Exshaw: Heart of the Valley

by Rob Alexander

pp. 712,b/w photographs, bibliographical references, index. heavy book additional postage may apply, illustrated boards

Hardcover

Published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Amy Dale · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is probably the biggest book I've ever held, at over 700 pages and nearing the size of a coffee table book, it's a monster! We drive through Exshaw everytime we go to the mountains, so I was really excited to find this huge history book. The first 80 pages or so are all very interesting and about the area and how the town came to be. After awhile you run into biographies of all the earliest families in the area, I read maybe a dozen and moved on.
Each chapter gets closer to the present day and begins with historical happenings and people that are intriguing, then once again you hit maybe 100 pages of local biographies, these I ultimately skipped past in all the remaining chapters.
The very last chapter deals with nature and wildlife around Exshaw, that chapter was good too.

I want to give this book 5 stars simply due to its immense size, thorough exploration of everything and everyone in the area, the amount of passion and work put into it, along with great photos, but considering I skipped at least 65% of it, I can't really do that. I can imagine the pride and excitement for the families included, their history safe for generations, but most of it sounds homogeneous to a stranger, they all describe the same Christmas activities and hotel and such.

I did learn a ton, I'm very eager to get back to Exshaw and explore some of the areas I didn't even know existed. There's some very good stories and things in the book and I loved the historic photographs.