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By Amie Lalonde, Collections Cataloguer
Hello again from the Moore home! Two rooms down and five more to go! Right now I am cataloguing the study at the front of the house. This room is my favourite room of the house, it is so light and airy and gets such nice light all day long. I can just imagine sitting at the library table in the corner to write a letter, or stretching out on the settee with one of the many books.
This room mostly highlights Philip Moore: his time at Princeton, his military career, and his sporting escapades (like his affinity for playing archery golf at the Banff Springs Hotel golf course). The Princeton hats and pennants have that classic collegiate feeling and the fact that Philip kept so many of them really shows his pride at being a Princeton alumni and his fondness for the years he spent there. Many of the trophies and medals are his from Princeton and later, however Pearl’s athletic prowess is still well represented! Above the door to the bathroom is a hockey trophy awarded to the Banff Ladies Hockey Team for winning the Rocky Mountain Park Hockey Championship in 1907! Our wonderful Archives and Library has a photograph of Pearl and her hockey team around this time posing with a cup that looks very much like this one...
Above: [Studio portrait of a women's hockey team. Pearl Brewster Moore at centre, ca. 191?]., Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Moore family fonds (V439/PA-279)
Loving Cup (103.09.0012). The front of the cup is engraved with “Rocky Mountain Park Hockey Championships 1907 presented by H. Douglas won by: The Banff Ladies Hockey Team, Feb. 1908”, with the names of the team members on the reverse.
There is one difference between the pictured cup and the one currently in the study however... Do you see it? If they are indeed the same cup it appears that the cup was taken apart at some point in the past and put back together upside down! Oh the stories that objects tell!
In addition to the sports memorabilia donning the walls, the drawers are packed with sports pins and medals won by both Philip and Pearl - track and field medals from Philip's youth and time at Princeton, Pearl's hockey medals, and medals from various Banff Winter Carnivals and sports events. Philip and Pearl were certainly a classic athletic power couple!
Above: Prize Medals (103.09.0030 a-u), Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies
In addition to Princeton and sports, there are some artefacts relating to Philip's time in the Canadian Armed Forces in the First World War. Immediately to the left of the door are a pair of knee-high boots that Philip wore while in the Army. In the drawers of the campaign chest against the south wall of the room are some of Philips's military ribbons, medals, and epaulettes as well as a German Iron Cross from the Second World War, likely brought back by Philip as a (somewhat morbid) souvenir. Another interesting war relic that I came across in a box in one of the upstairs bedrooms is this fuse for a German howitzer gun. A collection of bullets from both the First and Second World Wars were also found in the study (just casually in a bowl on the campaign chest) but have since been safely removed and deaccessioned.
Above: Various medals, identification tags, ribbons, and patches. Top right is a German Iron Cross
Above: Now deaccessioned bullets and a detonated howitzer shell
Left: Boots (103.03.1045 a,b) from Philip’s time in the army during the First World War.
Right: Philip Moore in military uniform, [1916], Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Moore Family fonds (V439/PD-358/17/003)
Edmée Moore, Pearl and Philip's daughter, is also represented in the study. On the north wall are some oil paintings that she did of landscapes around the Banff area. While Edmée never had the artistic acclaim of family friends Peter and Catharine Robb Whyte or Carl Rungius, she was a talented artist in her own right and studied art in Chicago where the Moore family spent at least two winters. Upstairs in one of the bedrooms are her paint supplies which are really really neat.
Above: A collection of Edmée’s painting supplies. They were all thrown haphazardly into a drawer and are now nicely arranged to best conserve them.
Edmée Moore (1908-1971, Canadian), Mount Rundle, 1930, oil on canvas,
Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies. MoE.02.10