reviewed by Virginia Watson-Rouslin –
If you’ve ever travelled west of Calgary on the Trans-Canada to Banff, you’ll remember the stunning presence of the Three Sisters mountains on your left, a certain sign that you’ve reached our magnificent Canadian Rockies.
Those triple peaks give Katherine Govier’s latest novel a fitting title for a work that aims to tell the story of the early settlers and trail guides, the rowdy and rugged men and women who made the Rockies their home and explored its beautiful, but dangerous country.
Nestled beneath the Sisters lies the fictional town of Gateway, where Herbie Wishart, the best guide in the business, makes his living. Gateway has a hot springs, was host to the Prime Minister’s wife, riding in on the railroad on a cowcatcher – and the Three Sisters Hotel. Herbie is hired by the American archaeologist “Doctor Professor Charles Hodgson” to take him, his manservant, his lovely daughter Isabel and sulky son Humphrey on an expedition. It’s the Rockies’ motherlode of fossils the professor is searching for. Hodgson decides that he and his party will stay put for several more days, agreeing to meet Herbie at another site, but the Hodgson party don’t show up. And thus, their disappearance becomes the focus of search parties and intense interest in both Canada and the U.S. Says Govier: the Americans “act as if its most famous scientist had been kidnapped and was being held for ransom, as if Canada had absconded with this man, when, truth be told, Hodgson had been absconding with Canadian fossils.”
It’s this mystery that holds the story together, told from 1911 (in Herbie’s time) to 2011, when his three granddaughters become owners of the Three Sisters Bar & Hotel. As the years pass the surprising answer to the Hodgson mystery unfolds. In between, Govier creates memorable portraits of other characters, including my favourite: Helen, an Ottawa mandarin, working for the national parks, writing lackluster brochures about a place she’s never seen. Until she comes west: she’s smitten, and begins a new career making movies about the Rockies.
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