“Treating the Athabasca corridor for its entire non-Native history, A Hard Road to Travel takes its readers through two parallel histories brought together as one. It tells the stories of not just the fur traders on the transcontinental route between Hudson Bay and the Pacific Ocean, nor just the tourists, alpinists, skiers, and campers making annual pilgrimages to the mountains, but also the miners and foresters, the freighters and surveyors, the railway builders and homesteaders, the guides and wardens (horses in tow), forest industrialists and their provincial and federal government counterparts, and the forests and wildlife of the Athabasca.”
–From the foreword by I.S. MacLaren.

Peter J. Murphy is Professor Emeritus of Forest Science at the University of Alberta. He has written numerous books and articles on forestry topics, many of which contain a historical perspective.

Hardcover: $42.95
Softcover: $29.95