The ACC’s State of the Mountains Report is motivated by the Club’s commitment to summarise and better communicate to the general public an understanding of the environmental and cultural forces affecting Canada’s diverse mountain ranges, from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast, and north to the high Arctic regions.

Since 2018, the ACC has published the annual Report in collaboration with mountain researchers, community members, and partner organisations. The Report is a compilation of short essays describing current research, events or changes occurring in the Canadian mountains. The essays come from across the disciplines – the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. Diversity is also evident in the authors themselves: some are renowned academics, others are industry professionals or community leaders, and also emerging leaders. We pay attention to gender, we celebrate the work of senior mountain experts, we highlight the efforts of the up-and-coming generation, and in each issue, we always give voice to our important Indigenous partners. What unifies the Report’s contributors is that they are all individuals who have spent countless hours researching and/or caring for our alpine environment.

They have, in one way or another, dedicated their lives to the mountains and have offered their first-hand experiences, expertise, and photographs to tell the stories of how change in Canadian mountain environments is affecting people and places. In each issue, these stories are beautifully laid out and assembled in the Report’s main sections (People in Mountains, Physical Mountains, Life in Mountains).

The Editors meet in January to select the year’s theme; they then reach out and extend invitations to potential contributors from across the country. Material is submitted to the editors in April and May, and copy-editing, French/English translation, and layout work then begins. The Report’s online version is generally released to coincide with Canada Day (July 1st), and hard copies are printed and distributed to members, community partners, and other kindred organisations in October.

The goal is to circulate the Report’s various annual findings as widely as possible. This is also accomplished through the club’s various social media platforms. The Report’s essays are reformatted as blog posts, and released individually throughout the year so that every month’s regular “dispatch” to ACC members contains some of the Report’s content. The contributions from all years are available on the ACC website, and with over 60 essays published already this is a living resource of information about Canada’s mountain places and peoples.