Arthur Lismer, an artist who was one of Canada's "Group of Seven," was most impressed with Cathedral Mountain when he painted it in 1928 from the Opabin Plateau above Lake O'Hara. In a a letter to J. Russell Harper he wrote, "...This Cathedral Mountain to me was like a great gothic structure. It was an amazing thing. We were up to about 6 to 7000 feet, I suppose, and from every angle and in a vast territory like this you had to talk to your prey, as it were, to find a way of getting at it... There were buttresses and the pillars, towers and supporting weights like a vast piece of architecture..." The mountain features "Teacup Lake" which in the past has periodically emptied itself causing major disruptions to the operation of the CPR in the valley below. The lake is situated on a glacier and is now regularly monitored and the flow controlled. The name was in use as early as 1884 and appears on George Dawson's 1886 map. Appropriately, the peak was first climbed by a minister, James Outram.