Of all British Columbia valleys none has a finer sweepthan the spacious Windermere. The valley rolls itselfon both sides of the Columbia River in wide stretchesof grass lands, varied with great reaches of red pineforest, here of open park-like appearance, there thickwith underbrush of spruce and cedar. The valley liesbetween the two ranges of the Selkirks, which in placescrowd hard upon the river and again lie up against afar horizon across a stretch of tumbling foothills. Withthe autumn sun on its rich and varied wealth of color,the valley lies like one great genial smile across the faceof British Columbia from Golden Pass to the Crow’sNest, warm, kindly, restful.
It was upon a glorious autumn day that Hugh Gaspard’seyes first rested upon the valley, and from thatfirst impression he could never escape. For, though bytraining and profession Gaspard was an engineer, andwith a mastery of his craft, by native gifts of imaginationand temperament and sense of colour, that rarestof Heaven’s bestowments, drawn from his mingledHighland Scot and Gallic blood strain, he was anartist.
Gaspard was enormously proud of this mingled bloodof his. He was never quite sure which strain broughthim greater pride. It depended entirely upon hisenvironment. In Glasgow, where his father’s engineeringworks were situated and where he spent his boyhood, hewas never tired vaunting the “Gaspard” in his blood.In Paris, where in early youth he spent his holidaysand where later his hard-headed and practical fatherdeclared he “wasted two valuable years of his life fiddlin’wi’ pents and idle loons and lassies,” he was vehementlyHighland, a cousin, indeed, to the Lochiel himself. Fromboth strains he drew his fiery, passionate, imaginativetemperament, his incapacity, too, for the hard grind inlife.
After graduating from the Glasgow University as an