Authors
Craig Douce
Canadian Rockies A Winter Paradise
Craig Douce is a Canmore, Alberta-based photographer whose editorial, fine art, and event images have been published by clients worldwide. Since graduating from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology’s Journalism Arts program, he has received numerous photography awards and his work has been exhibited in locations such as the Banff Centre, the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, and in many private collections.
Website: Craig Douce
Gwaii and Jaalen Edenshaw
Gwaai and Jaalen Edenshaw are Ts’aahl from Haida Gwaii. They are the founders of K’aalts’idaa K’ah Story Telling Society, a body dedicated to promoting Haida story and Haida language in everyday life through various media. Both Jaalen and Gwaai are carvers and designers who express their art through many forms.
Author Gwaaganad (Diane Brown) is Gwaai and Jaalen’s nunaay. She is a keeper of traditional medicines and an important figure in the preservation of the Haida language. She has spent 28 years in community health, and 12 years as a teacher with the Skidegate Haida Immersion Program. Gwaaganad has devoted her life to her family and to Haida culture.
Max Elliott
Canadian Rockies ABC, Canadian Animals for Kids
Max Elliott has lived and worked in the mountain parks of Western Canada for most of the past 26 years. Educated at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Max has created drawings, paintings, mixed-media collages, prints, mosaics, ceramic pieces, and poetry reflecting her love of an ever-changing and inspirational mountain environment.
Max’s recent exhibitions include the solo show Glacier-fed and the group show Elemental Inspiration: Out of the Wildfire, both at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies in Banff. Her work can be found in public and private collections worldwide.
E. J. (Ted) Hart
Ain’t it Hell, Trailblazers of the Canadian Rockies, The Place of Bows, The Battle for Banff, Banff Springs Golf Club, Banff: A History of the Park and Town, Cave and Basin,
E. J. (TED) HART’s life and career have been dominated by the history of Banff. Born and educated in Edmonton, Alberta, Ted graduated with a Masters in Western Canadian History at the University of Alberta in 1971. The following year he was hired by the late Maryalice Stewart to work in the archives at what was then known as the Peter Whyte Foundation, beginning what would be a 40-year-long career involved with the cultural history of Banff and the Canadian Rockies. Encouraged by noted mountain poet Jon Whyte, Ted published his first book on Canadian Rockies history, Diamond Hitch, the Early Outfitters and Guides of Banff and Jasper, in 1975. In 1976, Hart took over as the head of the Whyte Foundation, a position that evolved into the Director of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies and that he held until 2008. During this period Hart authored 12 books relating to Banff and the Rockies, including his award winning The Selling of Canada: The CPR and the Beginnings of Canadian Tourism; Jimmy Simpson, Legend of the Rockies and a work of fiction, Ain’t it Hell: Bill Peyto’s “Mountain Journal.” Between 2008 and 2010 Ted continued to oversee the archives at the Whyte Museum and work on a major biography of Dominion Parks Commissioner J. B. Harkin, published in 2010 as J. B. Harkin, Father of Canada’s National Parks. Ted retired from the Whyte Museum in 2010 and now lives with his wife, Pat, south of Calgary in the foothills town of Okotoks.
Andrew Hempstead
The Canadian Rockies, Images of Banff, Lake Louise Past to Present
Co-owner of Summerthought Publishing, Andrew Hempstead, a resident of Banff, has been photographing and writing about the Canadian Rockies since the early 1990s. His images have been published in hundreds of books, magazines, and graphic products. He is also an accomplished travel writer, with over 80 guidebooks to his credit.
Eleanor Luxton
Banff: Canada’s First National Park, Latch String Out
Eleanor Luxton (1908-1995) is perhaps uniquely qualified to have written about Banff, having deep roots not only in this area but in the larger region of western Canada. Her maternal great-grandfather, the Reverend George McDougall, came west in 1860 to found Fort Victoria North (now Pakan). W. F. Luxton, paternal grandfather, was the first school teacher in Winnipeg, and founded The Winnipeg Free Press in 1872.
Her mother, Georgia McDougall Luxton, was the first white child born in the area we now call the province of Alberta. Her father, Norman Luxton, made an epic return voyage across the Pacific Ocean in a thirty-foot dugout canoe (the story of which is recorded in one of Miss Luxton’s books, The Voyage of the Tilikum), came to Banff, founded the town newspaper, The Crag & Canyon, and played an instrumental role in developing the area into the world-renowned National Park it is today. With such close ties with Canada’s past, it is little wonder that Eleanor Luxton turned to writing history.
Throughout the years of Miss Luxton’s many-facetted career – which ranged from locomotive design for the Canadian Pacific Railway to lecturer at McGill University and technician in charge of a medical laboratory – she carried on the historical research of western Canada’s pioneers.
Wayne Lynch
Canadian Rockies Wildlife Photography
Dr. Wayne Lynch is Canada’s best known and most widely published wildlife photographer. His photo credits include hundreds of magazine covers, thousands of calendar shots, and tens of thousands of images published in 50 countries. He is also the author and photographer of a dozen highly acclaimed natural history books for adults and nearly 40 books published for children and young adults. His books have been described as “a magical combination of words and images.”
Dr. Lynch was elected as a Fellow of the Explorers Club and the Arctic Institute of North America in recognition of his contributions to the knowledge of polar and subpolar regions. He lives in Calgary with his wife of over 40 years, Aubrey Lang.
Website: Wayne Lynch
Brian Patton
Canadian Rockies Trail Guide, Parkways of the Canadian Rockies, Best Day Hikes in Banff National Park, Icefields Parkway, Lake Louise Hiking Guide, Movies in the Mountains
For the past 50 years, Brian Patton has interpreted the natural and human history of the Canadian Rockies in books, on film and through presentations. His books include the Canadian Rockies Trail Guide, 50 Walks and Hikes in Banff National Park, Lake Louise Hiking Guide, Icefields Parkway, Parkways of the Canadian Rockies, Tales from the Canadian Rockies, Mountain Chronicles: Jon Whyte and Bear Tales from the Canadian Rockies. He continues to work on a variety projects from his home in Invermere, British Columbia.
Meghan Power
The History of Jasper, Maligne Lake
Meghan Power spent many years as the head archivist at the Jasper Yellowhead Museum and is the author of the History of Jasper and Maligne Lake: The Jewel of Jasper National Park. When Power isn’t sorting historic photographs and documents or working on freelance writing projects, she is out and about enjoying the beautiful region that she is fortunate enough to call home.
Bart Robinson
Canadian Rockies Trail Guide, Lake Louise Hiking Guide, Castle in the Wilderness: The Story of the Banff Springs Hotel
Following the publication of the Canadian Rockies Trail Guide in 1971, of which he co-authored, Bart Robinson authored several other books on the Canadian Rockies: Columbia Icefield: A Solitude of Ice, Great Days in the Rockies: The Photographs of Byron Harmon, and more recently, the Lake Louise Hiking Guide and Castle in the Wilderness. Robinson has enjoyed a long career as a journalist, editor, and conservationist. He currently lives in Canmore, Alberta.