People uprooted from Glacier (1)

Glacier (formerly Glacier House) was developed as a non-Indigenous settlement in 1886. It first opened as a permanent dining car attached to the Canadian Pacific Railway’s (CPR) Glacier Station, built on a curve west of the llecillewaet River. A hotel complex was built on a small flat adjacent to the CPR station, near the Illecillewaet (Great) Glacier, in 1887. By late 1886, the hotel had a large dining room available to workers. More renovations done from 1887 to 1904 made Glacier a popular tourist destination.

On 4 March 1910, an avalanche in Roger’s Pass killed sixty-two CPR workers who were clearing the railway; thirty-two of them were Japanese Canadian men. CPR dismantled the bridge spans and track that led to Glacier in 1917, and the station was closed to the public in 1925. By 1929, all structures that remained in Glacier were being dismantled.