Mountain Voices: The Mountain Legacy Project and a Century of Change in Western Canada

Legendary mountain photographer and adventurer Pat Morrow is helping introduce Mountain Voices, a new book from the University of Calgary Press that brings Canada’s alpine landscapes to life through fifty short essays paired with historic repeat photographs from the Mountain Legacy Project.

Morrow describes the collection as “essays from folks who truly live and breathe the high country — Indigenous land guardians, park staff, scientists, historians, and a few of us who’ve hauled cameras up to more high points than we can count.” His own contribution is “a love letter to Mt. Assiniboine,” a relationship that began with a winter ascent in his teens and continues to this day.

How This Book Came to Be

The idea for Mountain Voices grew out of years of discussion within the Mountain Legacy Project. Early plans imagined a traditional repeat-photography book focused on a single region, but the sheer scope and depth of the MLP archive made that approach feel too narrow.

The turning point came when former MLP crew member Ellie Stephenson suggested that the photographs needed many voices — a range of perspectives that could speak to the complexity and change revealed in the images. That spark led to a brainstorming session at the 2018 Thinking Mountains conference in Banff, where the concept for the book took shape around a diverse group of contributors.

The editors then set out to gather a broad blend of perspectives: Indigenous knowledge holders, youth and elders, archivists, mountaineers, scientists, land managers, artists, and historians. The result is a carefully balanced collection that reflects the many ways people connect with — and are shaped by — Western Canada’s mountain landscapes.

A Century of Change, Seen Through Words and Images

Each essay is paired with a set of “time-lapse” photographs — historic images re-shot from their original survey locations. These visual pairings reveal more than a century of transformation across the high country, from shrinking glaciers to shifting treelines and evolving ecosystems. The result is a contemplative blend of personal narrative, cultural insight, and environmental observation.

As Morrow notes, the stories are for anyone drawn to mountain writing that mixes awe with a realistic look at rapid change.

Where to Find It

Readers are encouraged to support their local independent bookstore.
Mountain Voices is also available directly through the University of Calgary Press.

For anyone who loves the alpine world — its vastness, fragility, and stories — this book is both a tribute and a timely reminder of the transformations unfolding across Western Canada’s peaks.