The family fell upon hard times in Ireland, and in 1876 they sold their estates and moved to Canada, where his father took up the post of harbour master in Collingwood, Ontario.

In 1877, Wheeler was hired by surveyor Elihu Stewart to work north of the Great Lakes in the Algoma District of Ontario, where he spent the summer paddling a birch bark canoe.

[4] In 1883, Wheeler was employed by the Canadian Government on pioneer surveys in the North-West Territories, which then included the future provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta and parts of what are now Manitoba.

In 1885 the North-West Rebellion was begun by Louis Riel, which pitted the Métis people of the District of Saskatchewan against the government of Canada.

During this period he surveyed the watersheds of the Elbow, Sheep, Highwood, Oldman, Belly, Waterton, Little Bow, St. Mary and Milk Rivers.

In 1901, the Surveyor-General of Canada, Dr. Edouard Deville, assigned Wheeler the task of surveying the Rogers Pass area of the Selkirk Range in British Columbia.

On the train to Rogers Pass, Wheeler met Edward Whymper, who had made the first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865 and who was in Canada as a guest of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

At Rogers Pass, Wheeler met a group of professional Swiss mountain guides in the employ of the railway, and it was with six of them that he made his first ascent of a major peak.

During the following two years, he met numerous American and British climbers who were making first ascents among the vast ranges of unclimbed peaks in the Canadian west.

During this assignment Wheeler named many of the peaks in the Kananaskis area of Alberta after World War I British and French generals, admirals and battleships.

Wheeler took up the task of promoting the idea, but Elizabeth Parker, a journalist at the Winnipeg Free Press, objected strenuously to Canada becoming a subsidiary to the United States in this matter.

In 1923 his beloved wife, Clara, died, and in 1924 he married Emmeline Savatard who had been the "Girl Friday" for the ACC for the previous 20 years and who remained with him until his death in 1945.

[1] Wheeler was elected an honorary member of the Dominion Land Surveyors Association, and served for many years as the Canadian representative on the International Commission on Glaciers.

He is the father of Sir Edward Oliver Wheeler, who participated in the first topographical survey of Mount Everest in 1921, and as Brigadier in the British Army was appointed Surveyor General of India in 1941.