The River Returns: An Environmental History of the Bow

The River Returns: An Environmental History of the Bow. By Christopher Armstrong, Matthew Evenden, and HV. Nelles. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2009. xi + 488 pp. Maps, graphs, illustrations, appendix. $49.95 cloth, $34.95 paper.

This book should be read more as a collection of essays on a wide variety of topics related to the Bow River than as a monograph. Each of its thirteen chapters examines an aspect of the history of human interactions with the river, ranging from ranching, forestry, hydroelectricity, and irrigation to urban sanitation, recreational fishing, flooding, and park building. The Bow River is amenable to a discussion of such diverse themes. Its headwaters are among the glaciers of the Rocky Mountains in Banff National Park, but it also flows through the ranching country of the foothills, the major urban center of Calgary, Alberta, and fertile but semiarid plains. Thus, the river has...