As Roderick Haig Brown once observed, in a province with 40 major ranges, "The first almighty fact about British Columbia is mountains.";
With Christmas sales mostly below expectations, Over Beautiful British Columbia (Beautiful B.C./ARTery $49.95) literally rose above the rest to provide a bestselling bird's eye view of B.C.
Released in October, the 192 page overview of B.C. reportedly sold 30,000 copies before Christmas with the marketing support of Overwaitea/Save On Foods, underwriters of the project.
"Because of my graphic art background I always look for very simple elements in photographs,"; says photo editor Tony Owen. But the spectacular images weren't always simple to obtain, given B.C.'s topography. As well, the selection process for 200 aerial photos from 20 photographers entailed sifting through a veritable mountain of images.
"We invited more than 50 photographers to submit and we received 6,000 images from 35 of them,"; says Owen. "Even with all those we still sent photographers into key areas for more.";
Having pictured the province since 1959, Beautiful B.C. magazine was a logical partner for KCTS 9 to produce a 60 minute video Over Beautiful British Columbia: An Aerial Adventure, marking B.C.'s 125th anniversary as a province. Washington state's public broadcasting station had previously made ten 'Over' programs including Over Washington to mark the state's 200th birthday in 1989.
For the book's accompanying video, for sale at $24.95, a $300,000 camera was bolted under a helicopter's nose, operated by remote control.
Written and edited by Bruce Obee, with Russ Heinl as principal photographer, the Over project was the largest publishing venture in the magazine's 37 year history.
Lieutenant Governor Garde Gardom will present a copy of the book to Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace this spring.

[BCBW 1997]