Excerpt: Canada’s national parks system originated in western Canada. On 25 November 1885, a week after authorities executed Louis Riel for his role in the North-West Resistance, and about two weeks after railway financier Donald Smith hammered in the Last Spike on the Canadian Pacific Railway, Sir John A. Macdonald’s Conservative government reserved approximately 26 square kilometres of forested land around the hot mineral springs near Banff Station, in present-day Alberta.