Parks, Peace, and Partnership: Global Initiatives in Transboundary Conservation
edited by Michael S. Quinn, Len Broberg, & Wayne Freimund

Today, over 3,000 protected areas around the world contribute to the protection of biodiversity, peaceful relations between neighbouring countries, and the well-being of people living in and around the protected environs. Historical and geo-political constraints are disappearing in a new spirit of collaboration to address common issues confronting ecosystems, species, and communities. Managing across boundaries is seen as the only way to ensure the long-term viability of ecological systems and sustainable communities. Current international thinking in this area is reflected in this collection of essays by park managers, biologists, scholars, scientists, and researchers. From Waterton-Glacier International Park to the European Alps, and Lake Titicaca in Peru and Bolivia, the essays provide illustrative examples of the challenges and new solutions that are emerging around the world.

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Juan de Fuca’s Strait: Voyages in the Waterway of Forgotten Dreams
Barry Gough

The tale begins in sixteenth-century Venice, when explorer Juan de Fuca encountered English merchant Michael Lok and relayed a fantastic story of a marine passageway that connected the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. This tale would be the catalyst for centuries of dreaming, and exacerbate English and Spanish rivalry. Gough provides meticulously researched insight, delving into diplomatic records, narratives of explorers and commercial aspirants, legal affidavits and court records to illuminate the subsequent journeys of mariners. A sea venture tied up with piracy and international intrigue, Juan de Fuca's Strait is an indispensable contribution to the history of discovery on the Northwest Coast.

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Civilizing the Wilderness
A.A. Den Otter

In this collection of essays, A.A. den Otter explores the meaning of the concepts "civilizing" and "wilderness" within an 1850s Euro-British North American context. At the time, den Otter argues, these concepts meant something quite different than they do today. Through careful readings and researches of a variety of lesser known individuals and events, den Otter teases out the striking dichotomy between "civilizing" and "wilderness," leading readers to a new understanding of the relationship between newcomers and Native peoples, and the very lands they inhabited. Historians and non-specialists with an interest in western Canadian native, settler, and environmental-economic history will be deeply rewarded by reading Civilizing the Wilderness.

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Dalton's Gold Rush Trail: Exploring the Route of the Klondike Cattle Drives
Michael Gates

Used as a trading route by the Chilkat Tlingit for centuries, the Dalton Trail was taken over by Jack Dalton, a hard driving, murdering, entrepreneurial adventurer, who built bridges and way stations and set up a toll booth. For a fee he would pack passengers and freight to and from Dawson, gaining a reputation for a difficult but safe passage.

This is the trail where starry-eyed financiers first dreamed of building a railroad to Dawson City, where thousands of head of cattle were regularly driven north, and where reindeer were unsuccessfully introduced to the Yukon as pack animals. Despite its short existence — from 1897 to 1903 — the Dalton Trail was also a flashpoint for conflict with the local Natives, border disputes between Canada and the US, and the jumping-off point for yet another gold strike at Porcupine Creek.

While the Klondike stories are (nearly) all true, just remember — it happened first on the Dalton.

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Polar Wives: The Remarkable Women behind the World’s Most Daring Explorers
Kari Herbert

Polar explorers were the superstars of the "heroic age" of exploration, world-famous for their Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. As the daughter of a polar explorer, Kari Herbert brings a unique perspective to the stories of their adventurous and remarkable wives. In her portraits of the gifted sculptor Kathleen Scott; eccentric traveller Jane Franklin; spirited poet Eleanor Anne Franklin; Jo Peary, the first white woman to travel and give birth in the High Arctic; talented and determined Emily Shackleton; Norwegian singer Eva Nansen; and her own mother, writer and pioneer Marie Herbert, Herbert blends deeply personal accounts of longing, betrayal, and hope with stories of peril and adventure. Previously consigned to historical footholes, these women were vibrant, strong-willed individuals in their own right, playing essential roles in supporting, publicizing, defending, and even financing their husbands' expeditions. With extracts from previously unpublished journals and letters, Polar Wives will appeal to everyone from travellers and polar enthusiasts to those simply fond of a good story.

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