When Canada created a Dominion Parks Branch in 1911, it became the first country in the world to establish an agency devoted to managing its national parks. Over the past century this agency, now Parks Canada, has been at the centre of important debates about the place of nature in Canadian nationhood and relationships between Canada's diverse ecosystems and its communities. Today, Parks Canada manages over forty parks and reserves totalling over 200,000 square kilometres and featuring a dazzling variety of landscapes, and is recognized as a global leader in the environmental challenges of protected places. Its history is a rich repository of experience, of lessons learned—critical for making informed decisions about how to sustain the environmental and social health of our national parks.
The standard of illustrations is exceedingly good throughout, with archival black-and-white and modern colour photos being well chosen for their interest and relevance. The importance and the clarity of maps is often ignored nowadays, but here they are excellent, and are a real bonus.
—Ken Atkinson, British Journal of Canadian Studies