Rick Blacklaws was born in Calgary, Alberta, and came to BC thirty years ago to complete his graduate studies in archaeology. During that time he has also travelled BC, photographing the province in all its regions and seasons. Trained in landscape photography, Rick creates images that document people and their relationship to the land. Ranchland is his third book; his most recent title, The Fraser River (text by Alan Haig-Brown), won the 1997 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Book Prize.

Diana French has called the Cariboo Chilcotin her home since 1951 when she came to teach in a one-room school. She married Bob French, the son of a pioneer family, and they lived in different parts of the area before settling in Williams Lake in 1970. Along with raising five sons, Diana continued to teach, and later worked as a reporter then editor for the Williams Lake Tribune. She still writes a weekly column for that paper. She is the author of The Road Runs West: A Century Along the Bella Coola/Chilcotin Road (Harbour Publishing) and co-authored, with Rick Blacklaws, Ranchland: British Columbia's Cattle Country (Harbour Publishing).