5/7/2023 0 Comments King under the mountain castle![]() ![]() Its battlemented towers, its buttresses, its crenalated crags shout Castle, Castle, Castle, all day long. The mountain named itself in the first instance. No one who has seen Castle Mountain can call it anything but Castle. The gesture is a gracious one …it is a pity that the gesture will be futile. Oddly, the Canadian Pacific Railway station in the area retained the name Castle Mountain.Īlthough the audience at the state dinner responded enthusiastically to the announcement, protests erupted from across Canada and even from the United States. The mountain became Mount Eisenhower and the junction of the two main roads in the area became Eisenhower Junction. There is one thing, too, of which I am fairly certain – it must be a bald peak” ( Ottawa Journal, 10 January 1946). Reportedly visibly moved, Eisenhower responded by saying that he was “touched by such a tribute that one man should be so honoured and his name so perpetuated in this way,” adding that “One day I am going to see that mountain. We can’t very well present you with a mountain, but we have this mountain named ‘Castle Mountain’ and it is the wish of the Government of Canada and of the people of Canada to change the name from ‘Castle Mountain’ to ‘Mount Eisenhower’. We have no ancient castles in this country, but we have other things that are even more enduring. Recounting that the people of Scotland had recently presented Eisenhower with a castle, King said that Reportedly against the objections of the Geographic Board of Canada, King announced the renaming during a state dinner on January 9. Sir Leonard Brockington, a friend and former aide of the Prime Minister’s, suggested that Banff National Park’s Castle Mountain be renamed in the general’s honour, adding, in a statement that proved to be astoundingly inaccurate, that because the mountain “was not named for any individual … no one could be offended by a change of name” (quoted in memorandum, Pickersgill to King, 7 January 1946). Prime Minister Mackenzie King was seeking a fitting honour to bestow on the general. ![]() Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe and future President of the United States of America, was on an official visit to Canada. Castle Mountain to Mount Eisenhower and Back Again ![]()
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