Featuring essays from some of the area’s most beloved personalities, this exceptional literary anthology celebrates the landscape, culture, community and natural history of Alberta’s Bow Valley.

Canmore and Banff are collectively renowned for their mountain culture, diverse wildlife and scenes of breathtaking natural splendour. 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. The contributors include

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

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.

Stephen Legault is a full-time conservation activist, writer, photographer, and organizational development consultant. He is the author of a number of historical and environmentally themed mysteries, including The End of the Line and The Third Riel Conspiracy, featuring Durrant Wallace, a sergeant with the North West Mounted Police in the late 1800s; The Slickrock Paradox, a Red Rock Canyon Mystery set in Utah's Canyonlands region; and The Vanishing Track and The Glacier Gallows, the most recent mysteries featuring Cole Blackwater, an environmentalist who finds himself solving crimes. Stephen is also the author of Carry Tiger to Mountain: The Tao of Activism and Leadership, which he wrote based on his experience using the Tao Te Ching as a guide to his lifelong work to protect wilderness and wildlife, and Running Toward Stillness, a meditation on Buddhist spiritual practice, running, and parenthood. He is currently working on new books of photography, essays on spirituality, and more mystery novels. He lives in Canmore, Alberta, with his wife, Jenn, and two children, Rio and Silas. Visit Stephen online at stephenlegault.com and follow him on Twitter at @StephenLegault.

Stephen Legault's profile page

The essays in this collection make an important contribution to an understanding of the contemporary Bow Valley, not simply as a scenic backdrop for tourism and development but as a complex, sometimes embattled, and very creative place.

Ben Fullalove, Alberta Views