Country Roads of Alberta: Exploring Routes Less Travelled.

Sandy Campbell is a reference librarian in the Science and Technology Library at the University of Alberta.

Liz Bryan was one of the founders of Western Living magazine. She has also authored Country Roads of British Columbia and books on plains Natives and archaeology.

This volume should be titled Liz Bryan’s Country Roads of Southern Alberta. The best way to describe this book is to imagine sitting beside Liz Bryan as she travels over some of the back roads that she knows and loves. It is a personal tour. Bryan tells you about things that are of interest to her, though they may be of marginal interest to others, and tells you what she knows about the sites. She occasionally poses questions about sites, but never answers them. “Did the Cree and the Blood reconcile their differences here?” “Is this one of the ‘Indian graves’?” It’s as though she is thinking out loud as she drives along.

The book consists of 14 drives, each focusing on a place, such as the Cypress Hills, or a theme, such as sacred stones. Most of the drives are in areas in the far south of the province, including places such as Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump, Pincher Creek, Fort MacLeod, and Fort Walsh.

One drive, dedicated to Ukrainian churches and culture, terminates at Smoky Lake, northeast of Edmonton, and another begins at Elk Point, in the same general area. Apart from these drives, there are none in the north half of the province and none in west-central Alberta. Bryan does not explain her choice of drives.

Bryan’s commentaries are accompanied by rudimentary maps. There are significant things missing from the maps, for example the British Columbia–Alberta border. When Bryan describes passing a road or crossing over a creek, the point is often not marked on her map. There are also things obviously marked on the maps that she doesn’t mention in the commentary. It would be advisable to carry a good detailed map of the area when using this book.

If you want to see these roads through another person’s eyes, then this book will be of interest to you.