Alaska: The Cruise-Lover's Guide

Contributor to newspapers and magazines in Canada, Britain and United States on travel- and transportation themes.

Author: Empress of Britain: Canadian Pacific's greatest ship (Erin: Boston Mills, 1992).

Reviewer for CBRA since 1993.

Guidebooks to Alaska are not uncommon. National and regional publishers
issue new ones or update old ones regularly. What makes this book
different is its focus on the cruise-ship passenger. From early May to
late September each year, ships leave Vancouver almost daily for Alaska,
their passengers eager to see what the authors call “the last, vast
frontier.”

Crisp writing, excellent color photographs, and useful maps are
combined in this well-designed book. Chapters on the Inside Passage,
Alaska’s history and Native people, its mammals, birds, sea creatures,
and wildflowers are readable and informative. One chapter relates the
origins and locations of Alaska’s glaciers. The ports that cruise
ships visit, and some inland locations, receive a few descriptive pages
each.

While many guides soon become outdated, this one will not. It deals
with the more lasting aspects of what the visitor will discover, leaving
descriptions of Alaska’s hotels and restaurants to more conventional
guidebooks. Although it suggests what kinds of souvenirs are worth
buying, it does not name the stores that sell them; these can easily be
found out locally. What Alaska: The Cruise-Lover’s Guide does, and
does ably, is provide a well-planned framework for passengers who want
to get more out of their cruise than what is offered by shipboard
lectures and Chamber of Commerce handouts.