Sparks was also a member of the Advisory Committee's Parkway subcommittee which had been created to study the possibility of building a parkway through Gatineau Park. In July 1953, the subcommittee went on a fact-finding mission to Virginia's Shenandoah National Park and Tennessee's Great Smoky Mountain National Park. The recommendations made in its report were largely inspired by Shenandoah's Skyline Drive, and many of them were later implemented in Gatineau Park. The park's Étienne Brulé Lookout is a mirror image of lookouts found throughout Shenandoah.