Former Banff superintendent releases new Alberta centric anthology book

BOW VALLEY – Former superintendent of Banff National Park, Kevin Van Tighem, released his new book, Wild Roses Are Worth It: Reimagining the Alberta Advantage, Nov. 5.

“I have been writing a column for many years for Alberta News Magazine called ‘This Land,’ and so I dealt with nature conservation, sustainable ways of living, all that stuff — there was a theme of it,” said Van Tighem.

“You have to write a column every couple of months and you have to keep on coming up with new ideas. After a number of years, I looked at that plus some future articles I had written… and I thought if I put those together, the sum would be greater than the parts.”

Van Tighem described the book as intended to be a reflection on what it means to be of Alberta. The subtitle, “Rethinking the Alberta Advantage,” aims to suggest a new perspective on the idiom.

“We keep hearing about the ‘Alberta Advantage,’ and it is really meant to be that we are open for business, a great place to get rich off oil and gas, low regulations, and it is a very cold way of interpreting what we are all about,” he said.

“What I am saying is that the ‘Alberta Advantage,’ is this place itself, all this beautiful diversity that we live on it with, and also the diversity of people and the way we learn to live here and the ways that are the best of the place and the best of us.”

Van Tighem explained his book originally came together three years ago, during the COVID-19 pandemic, with him subsequently trying his hand at politics.

He ran for the NDP in the Livingston-MacLeod riding, situated in the foothills and mountains of Southwestern Alberta in the vicinity of High River.

Due to engaging in Alberta’s political landscape, he became partisan and deemed that it would no longer be suitable for him to pen a non-bias column.

Following the election, to which he was unsuccessful at obtaining a seat, his publisher, Rocky Mountain Books, suggested adding his experiences in politics to “Wild Roses Are Worth It.”

“These are actually very challenging times that we are living in… not just challenging for Alberta, but challenging just generally when we are Albertans living in a world that is dealing with the issues that we are dealing with,” said Van Tighem.

“We have got this fairly rapid onset of climate instability and change, and we are losing biodiversity very rapidly. Looking at it geologically, it is virtually an extinction event.”

He added one of the goals of the book is to remind those who read it of how well off Albertans are and why it is worth making efforts to sustain all the good things about the province and the people who live in it.

Wild Roses Are Worth It: Reimagining the Alberta Advantage is available for purchase through a host of online retailers.

The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada. The position covers Îyârhe (Stoney) Nakoda First Nation and Kananaskis Country.