PARK A N D C EM ETER Y. 
169 
tempt to deal in detail with the multitude 
of conditions which are met in connection 
with national parks, but delegates to the 
Cabinet ample powers to do so. To my 
mind this delegation of legislative au- 
thority is the most vital part of the Act. 
It provides a freedom of action in admin- 
istration without which parks development 
would be seriously hampered. Moreover, 
the spirit of the Act is that national parks 
shall be created and maintained forever for 
the benefit, advantage and enjoyment of 
the people of Canada and that every facil- 
ity in the matter of administration shall 
be provided to serve this purpose. 
Responsibility for administration rests 
primarily upon the Minister of the In- 
terior. Under the Canadian system of 
government each member of the Cabinet 
occupies a seat in Parliament and must 
assume in Parliament full responsibility 
for the administration of every branch of 
the department over which he presides. 
The Parks Act reads: ‘‘The said parks 
shall, subject to the direction of the Minis- 
ter of the Interior, be under the control 
and management of the Commissioner of 
Dominion Parks or such person as is se- 
lected for that purpose by the Governor in 
Council.'’ 
The effect of this provision is that the 
Commissioner of Parks and his staff con- 
stitute a distinct bureau charged with re- 
sponsibility for the administration of all 
park matters under one head. It means a 
bureau devoting all its attention to every 
aspect of parks work, policy, development, 
detailed administration. But Parliamentary 
responsibility resting upon the Minister of 
the Interior, the practice necessarily is 
that all subjects involving new lines or 
policy or any questions which from their 
character may become subjects of discus- 
sion in Parliament are first submitted to 
the Minister for decision. 
Organisation.' 
The organization of the Parks Branch 
naturally includes an inside or head office 
service and an outside service. The out- 
side staff consists of a superintendent and 
necessary assistants in each park and a 
chief superintendent, whose duty it is con- 
stantly to inspect and supervise the work 
of the various superintendents. He is vir- 
tually a traveling representative of the 
head office, expected to see that at all 
times the instructions of the head office are 
efficiently and promptly carried out. 
All the officials at the head office are per- 
manent and are under the control of the 
Civil Service Commission. The members 
of the outside staff, however, are not un- 
der the commission, but are appointed or 
dismissed directly by the government of the 
day. 
Policy. 
Therefore the principle was adopted that 
the head office should lay out all the work 
and that the principal duties of the indi- 
vidual superintendents should be to carry 
out the work as assigned to them. This 
was considered essential to ensure an in- 
telligent continuity of policy. 
The work carried on at the head office 
was subdivided into various branches pre- 
sided over by special officers, each efficient 
in the particular line of work he was to be 
engaged upon — general engineering, high- 
way construction, land matters, forestry, 
animal life, etc. And in order to avoid 
the pitfalls that abound for officials who 
administer on theory without any knowl- 
edge of local conditions, or local officers, 
we have endeavored to have all the chief 
officers personally visit the various parks 
from time to time and work there long 
enough to become familiar with the char- 
acteristics of the personnel of the local 
staff and the peculiarities of the lbcal con- 
ditions, learning from experiences of each. 
No portion of parks revenue can be ex- 
pended on parks work. Under our system 
of government all revenue collected by the 
various departments must be returned to 
the Receiver General to go into a special 
fund. Parks appropriations are voted each 
year by Parliament. The estimates on 
which these are based are prepared (in 
their final shape) by the Parks Bureau. 
The practice is to have each superintend- 
ent prepare estimates for his own park 
based on general principles laid down for 
him by the head office, not upon the whim 
or caprice of the superintendent or the 
activity of any interests. These are sub- 
mitted to the chief superintendent, who 
makes whatever changes — additions or sub- 
tractions — he deems fit and transmits them 
to the head office, where they are carefully 
gone over and finally revised from the 
larger perspective, on lines of settled pol- 
icy with respect to each park. They are 
then submitted to the Minister for presen- 
tation to Parliament. All money for parks 
purposes is voted not by individual items, 
not even by individual parks, but in one 
lump sum. The voting of the money in 
one sum gives the Parks Branch consid- 
erable latitude in the expenditure of the 
money should changed conditions indi- 
cate the wisdom of variations in that con- 
nection. 
When the money is voted each superin- 
tendent is advised of the amount of money 
allotted to his park and of the particular 
items of work on which it is to be ex- 
pended. The money, however, is not hand- 
ed over to him, but kept in the custody of 
the head office. Each month the superin- 
tendent of each park prepares an esti- 
mate of the work he proposes to do dur- 
ing the next ensuing month, and if this is 
approved by the head office, an advance 
sufficient to cover this work is sent to him. 
He then proceeds with the work, paying 
for it out of the advance and submitting 
his monthly accounts to head office for 
audit. This system, while giving head 
office full control and supervision over 
the amount to be spent and the work to be 
undertaken, at the same time permits of 
the prompt payment of all accounts for 
labor and material. 
The constant control exercised by a cen- 
tral bureau is, I believe, essential to the 
satisfactory development of the parks 
scheme. It means uniformity of adminis- 
tration, expenditure based on a proper 
perspective of the relative needs of the 
various parks of any kind, and a super- 
vision of all the parks in the light of the 
experience of all. It means the creation of 
comprehensive schemes of development in 
each park from the viewpoint of the gene- 
eral public and a continuity of policy which 
Frederick Law Olmstead, in outlining the 
requirements of the Parks Bureau, de- 
clared to be one of the first essentials. 
Let me call your attention to a few con- 
crete instances. You recently had an out- 
break of foot-and-mouth disease in Chi- 
cago. The day after the announcement 
our animal expert handed me a detailed 
report upon the disease and the ease with 
which it can be carried by human beings. 
A telegram was immediately sent to the 
superintendents of the parks where our 
herds of buffalo and other animals are lo- 
cated, closing these parks to all visitors. 
Another instance was a provision made 
for our future requirements in road build- 
ing. In Northern Alberta there are ex- 
tensive asphalt deposits. A large section 
of these has at -the request of the Parks 
Branch been reserved for parks purposes. 
A railway is now building towards those 
deposits and within a year or two we shall 
have asphalt for all our roads at the mere 
cost of handling and transportation. 
Again, we require a large quantity of 
oats for feed for animals. At our chief 
buffalo park, which is situated on the prai- 
rie, we have developed a farm which this 
year produced 15,000 bushels of oats. This 
will materially reduce the expenditure for 
feed for all the parks, since the total cost 
of the oats per bushel was only 17 cents, 
whereas the price now quoted at the near- 
est point is 75 cents per bushel. We are 
also breeding horses on this farm and in a 
few years expect to produce enough to 
supply work horses and ponies for the 
wardens for the entire park system. 
Banff, the principal town in our principal 
park, promises to develop into an impor- 
tant resort, and the Parks Branch felt that 
its character and appearance (as a town) 
should harmonize with the stately beauty 
of its environment, so Thomas Mawson, 
the world-famous landscape artist, was en- 
gaged to remake the plans of the town- 
site. 
A power company desired to secure stor- 
age rights in a park’s lake. The rights 
were given, but the company was com- 
pelled to provide a pen stock in its dam 
for the use of the department. The de- 
partment now is prepared to install a 
hydro-electric plant at this point to serve 
Banff and other towns, and it has the use 
