Imagine This Valley ― Essays and Stories Celebrating the Bow Valley

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. 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

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, includingThe 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 and Black Sun Descending, a Red Rock Canyon Mystery set in Utah's Canyonlands region; andThe 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 ofRunning Toward Stillness (RMB 2013), a meditation on Buddhist spiritual practice, running and parenthood;Earth and Sky: Photographs and Stories from Montana and Alberta (RMB 2016); and editor of the literary anthologyImagine This Valley (RMB 2016). He lives in Canmore, Alberta.