Why Canada's Mountains Feel Like Switzerland | Banff, Lake Louise, and Sunshine Village

I become obsessed with the country of Switzerland and Swiss culture and everything Swiss and so I decided to come to Canada I'm in the Canadian province of Alberta and I'm surrounded by mountains by these evergreen forests by no and ice and winter sports and it's just gorgeous as someone who's recently become obsessed with Swiss culture I keep seeing Swiss things here and it's like what's going on here these are the Canadian Rockies it's like this part of Canada it's right on the Continental Divide which is right where these tectonic plates are coming together so it's this giant mountain range [Music] if you rewind back to 1800s this mountain range was basically empty people hadn't explored it it was just here doing its thing and son of it accessible but these mountains were on the cusp of a revolution Canada wanted to start to build access into these mountains mainly with trains [Music] there's a huge company in particular Canadian Pacific that was building a giant railway across all of Canada including this mountain range with these railways came this dream of a future where people could actually visit the mountains so they built hotels really fancy hotels [Music] but let me tell you it's really hard to navigate through mountains like this building trains and getting into the mountains and exploring them is a dangerous and difficult activity so you have these early pioneers of mountaineering in Canada who are going and like charting these mountains going up peaks for the first time helping the railway build infrastructure guiding the first tourists through these mountains by the end of the 1800s they were starting to explore these mountains and then there was an accident this renowned climber was going up this huge peak to explore it for the first time when he slipped and fell to his death this was the first recorded death from mountaineering in all of North America where mountaineering was like a fairly new thing and it was a big deal it kind of shocked people and it made them realize that if they were gonna chart these mountains and properly explore them they needed help from the experts in mountaineering which were at the time the Swiss Canada had everything Switzerland had in terms of mountains in fact the renowned English climber who is the first person to summit the Matterhorn yes the Matterhorn when he came to the Canadian Rockies he said that this place was quote 50 Switzerland's in one so they had the mountains they just didn't have the mountain expertise which is why they brought in the Swiss so they started hiring Swiss Mountain experts to come teach them the ways of trains and mountains and tourism they called these Swiss guys sturdy picturesque fellows man if I could just be considered a sturdy picturesque fellow I'm not sure there's any higher compliment I am on a lake ice skating surrounded by stunning mountains stunning forests this stunning structure behind me this is Lake Louise nestled up here in the Rockies I can't stop looking at these mountains they are just the Swiss were the experts of this they had the knowledge and they pass it on to their Canadian brethren this chateau became the base camp base for a lot of this climbing expedition education learning how to climb learning how to navigate these mountains learning how to access this and over the next 50 years there wasn't a single fatality in all of the exploration that happened in this area to make way for tourism and it really left a mark on the culture here so over the course of the 1900s the Canadian Rockies became discovered they built roads hotels resorts and the Canadian Rockies once inaccessible became a major part of the Canadian identity and today this mountain culture has taken on a life of its own it's now uniquely Canadian it's expanded and grown in really amazing ways but it's important to remember that the Swiss helped build it I've been reading this book by this Canadian historian who said that quote it was the swiss guides who made manifest the meaning of having so many beautiful mountains eventually a lot of these swiss guides went home but the swiss influence is 100% still here you can see the influence from those early days when those guys were here teaching the canadians how to access their mountain today there are 15 peaks in the canadian rockies that were given swiss names but it's not just the names of mountains there is a very swiss institution a thing that i wanted to try for a really long time very swiss i've never tried it and i'm going to try for the first time tonight in canada here we go [Music] this is fondue film TV if I were speaking French but I don't speak French materials fondue is basically a Swiss format where you put a communal pot in the middle of the table with a portable stove that heats it up and you put different kinds of cheese in that pot and it melts it down into this like creamy liquidy wonderful path of goodness and then you start dipping and it's again this kind of communal experience it's like hotpot but like with cheese totally a Swiss thing like 100% like originates in Switzerland in in Canada fondue gets a ten out of ten must do you must do fondue that's my new motto must do fondue why are you making that Rufus must do fondue open she's gone is was it not cool in the 1950s a constant supply of Swiss Mountain gear started flowing into the Canadian Rockies and that's because of this guy John Monnett who is one of the swiss guides who was here as a ski instructor and he saw the need for quality gear that was not available here in North America at that time was only available in Switzerland and so he started to bring stuff back from Switzerland high-quality climbing gear and apparel and clothing and boots and it really caught on as this mountain culture was developing he saw a giant demand for this stuff and he started a store that store is right behind me and today it's one of the major retailers of sports and outdoor equipment some of that Swiss legacy right here on vamp Avenue I mean that's just full-on like Swiss architecture galore like that you don't get more Swiss than the net okay it was in the 1960s when a Swiss company brought in not only chairlifts themselves but employees who knew how to build and operate them that helps spread Mountain infrastructure all throughout the Canadian Rockies so today if you go skiing or snowboarding here you are partaking in some of that Swiss influence [Music] in the 1920s there was the Swiss immigrant who came here he was a mountaineer guy Sam was John just like me my name is John he saw this mountain behind me and he's like I'm tired of seeing people carry up supplies to the teahouse at the top of this mountain there needs to be a cable car like we have in Switzerland but no one wanted to pay for it couldn't raise funds so he went back to Switzerland and he got a bunch of business people to fund this project and before you know it this gondola was built let's go up it and see what it looks like you want to go up the gondola sweetie you're heavy don't grow up not only was this created by a Swiss person and funded by Swiss capital but it's also run today by Swiss infrastructure it's a Swiss company that actually designs and manufactures these cable cars and this whole system it doesn't get any more Swiss than this but we're here in the cave [Music] I'm super happy that we were able to take this trip to uh porta this is my first time here and I had no idea what I was missing out on the Tourism Board travel Alberta reached out to us and asked if we wanted to come explore this place and he said yes they had no influence over the videos we made they just told us to make whatever video we wanted based on our trip and as I started to poke into this kind of Swiss influence I became insatiable fascinated and went down many rabbit holes bought many books bought many maps so thank you travel Alberta for sending me down this rabbit hole is also made a video that's more of a Travel Guide of everything that we did while we were here kind of a day-by-day so you should go over and check that out and thanks for watching Switzerland in North America I love it [Music]

