Canada 150 Visitation Unless you've been living under a rock this past year, you know that 2017 represents the 150th birthday of Canada. As a nation, we were born just 150 years ago on July 1, 1867. Now this wasn't the Canada we know today, but a teeny tiny Canada with a lot of well, wilderness. Canada, such as it was, was made up of Upper and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and that's it. Upper Canada then became Ontario and Lower Canada, Quebec. Looking at the rest of what would become the rest of Canada, in the far west, there was the Crown Colony of British Columbia, but it would be 4 more years before it became a province on July 20, 1871. The vast majority of what is now Canada though, remained as either Rupert's Land or the Northwest Territories. If the water's flowed into Hudson Bay, it was part of Rupert's Land, and if it flowed north into the Mackenzie River system, it was part of the Northwest Territories. Alberta and Saskatchewan did not join Canada as full provinces until 1905. Canada's National Park system began with the 10 sq km Banff Hot Springs Preserve in 1885, with just a tiny section protected around the Cave and Basin Hot Springs. It sowed the seeds of Canada's National Park system though and was the third National Park in the world behind only Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. and Royal National Park in Australia. Today Canada's National Park system includes 47 National Parks and 970 National Historic Sites. These include the Cave and Basin, Abbots Pass Refuge Cabin, Banff Park Museum, Banff Springs Hotel, Howse Pass, Skoki Ski Lodge, and the Sulphur Mountain Cosmic Ray Station. Other sites across the Mountain National Parks include Athabasca Pass, Yellowhead Pass, the Jasper Park Information Centre, and the Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton. Across Alberta, you can add Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, Calgary City Hall, Nordegg, Atlas No. 3 Coal Mine, Coleman, Fort Edmonton, Fort Macleod, Fort Whoop-Up, and the Turner Valley Gas Plant. 2017 was a year steeped in history but also steeped in tourism. The Trudeau Government decided to make all visitation to National Parks and National Historic Sites free for 2017 and this led to huge fears that the parks would be inundated. I have been a strong critic of Parks Canada's focus on bringing more and more cars through the park gates for the past decade while allowing the backcountry to wither. All the marketing has focused on 4-5 million visitors pointing their cars and buses towards the same 2% of the park. Over the past few years, I have watched the park get swarmed by more and more and more visitors. In iconic locations like Lake Louise, Moraine Lake, and Peyto Lake, I've witnessed the crowds growing to levels unimaginable just a decade ago. Many of the park roads, like Sulphur Mountain, Lake Louise, and Moraine Lake, are one lane in and one lane out. This creates finite limits on the amount of traffic the roads can accommodate. In past years, I experienced wait times as long as 2-1/2 hours driving the 3 km or so between the Village of Lake Louise and the actual Lake. With traffic jams like these, nobody is having a good experience. Over the past year, after the announcement that park passes would be free this year, there was well-justified fear that these delays would just get longer and longer. Parks was regularly criticized by Banff and Jasper town counselors for their lack of transparency and discussion on how to deal with the influx of traffic. As the season approached, though, the pieces began to fall into place. Parks Canada made some very bold moves that dramatically reduced the congestion within Banff National Park. Some of these moves included: Permanent parking boundaries along narrow roads such as the approach to Moraine Lake, Johnston Canyon and Lake Minnewanka. These reflective pylons made sure that narrow sections of road weren't