Imagine This Valley: Essays and Stories Celebrating the Bow Valley

by Stephen Legault (Compiler)

Canmore and Banff are collectively renowned for their mountain culture, diverse wildlife, and scenes of breathtaking natural splendor. These vibrant mountain communities are also home to exceptional adventurers, artists, thinkers, and writers. For the first time, some of the area’s best-known personalities have contributed essays to a collection of work that promotes this remarkable area like no other book has before.

Author royalties from Imagine This Valley will be donated and placed into a fund for young people from the Bow Valley who wish to pursue writing as a vocation. An initial amount of $2,000 will be placed in trust by RMB | Rocky Mountain Books, and each year, starting in 2016, a $500 grant will be given to a student interested in pursuing their dream of writing.

The contributors include:

Rob Alexander
Jocey Asnong
Barry Blanchard
Ian Brown
Kristy Davidson
Colette Derworiz
Ben Gadd
Jamey Glasnovic
Katherine Govier
Maria Gregorish
Miki Kawano
Frances Klatzel
Michale Lang
Harvey Locke
Dustin Lynx
Lynn Martel
Brewster Niehaus
Ruth Oltmann
Carol Picard
Graeme Pole
John Reilly
Robert Sandford
Margo Talbot
Jon Whyte

Genres: Nature

256 pages, Paperback

Published November 15, 2016

About the author

Stephen Legault is the author of fourteen books, including most recently Where Rivers Meet: Photographs and Stories from the Bow Valley and Kananaskis and Earth and Sky: Photographs and Stories from Montana and Alberta.

He is a full-time conservation activist, writer, photographer, public speaker, and strategy consultant who lives in Canmore, Alberta with his wife Jenn, and two sons, Rio and Silas. He has been writing since 1988, and for nearly as long has been leading national and international conservation programs and organizations.

Stephen recently served as the program director (Crown, Alberta, NWT) of the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y). His writing includes nine murder mystery novels, books of essays on Buddhism and Taoism and a collection of works by 25 authors on the Bow Valley of Alberta.

Follow Stephen on Facebook, or visit www.stephenlegault.com.

Reviews

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the mix of experience with the place and the issues of parks, preservation and climate change. I love the Bow Valley and the hiking I have done there.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you love the Canadian Rockies, or dream of visiting the mountains someday, you’ll love this collection of essays by local writers of Banff, Canmore and the surrounding area.

[Nicolas Levy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Normally I am skeptical of compilations and the varying topics, scope, and quality of their contents. But this book intrigued me when I saw it on the shelves of Cafe Books in Canmore, and I'm glad it did. I have been visiting the Bow Valley as a local tourist for the past eight years, and more recently have been connected to a local mining family. This collection of essays from the region's writers was hugely influential in how I understand this special place and my own relationship to it. Nearly each essay left me with an image or idea that shaped my understanding of the valley's unique ecosystem, the people that call it home, and its broader role in the West and the world. "The Good Rain" remains my favorite literary travel/mountain book, but this is also a lyrical testament to the power of place.