Canadian Rockies: Art, Music and Literature

An inspiring, humorous and adventure-packed mountain memoir that takes the reader on a journey into western Canada's backcountry parks during the raucous 1960s and 1970s.

In 1906, Nello Vernon-Wood (1882–1978) reinvented himself as Tex Wood, Banff hunting guide and writer of “yarns of the wilderness by a competent outdoorsman.” His homespun stories of a vanishing era, in such periodicals as The Sportsman, Hunting and Fishing, and the Canadian Alpine Journal, have much to tell us about the west as envisioned by those who wanted to leave the industrialized world behind.

n 1912, Mary Vaux, a botanist, glaciologist, painter, and photographer, wrote about her mountain adventures:' A day on the trail, or a scramble over the glacier, or even with a quiet day in camp to get things in order for the morrow's conquests?

The mountain parks are for all Canadians for all time and their value cannot be measured in terms of how many access roads, motels, souvenir shops and golf courses we've provided. -Bob Jordan, 1971 The Alpine Club of Canada imagined the Rockies and neighboring ranges to the west and the north as a 'climber's paradise.'

This critical edition delivers a unique and comprehensive collection of the works of Ktunaxa-Secwepemc writer and educator Vera Manuel, daughter of prominent Indigenous leaders Marceline Paul and George Manuel. A vibrant force in the burgeoning Indigenous theatre scene, Vera was at the forefront of residential school writing and did groundbreaking work as a dramatherapist and healer.

Winner of the 2019 Banff Mountain Book Award for Climbing Literature Winner of the 2019 National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Literature Shortlisted for the 2019 Boardman Tasker Award Inner Ranges brings together an enlightening and entertaining selection of mountain writing by one of Canada's most respected adventure journalists and thinkers.

For centuries, the spectacular landscapes now protected in Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park have amazed and inspired us. Historian-naturalist Paul Schullery and artist-illustrator Marsha Karle bring us a new and richly textured portrait of this magnificent region and reveal why Waterton-Glacier is a world treasure.

'The great purpose of landscape art is to make us at home in our own country 'was the nationalist maxim motivating the Group of Seven's artistic project. The empty landscape paintings of the Group played a significant role in the nationalization of nature in Canada, particularly in the development of ideas about northernness, wilderness, and identity. In Beyond Wilderness contributors pick up where the Group of Seven left off.