"Every drop of water will be desired": The Lake Minnewanka and Spray Lakes controversies in Rocky Mountains National Park, 1912--1931.

The notion of the national park as an area where human enjoyment of natural scenery took precedence over, and was incompatible with natural resource development was constructed in Canada between 1907 and 1931. During this time period, Canada's National Parks Branch went from building its own dam on Lake Minnewanka, in Rocky Mountains National Park (later Banff National Park), to vigorously opposing the construction of new dams on that and other park lakes. The emerging parks and conservation movements ultimately diverged over the proposed development of the Spray Lakes and Lake Minnewanka between 1922 and 1931. The result -- a recognition that human enjoyment of national parks was incompatible with resource development, but that development projects could take precedence over park land -- was a compromise which reflected the divergence between these two branches of the Canadian environmental movement. --P. ii.