Arthur Philemon Coleman was a passionate Canadian and one of the first to truly discover the beauty and majesty of this country's mountain ranges as an explorer, geologist and mountaineer. In 1884, before the railway traversed the Rocky and Columbia mountains, Coleman headed west on the first of what would be eight mountaineering expeditions, making his way on foot and pack horse, with Native guides and without, over passes in Alberta and British Columbia.

Coleman's book gives modern-day readers a glimpse of the early days of mountaineering in the Canadian west, painting a sympathetic picture of the rugged men and women who opened the region and of the hardships they endured. In his travels he encountered some of the main characters in Canadian mountaineering history, including Mary Schäffer, Joby Beaver, Frank Sibbald, Reverend George Kinney and Adolphus Moberly.

Arthur Philemon Coleman was born in Lachute, Quebec, on April 4, 1852. For most of his professional life he taught at Victoria College, part of the University of Toronto, and spent a great deal of time adventuring throughout western Canada. In all, Coleman and his Morley, Alberta-based brother, Lucius Quincy Coleman made eight successive trips to The Canadian Rockies. Coleman was in his 80s on his last trip. He died in 1939 never having climbed Mount Robson, the object of his mountaineering obsession.

A.P. Coleman's profile page