The Hard Work of Hope
The Climate Nexus (RMB, 2015) analyzed and explored the economic and social realities facing water, food, energy and biodiversity. The Hard Work of Hope continues this narrative and seeks to develop effective solutions to the growing urgency for global action on climate change.
The Hard Work of Hope builds on events that have transpired since Decemb …
The Green Horse
An inspiring, humorous and adventure-packed mountain memoir that takes the reader on a journey into western Canada’s backcountry parks during the raucous 1960s and 1970s.
Born in the west but raised initially in the east, Dale Portman was eight years old when his family headed back to the land of the Rockies. Growing up in Calgary, he was introduc …
Art of Freedom
Winner of the 2017 Banff Mountain Book Award for Mountain Literature (Non Fiction). Winner of the 2017 Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature. Winner of the National Outdoor Book Awards.
A profound and moving biography of one of the international climbing world's most respected, complicated and reclusive mountaineers.
Voytek Kurtyka remains o …
Our Place
A collection of essays and articles that reflect upon the ecology, conservation history, missed opportunities and emerging possibilities of a place that could have been about so much more than oil.
Naturalist, hunter, conservation activist and recovering bureaucrat Kevin Van Tighem explores the landscapes and wildlife of one of Canada's most divers …
One Last Cast
One Last Cast is a collection of soul-touching and evocative stories about author and outdoor enthusiast Bruce Masterman's experiences in wild places and with wild critters.
Award-winning Alberta writer, journalist and storyteller Bruce Masterman has been a passionate outdoors enthusiast for more than five decades and has explored Alberta's natural …
Live Close to Home
In his third thought-provoking RMB manifesto Peter Denton explains how we can change course toward a sustainable future in immediate and practical ways – and why it could make all the difference for ourselves and for future generations.
As individuals and as a culture and society, we have increasingly emphasized the global village over the village …
Surviving Logan
One mountaineer’s harrowing story of survival and recovery after being trapped on the second-highest peak in North America, Mount Logan in the Yukon Territory, during an extratropical cyclone.
In May of 2005, North Shore Rescue put together a 40th Anniversary Expedition to Mount Logan. The team was made up of seven men and one woman – all experi …
A River Captured
A River Captured explores the controversial history of the Columbia River Treaty and its impact on the ecosystems, indigenous peoples, contemporary culture, provincial politics and recent history of southeastern British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest.
Long lauded as a model of international cooperation, the Columbia River Treaty governs the sto …
The Family that Conquered Everest
A fast-paced and engaging story that takes the reader on a remarkable family journey from the flatlands of suburbia to the top of the world.
Climbing Mount Everest is one of humanity’s greatest feats of physical, emotional and psychological endurance. In 2008 Alan Mallory and his family took on the challenge and became the first family of four to …
Warnings Against Myself
With personal essays detailing noteworthy climbing sites throughout the western United States, infused with a few terrifying excursions to the Alps and a trip to the Bugaboos of western Canada, Warnings Against Myself opens up the beautiful, obsessive world of mountain climbing to climbers and non-climbers alike.
From his youthful second ascent of …
Cycling the Islands
Cycling the Islands is the ultimate guidebook for those travellers looking to explore the beauty and splendour of British Columbia’s Gulf Islands and the American San Juan Islands by bicycle.
Featuring over 30 adventures on 11 different islands, each route includes a map and detailed information on local history, topography, aesthetics, places of …
Through an Unknown Country
In the winter of 1874–75, Edward Worrell Jarvis (1846 –1894) and Charles Francis Hanington (1848–1930) took part in an expedition on behalf of the Canadian Pacific Survey from Quesnel, British Columbia, to Winnipeg, Manitoba. It led them over the northern Rocky Mountains through what would come to be known as Jarvis Pass (Kakwa Provincial Par …
June Mickle
June’s strength of character was forged by living in the wilderness west of Turner Valley as a young girl with her mother and her stepfather, Tip Johnson, a renowned cowboy and horse trainer. She learned early to live in harmony with her environment and became a strongly determined woman capable of meeting the challenges of being an artist, horse …
Heart Waters
Shortlisted for the 2016 Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival award for Mountain & Wilderness Literature.
“We could belong here too. We could be like the bull trout, the willows, the wary horses; like the river that continuously arises from these fine green places where the waters are born. We could find our best selves in the stories of those …
Alpine Warriors
Winner, Mountaineering History, 2015 Banff Mountain Book Competition
From internationally renowned mountain historian Bernadette McDonald comes a highly readable, intense and exciting look at the explosion of Slovenian alpinism in the context of that country’s turbulent political history.
