First in new photobook series geared to surveying buffs from prolific author and historian, Jay Sherwood. In 1917 Canada commemorated its 50th anniversary against the backdrop of World War I. Although the war effort was the main focus of the federal and provincial governments, some important projects continued. The Alberta-BC boundary survey, which had started in 1913 during an economic boom in western Canada, continued to receive funding throughout the war. It was quintessentially a Canadian project - talented Canadian surveyors using the most modern equipment available, transported by horses and humans through rugged wilderness country to mountain passes and the summits of peaks along the Great (Continental) Divide. Throughout their journey, the surveyors documented their work, leaving behind not only a comprehensive collection of letters and journals, but also one of the most extensive collections of surveying photography in North America. The survey crew climbed many mountains, taking pictures from the peaks that were later used to create the first detailed maps of the Great Divide. Today scientists are taking repeat photographs at the same locations, documenting the dramatic changes the have occurred in the Rocky Mountain landscape during the past century. One hundred years later, as Canada celebrates the 150th anniversary of Confederation, Jay Sherwood's Surveying the Great Divide offers a testimony to the fortitude of the survey crews who risked their lives working in remote, mountainous terrain documenting the boundary between Alberta and BC.

Jay Sherwood is the author of two other books about Frank Swannell: Surveying Northern British Columbia (a 2005 BC Book Prize finalist) and Surveying Central British Columbia (second-prize winner in the 2007 BC Historical Federation Writing Competition). He now lives in Vancouver, where he works as a teacher-librarian.

Jay Sherwood's profile page

“Readers familiar with Sherwood’s seven (!) previous books on surveying in British Columbia will know what to expect with Surveying the Great Divide: a thoroughly detailed and chronologically organized narrative, largely woven from the first-hand accounts contained in the journals, personal correspondence, and official memoranda of the surveyors themselves. Supplementing this account are more than one hundred glossy blackand- white photos (several full page) depicting surveyors at work, completed boundary monuments, and – most spectacularly – sweeping panoramic vistas of majestic peaks and timbered passes.”

—Jason Grek-Martin, BC Studies

“Having read Surveying the Great Divide, I am awestruck by the hardships involved in surveying that border and full of admiration for the detailed fieldwork of a century ago … Thank you, Jay Sherwood, for putting this book together to commemorate these fine surveyors on our great country’s 150th birthday — and on the 100th anniversary of the completion of the survey of this tangled mountainous portion of the B.C.- Alberta boundary.”

—Robert Allen, The Ormsby Review