry to McGill. There he also excelled at his courses, and graduated in 1882 with a First Class degree in Applied Science, making him an engineer. In his Applied Science class, there were only five students.8 The course work entailed some geological teachings, and he was instructed by the Principal, Sir William Dawson, who at that time was one of the foremost geologists in Canada. He was also the father of George Mercer Dawson,9 the geologist who became the director of the Geological Survey in the 1890s and for whom the city in the Yukon is named, as well as a number of other Canadian landmarks. At that time, the Geological Survey was headquartered in Montreal and Low made some social and professional connections there through his geological studies. Many of the scientists employed at the Geological Survey of Canada were graduates of McGill.
This 1881 Notman photograph of the McGill University team is the first ever taken of a hockey team in uniform. The photo is labelled “Hockey Match, Crystal Palace Skating Rink.” A.P. Low is on the left. Note the variation in uniforms and hockey sticks. Courtesy of McCord Museum, Notman Collection, MP-0000.175.
Albert Peter was an enthusiastic participant in team sports at McGill. Physically, he was short, stocky and very rugged.10 He is found in the first photograph11 of a hockey team in uniform,12 taken in 1881. His name as goalie and those of his teammates are inscribed on the hockey trophy13 memorializing the team's victory in the 1882 Quebec winter carnival game. Hockey in those days was in its early days as an organized sport. The McGill hockey rules had just been written in 1878 so that teams could play each other using common rules. Neither goalies nor other players wore padding; play was rough and injuries common. On the off season, Albert Peter also played football for McGill, and can be identified in an 1883 photo of the team.14 No record has been found indicating that he participated in other popular sports clubs of the day, such as snowshoeing — he would get more than enough later in his life — or in cultural clubs. There is no way around it — Albert Peter Low was a “jock.”
The silver hockey trophy won by the McGill University team at the 1882 Quebec winter carnival game. A.P. Low's name is inscribed on the cup. Courtesy of McCord Museum, Notman Collection, M976.188.1.
We wonder what his friends called him. Was it Albert or Peter or some variation? In the McGill hockey team photo, he is identified as Albert Low. Nevertheless, all further references are to “A.P.,” including his signature on official Geological Survey correspondence, his field notebooks and news articles. As a confirmation of Mrs. Wynn Turner's family information, oral history records at the Geological Survey always refers to Albert as “A.P.”
JOINING THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
In the summer of 1881, while still at McGill, Low joined a Geological Survey field party as the summer-student assistant to R.W. Ells, to survey the geology of the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec.15 For this job he was paid $30 per month plus board. As an assistant, he did basic mapping which involved pacing distances along roads where they existed, or measuring with optical surveying instruments. Labourers were hired to establish camps, transport supplies and do the camp chores. Low learned to respect their abilities in the bush and on the trail. In the summer of 1882, he again assisted R.W. Ells in continuing the survey of the same area, but this time as a permanent employee of the Geological Survey, starting on July 1,1882, with the salary of $700 per year.
A.P. Low as a young man around the time he joined the Geological Survey of Canada. Courtesy of LAC photo collection, PA-214274, William James Topley.
Low had to move to Ottawa to take up his position at the Geological Survey, which had just completed its relocation from Montreal in 1881. In keeping with his salary and bachelor status, as well as with the general housing shortage in Ottawa at the time, he took rooms in various boarding houses. In 1884, he lodged in Mrs. Buchanan's boarding house on Rideau Street, (still one of Ottawa's main streets) near the Geological Survey headquarters, which was then occupying the Clarendon Hotel on the corner of Sussex Avenue and George Street in the Byward Market. The building still stands but is now home to an exclusive fashion shop and a premium coffee house. Mrs. Buchanan's boarding house could have had the title “Geologist Central” as it also was home to other geologists employed at the Geological Survey, including Joseph Tyrrell (and his brother James who later wrote the classic Across the Sub-Arctics of Canada), Robert G. McConnell (a future Director of the Geological Survey), William Mclnnis and Frank Dawson Adams.16
The Geological Survey of Canada was founded in 1842 by Sir William Logan,17 one of the world's leading scientists and thinkers of his time, and in whose honour Mt. Logan, the highest mountain in Canada, is named. Its mission was to prepare a survey of the geology of the united colony of the Province of Canada. In those pre-confederation times, the Province of Canada (Canada East and Canada West) occupied a narrow strip of land between the U.S. border to the south and the height of land separating the watersheds of rivers flowing north to James and Hudson bays, and rivers flowing south to the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes. In 1867, the Confederation of Canada added New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. In 1870, the inclusion of Manitoba (at the time a fraction of its current size) and the purchase of the lands from the Hudson's Bay Company added millions of square miles. In 1871, British Columbia and, in 1873, Prince Edward Island became part of Canada. The job of the Geological Survey had become continental in size.