After years of people saying, “Boy, that would make a good book,” the memoirs of an Alberta frontiersman have finally been published.

Bob Udell, program lead for the adaptive forest management and history program at the Foothills Research Institute, was at the Jasper museum on Feb. 19 to launch Mountain Trails, the memoirs of Jack Glen Sr., a Dominion Forestry/Alberta Forest Service Ranger who worked out of Entrance from 1920 to 1945.

The book describes what it was like to work in that community, as well as Glen’s adventures and experiences while patrolling and building trails and fighting fire, Udell said. 

“It’s kind of an interesting chronicle and gives a real insight into what life was like,” he said. “They’d be out for weeks at a time packing all their gear on horses.”

Contributing editor Pete Murphy first came across Glen’s memoirs in a filing cabinet in the form of photocopied articles published in the Western Producer in 1969. The documents were transcribed, then copies began to circulate throughout the forestry community.

“A lot of people have looked at that and said, ‘Boy this would be great to put out as a book,’ but it had no illustrations, had no maps,” Udell said. The greatest challenge of deciphering the 200-page, single-paragraph manuscript was that the timeline had to be pieced together using very few recorded dates. 

“We used the Western Producer as a starting point then added information into that text from the manuscript then set to work reconciling the dates,” Udell said. All in all, five colleagues put five years of effort into the book, which is now for sale at the Yellowhead Museum and Archives in Jasper.

Murphy, who spoke at the book launch, said what strikes him about Glen is that he always smiled in photographs. “His smile comes through in all his writing,” he said. “He so enjoyed what he was doing.”