Here's a list of the works I mentioned on my recent Jane's Walk Reading the Bow River -- and a few more titles, too. Let me know if you have your own favourites and I will add them to the list.

Happy Bow River reading!

Early Calgary in Literature

Peter Fidler, Journal of a Journey over land from Buckingham House to the Rocky Mountains in 1792&3 – Fidler’s river crossing at Nose Creek may be the first action scene in Calgary’s literature

David Thompson, The Travels (1850) – as an old man, the explorer remembers his long-ago winter along the banks of the Bow River near Springbank, and the stories of a Piikani Elder

Katherine Govier, Between Men (1987) – a contemporary novel captures the first flickering of street lights powered by Peter Prince’s Bow River dam

Rudyard Kipling, Letters to the Family (1908) – an account of Kipling’s 1907 cross-Canada railway tour, and a Bow River cameo

Isabel Paterson, The Shadow Riders (1916) – a rare novel about urban life in pre-World War I Calgary

1886 Café

Norman Ravvin, “Mapping the Boom and Bust: A Guide to Perfect Calgary Time,” Hidden Canada: An Intimate Travelogue (2001) – the 1886 Café makes a cameo appearance in a personal essay about the changing Calgary landscape

Aritha van Herk, No Fixed Address (1986) and Restlessness (1998) – the café pops up in two of van Herk’s novels

The Bow River as a setting for fiction

Paul Anderson, Hunger’s Brides (2004) – a climactic scene in this 1350-page novel unfolds on a snowy river bank beside Memorial Drive

Marion Douglas, Bending at the Bow (1995) – a Bowness woman grieves the loss of her lesbian lover

Betty Jane Hegerat, Running Toward Home (2005) – a boy escapes his foster home and hides at the Calgary Zoo

Robert Hilles, “Little Pink Houses” (2017) – a short story set in and around the Bow River

Marie Jakober, The Demon Left Behind (2011) – two demons begin their search for a lost companion beside the Bow River in Sunnyside

C. B. Sikstrom, “Stooges” (2002) – a prize-winning short story about a group of boys growing up in and around the river, and their hijinks that end badly

Martine Leavitt, Tom Finder (2003) – a 15-year-old boy living on the streets of Calgary finds sanctuary and purpose on Prince’s Island

Rosemary Nixon, Kalila (2011) – a Calgary couple navigates the loss of their infant daughter in a novel that visits the Bow River

Anne Sorbie, Memoir of A Good Death (2010) – the Bow courses through the lives of a mother and daughter

Laurali (L. R.) Wright, Neighbours (1979) – a woman descends into madness in her West Hillhurst home

Bridge Poems

Louis de Bernières, “A British Poet Falls in Love with the 10th Street Bridge in Calgary,” Alberta Views, January 1998 – the title says it all

Weyman Chan, “Written on Water,” in Before A Blue Sky Moon (2002) – the Centre Street Bridge makes a cameo appearance in this poem

Karen Connelly, Come Cold River (2013) – peripatetic Connelly returns to her hometown to face her past and the river

Cecelia Frey, “Under the Louise Bridge” in Reckless Women (2004) – a woman watches two lovers near the Louise Bridge

Robert Finley, “Light Rapid Transit” (2003) – a poet observes LRT commuters from his home on 9A Street

Kirk Ramdath, “Calgary” (2012) – a poet inaugurates the Peace Bridge

Bow River Poems

Murdoch Burnett, “Boys or the River,” in The Long Distance and Other Poems (1987)

Claire Harris, “July” in Translation into Fiction (1984)

Robert Hilles, “When Light Transforms Flesh (Bow River, Calgary)” in Outlasting the Landscape (1989)

Flood Literature

Rona Altrows, The River Throws a Tantrum (2013) – a best-selling children’s story inspired by the author’s 4-year-old grandson after his family was evacuated during the 2013 flood

Richard Harrison, “On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood” in On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood (2016) – the title says it all (well, not quite)

E. Pauline Johnson, “Among the Blackfoot – Interesting Results of Blockade on the C. P. R.,” Toronto Globe, Aug. 2, 1902 – on one of her many visits to Calgary, the Mohawk poet-performer is waylaid by a massive spring flood

Taylor Lambert, Rising (2014) – nonfiction stories about the human dimension of the 2013 flood

The Calgary Project: A City Map in Verse and Visual (2014) – in a section dedicated to the 2013 flood, Calgary poets consider the deluge

Flood Stories: Creative Flotsam on the Edge of High Water, Eveline Kolijn, ed. (2017) -- an art and story project from This is My City Art Society

Rough, Robin van Eck (2020) – a novel about a homeless man, his daughter and the flooding Bow River

Under Shifting Stars, Alexandra Latos (2020) – a young adult novel about twin sisters coping with identity and change as the rivers rise

Looking for the city’s soul

Karen Connelly, “Memorial Alley” in Alberta Anthology: The Best of Alberta Anthology for 2005 (2006) – Connelly expresses mixed feelings about her changing hometown

Jaspreet Singh, “Calgaryesque” – Singh searches for the city’s soul in a series of radio essays aired on CBC’s Calgary Eyeopener in 2007

Folk Festival fiction

Geoff Berner, Festival Man (2013) – a mischievous music promoter stirs up trouble at the 2003 Calgary Folk Festival

A few more Bow River Books

Christopher Armstrong, The Painted Valley: Artists Along Alberta’s Bow River Valley, 1845-2000 (2007)

Gerald T. Conaty, ed., The Bow: Living with a River (2004)

Kevin van Tighem, Heart Waters: Sources of the Bow River (2015)

The future?

Doreen Vanderstoop, Watershed (2020) – It’s 2058 and the Bow River has run dry