This entertaining collection of historical photographs, amusing newspaper accounts, reminiscences and letters celebrates the capricious antics that the Rockies and Selkirks summoned in Victorian residents and visitors. From climbers, cowboys, cooks and shopkeepers to hunters, guides, photographers and poets, these were people with a mania for mountains, beauty and challenge. It led them to draw maps, take fine photographs, analyze the rocks and geological structures around them, create fine paintings and, in general, plunge into the unknown and write about their wonderful adventures. Rocky Mountain Madness offers up a miscellany of their images and writings, including accounts of occasional accomplishment, accomplished adventure, adventurous rambling and rambling discourse.

Edward Cavell has worked with historical photography in Canada for more than 30 years. Once the curator at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies in Banff, Alberta, and author of seven illustrated histories, Edward has pored through many hundreds of thousands of photographs in archives, museums and private collections across Canada and abroad. Since 1992, he and his wife, Donna Livingstone, have operated Livingstone & Cavell Extraordinary Toys, a shop dedicated to nostalgic collector toys and quirky novelty items, in Calgary, Alberta.

Edward Cavell's profile page

Jon Whyte was the curator of Banff Heritage Homes, a foundation agency of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies in Banff, Alberta. Poet, columnist, writer and filmmaker, Jon wrote several books and contributed to many anthologies, magazines and other media. Jon died in 1992.

Jon Whyte's profile page