After the Second World War a period of relative calm began i …
Deep Powder and Steep Rock
Hans Gmoser (1932–2006) was the most influential mountaineer in Canada of the last fifty years. Through innovation, hard work, perseverance and an appetite for adventure, Gmoser evolved from penniless immigrant to mountain guide for kings, queens and prime ministers. He also played a major role in creating what is now western Canada’s dynamic m …
The Columbia River Treaty
The Columbia River Treaty: A Primer is a vital work that clearly explains the nature of this complex water agreement between Canada and the United States and how its impending update will impact communities, landscapes, industry and water supplies between the two countries for many years to come.
The Columbia River Treaty ratification in 1964 create …
Legacy in Time
Among the early North American explorers in the Rogers Pass, Yoho and Banff regions of western Canada were members of the Vaux family of Philadelphia. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, George Vaux Jr. (1863–1927), William S. Vaux (1872–1908) and Mary M. Vaux (1880–1940) regularly visited the majestic peaks, studying the massive glaci …
Lost and Found
For many people, moving to a mountain town is the realization of a dream, the final step in a pilgrimage to a relaxed lifestyle in a rugged and beautiful setting. After a long journey that began when he was a teenager in the 1980s with the vague idea there might be a better life somewhere “out west,” Jamey Glasnovic eventually fled the chaos an …
Buried
On January 20, 2003, at 10:45 a.m., a massive avalanche in the Selkirk Range of British Columbia struck three members of two guided backcountry skiing groups and buried them. After a frantic hour of digging by those still standing, an unthinkable outcome became reality: seven people were dead.
The tragedy made international news, splashing photos of …
Popular Day Hikes 4
Popular Day Hikes is a series of books written for visitors and locals looking to hike scenic trails from well-established staging areas. These factual, attractive guides feature detailed maps and colour photographs to whet the appetite.
Famed worldwide for its natural beauty, Vancouver Island is blessed with towering mountains, thundering waterfall …
Seaside Walks on Vancouver Island
This is the perfect book for those who love to explore the seashore but also love walking through forests and seaside meadows. Whether discovering inviting stretches of sandy beach, hiking along rugged cliffs or strolling through quiet estuaries, visitors to these trails will usually be far away from the crowds who chose to drive directly to the mo …
Finding Jim
Finding Jim describes Susan Oakey-Baker’s struggle to confront the realities of life after the death of her husband, renowned mountain guide Jim Haberl, the first Canadian to summit the most difficult mountain in the world: K2. For fifteen years they had spent time adventuring together around the world: skiing the Himalaya, rafting in Nepal and m …
The Homeward Wolf
Winner! 2014 Mountain Literature / Jon Whyte Award, Banff Mountain Book and Film Festival
Wolves have become a complicated comeback story. Their tracks are once again making trails throughout western Alberta, southern British Columbia and the northwestern United States, and the lonesome howls of the legendary predator are no longer mere echoes from …
Mount Robson
When Jane Gooch first camped at Lake O'Hara in 1975, she could not have foreseen how important the Rockies would become in her life. She travelled from her home in Vancouver many times during the summer months to hike in the mountains, and her love of the alpine landscape eventually inspired her to study the artists who have painted in the Rockies. …
Keeper of the Mountains
Beginning in 1946, Elizabeth Hawley worked for Fortune magazine as a researcher. Shortly thereafter, she left both her job and the United States itself to travel the world, and thus began her lifelong attraction to the exotic and remote sovereign state of Nepal. In the years that followed, she began reporting on the political and cultural events ta …
Becoming Water
Becoming Water takes the reader on a tour of Canada’s glaciers, describing the stories they tell and educating the reader about how glaciers came to be, how they work and what their future holds in our warming world. By visiting Canada’s high and low Arctic and the mountain West, the reader will learn how varied and complex our glaciers really …
Becoming Water
Provocative, passionate and populist, RMB Manifestos are short and concise non-fiction books of literary, critical, and cultural studies.
Becoming Water takes the reader on a tour of Canada’s glaciers, describing the stories they tell and educating the reader about how glaciers came to be, how they work and what their future holds in our warming w …
The Glittering Mountains of Canada
"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 o …
An Ocean of Inspiration
An Ocean of Inspiration is the true-life account of John Olguin (1921–2011), Director Emeritus of the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, San Pedro, California.
Although born into poverty and struggling with a speech impediment for many years, John refused to take “no” for an answer when people challenged his dreams. A natural-born leader and teacher, …
The Aspiring Hiker's Guide 2
This second volume in The Aspiring Hiker’s Guide series is meant to encourage beginner and intermediate hikers, backpackers and scramblers to explore British Columbia’s backcountry in and around the national parks of Mount Revelstoke, Glacier, Kootenay and Yoho, along with the provincial parks of Mount Assiniboine and Mount Robson, with confide …
