About the Book
“This then is a book of mountaineering, not presenting the Canadian Rockies in their entirety — no single volume will ever do that — but including many of the finest things. It is also a book of mountain travel, under conditions such as perhaps the European traveller experienced in the Alps during the Eighteenth Century. Finally, it is a book of mountain history; for here is Geography in the making, and with a tradition behind it — a story that has never been properly gathered together, and whose details, in part at least, are gone forever.” — from the Preface by J. Monroe Thorington
Completely re-edited, re-designed and containing with an impressive collection of archival photos and maps, The Glittering Mountains of Canada is a must-read for anyone interested in mountain literature. The book’s position in the pantheon of outdoor writing as a “classic” is only further enhanced and supported by the passionate Foreword by well-known mountain historian and environmental writer Robert William Sandford, who urges the contemporary reader to embrace Thorington’s belief in the importance of landscape and the poetry of place. This is a book that deserves to be read and appreciated alongside the work of Wallace Stegner, Henry David Thoreau and Sid Marty.
About the Author(s)
Robert William Sandford is the EPCOR Chair for Water and Climate Security at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health. He is the co-author of the UN’s Water in the World We Want report on post-2015 global sustainable development goals relating to water. He is also the author of some 30 books on the history, heritage, and landscape of the Canadian Rockies, including Water, Weather and the Mountain West, Restoring the Flow: Confronting the World's Water Woes, Ethical Water: Learning to Value What Matters Most, Cold Matters: The State and Fate of Canada’s Fresh Water, Saving Lake Winnipeg, Flood Forecast: Climate Risk and Resiliency in Canada, Storm Warning: Water and Climate Security in a Changing World, North America in the Anthropocene, Our Vanishing Glaciers: The Snows of Yesteryear and the Future Climate of the Mountain West, The Weekender Effect: Hyperdevelopment in Mountain Towns – Updated Edition, and The Weekender Effect II: Fallout. He is also a co-author of The Columbia River Treaty: A Primer, The Climate Nexus: Water, Food, Energy and Biodiversity in a Changing World, and The Hard Work of Hope: Climate Change in the Age of Trump. Robert lives in Canmore, Alberta.
J. Monroe Thorington (1895-1989) first ventured into the Canadian Rockies in 1914 and became one of the pre-eminent mountaineers and alpine scholars of his time, climbing extensively in the mountain ranges of British Columbia and Alberta, completing 52 first ascents and penning numerous guidebooks and journal articles on the mountains of western Canada. Thorington's finest work as an author can be found in this newly formatted masterpiece of North American mountaineering, along with the autobiography of Conrad Kain, Where the Clouds Can Go, originally published in 1935 and re-issued in a new edition by RMB in 2009.