Channel: Johnny Harris

Views: 482,016

Rating: 4.9373503 out of 5

Keywords: Johnny Harris, Johnny Harris Vox, Vox Borders, Johnny Harris Vox Borders, Vox, Banff, Skiing, snowboarding, vox media, journalism, canada, USA, swiss, swiss canada, switzerland, gondola, monod, swiss guides, railroads, canadian pacific, mountains, mountaineers, travel alberta, alberta, iz harris, banff ave, ski lifts

Id: eOa1zbBureI

Length: 11min 23sec (683 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 05 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/throounyforfun4d67]

This video popped up on my feed- enjoyed it.

Thought he sounded a lot like a guy from Vox videos- turns out same dude.

Thank goodness when he tried cheese fondue for his first time he didn't go to the Grizzly house but he went to Waldhaus instead!

Kind of cool to learn how these videos come about - at the end he states Travel Alberta invited him to create a videos, but had no impact about the content of the video. Unsure of compensation, but I like learning this insight and his transparency.

[u/arcelohim]

I love this place.

[u/GTeng]

He says at the end of the video that the trip was sponsored by Travel Alberta who reached out to him.

Great strategy on Travel Alberta's part! Hopefully they are engaging with other travel bloggers to shine a spotlight on this unique region.

[u/NewWorldCamelid]

Am Swiss. Canada's mountains feel nothing like Switzerland, other than being, well, mountains. Don't get me wrong, they're amazing mountains in their own right, but they're not Switzerland.