A new book chronicling the first 50 years of the resort now known as Sun Peaks is available in time for Christmas gift giving and to celebrate the the resort’s golden anniversary. Dr. Kathleen Scherf, Professor of Communications, started An Evolution of Dreams (Peaks Media, Sun Peaks, $39.95) in May, 2011. The idea came as she developed a seminar for Sun Peaks Resort Corporation, focusing on local points of interest.

An Evolution of Dream

Thinking about mountain culture for the seminar and the book, in turn spurred a new topic for an upper level English course, The Rhetoric of Mountain Culture. In the course Scherf and her students explored the history and presence of mountain culture in film, painting, advertising photography, fiction, fashion and resort operations.

Brady Cameron, a student in English 3070 created an EP of songs on mountain culture, one of them was on Sun Peaks and based on Scherf’s book. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gkdeQIroQg [/youtube]

Read the Kamloops Daily News interview with Dr. Scherf and further details on the writing of An Evolution of Dreams.

Dr. Scherf was recently awarded an Arts Research Fellowship through the small cities CURA project. The award allows her to take full course release this winter to continue her ongoing work on Sun Peaks Mountain Resort, particularly examining the practices linking community to resort activities, with the aim of producing a scholarly article as well as a conference paper to be presented at an international conference “Transforming and Managing Destinations” in Germany next August. An Evolution of Dreams is her eighth book.