Geomicrobiology: Interactions between Microbes and Minerals is a valuable reference for any geologist with limited biological background, and for any rock-deficient bacteriologist as well. I found this book to be easy to comprehend, while at the same time containing all relevant technical information. All in all, a great resource for rock lovers and bacteria buffs alike!

Ever since the Canadian Rockies were 'opened up' for tourism in the late 1800's, artists have been drawn by the spectacular scenery; indeed, the Canadian Pacific Railway paid artists to paint this area in order to promte tourism and thus fill their hotels.

In this book Ms. Christensen presents many of the best paintings of the Canadian Rockies along with detailed instructions on how to hike to the site that the artist painted from. In addition, she includes biographical notes, exerpts from diaries, and photographs.

For the history enthusiast, this is a valuable insight into an often overlooked aspect of our past; for the artist who is also a hiker, it offers an opportunity to enter the mind of the artist as he/she was forced to generalize and simplify in order to create a piece of art; and for the art lover, it offers an introduction to some of the more famous paintings done in the southern Rockies.

Some of the artists presented are Carl Rungius, John Singer Sargent, A Y Jackson, the incredible Lawren Harris, Illingworth Kerr, A C Leighton, and Catherine Robb Whyte and Peter Whyte. The art works are oils, watercolours and woodcuts.

I really enjoy this multi-award-winning book! It is obviously written by someone who is enthusiastic about history, art and hiking, and it has become a treasured part of my own library, one that I find myself perusing again and again.

The first portion of the book gives alot helpful information that is necessay for anyone thinking of hiking in the Canadian Rockies--from the gear needed for the hike to the precautions that need to be taken with hazards related to hiking. The author does an excellent job of linking each hike in a particular area to the next one, so that a hiker could possibly continue on right into the next degree of difficulty--if one were so inclined, or had enough time and preparation. Each hike is covered in very good detail, including: distance one way, degree of difficulty, elevation change, highest elevation reached on the hike, and location of the tailhead. Many beautiful colored and black & white photos were also included. The one thing that I thought was a little bit lacking was the detail of the maps. Several hikes in each area were included on the same map, and sometimes it got somewhat cluttered looking on the map. Overall I would highly recommend this book to anyone who was just a beginner or to those who wanted to strike out on the next degree of difficulty--all the way up to scaling some of the taller peaks in the Lake Louise area.

This was a throroughly enjoyable read.

It was an entertaining and descriptive history of my newly adopted home. The author describes in vivid detail what the area was like 100 years ago and one doesn't need look too hard to find the footprints left by Jimmy Simpson and his friends.

A good read that has inspired me to read more of the original frontiersmen, the area and those who documented it (eg. artist Carl Rungius).

Madeline Bird, a respected Metis Elder born at Fort Chipewyan in 1899, tells the story of her life in this affectionate biography assembled with the help of Sister Agnes Sutherland. Mrs. Bird relates the hardships and joys of her life and has particularly kind words for the Sisters (of the Residential School she attended) and their assistance and small kindnesses. She notes the particularly hard life and poverty which was the lot of these nuns who were their teachers. She also describes the role of the church in caring for Aboriginal orphans. The authors include many photographs depicting life in northern Alberta and the North West Territories.

As someone whose grandmother and great grandparents were a part of the Barr Colony I was very interested to find out exactly what life was like for them when they came from England to Canada in 1903. The book answered all my questions and gave great insight into the conditions experienced by my grandmother and her family as they travelled across Canada and tried to make a home in the Barr Colony. At times I was a little overwhelmed by the amount of detail in the book, but overall I found it very interesting. It is particularly suitable for those who have a particular interest inthe Barr Colony.

I grew up aroung Glacier National Park and had been there many times. However, I was given this book by a friend on my last trip to Glacier National Park and what a difference it made. The Park is so beautiful and having a reference guide only lends more beauty to the trip.

Ray Djuff's initial description of the lobby of the Prince of Wales Hotel is superb, and his collection of photos is second to none. Yet while he manages to capture the ititial impression of one entering the hotel lobby, the rest of this book is a disappointing visit, sort of like entering a great hotel and finding the rooms small and unimaginative. You will always tell how you visited there once, but you never go back again, at least as a hotel guest. Maybe you visit every few years or so - just in the lobby - just to remind yourself that you were really there.

This hotel presents a stunning view of a seven-mile long lake straddling the Canada-US border and the fact that it was even buuilt is one of those stories that gets better as time goes on. Buffeted by fierce winter winds and a National Park administered from thousands of miles away, the Prince has managed to maintain its dignity and its importance both as a landmark and a monument to civilization in the midst of an overwhelming wilderness.

Ray Djuff's continuing efforts on the history of the Waterton Lakes area have hit pay dirt with his newest book, High On A Windy Hill. The book details how the Prince of Wales Hotel, a majestic wooden structure modelled on Swiss alpine architecture, came to sit atop a promontory above the scenic lakes area straddling the Alberta-Montana border. Djuff, a Calgary, AB newspaper editor, describes in great detail how Louis Warren Hill, head of the Minnesota-based Great Northern Railway, needed a Canadian hotel in the early century to match his significant tourism accommodations in Montana's Glacier National Park.

Because Prohibition was still in effect, Hill envisioned well-to-do eastern Americans travelling by train west to his Montana hotels taking a short trip north to imbibe in a drink while on vacation. Hill's power of persuasion, coupled with a subtle but determined continent-wide public relations effort on Canadian authorities, a nearby Mormon teetotalling community and American tourists, eventually made his dream a reality.

Djuff's meticulous research captures the drama in the rushed construction of the 90-room, $370,000 Prince of Wales, locally referred to as the POW. Devastating weather and countless design revisions vexed the local contractors prior to the July 1927 opening and the book is chockfull of period photos and anecdotes describing the ordeal.

Ironically, the halcyon days Hill foresaw lasted only until America's 1933 repeal of Prohibition and the onslaught of the Depression.

Twice in the ensuing decade, Great Northern closed the hotel due to lack of visitors. By the 1960s and 70s, rail traffic had given way to vacationers in cars and the company finally sold the hotel.

The Prince of Wales is now owned by Viad Corporation of Phoenix, AZ and is open through the summer months.

Djuff draws on his experience as a waiter and bartender at the POW in the 1970s to chronicle the hotel staff's dedication to service, regardless of the business's financial straits. He ably describes the culture of the community both outside and inside the resort.

Perhaps most importantly, High On a Windy Hill is a story of how the raison d'etre behind such a grand edifice evolves over time through the visions of those who built and staffed it.

For that alone, Djuff's book is worth the read.

More topography and less politics would have made a better book.

This is the only work that I have read by Cendrars, although I am a student of French literature. While I cannot give the book a rave review, it is an intriguing little work that has piqued my interest in the author and his writing. It is a book that does not easily reveal its meaning, or purpose, to the reader, but which makes him read on, intrigued, nonetheless. This is the goal of art, ultimately, to stir our thoughts and passions, to whet the appetite, to provoke more questions than answers, so the work is a success. It is light on plot, structure, characterization and other "readerly" qualities, but it is allusive and original. I don't imagine that the average reader will be much interested in Cendrars, or this little book, but for the moderately serious reader of French fiction it might very well arouse the imagination.