The Slocan Valley, in the heart of the southern interior of British Columbia, is a slender blue-gold arc of water, pastures, and trees lying in the western shadow of the Selkirk Mountains. Although barely 120 years old in terms of European settlement, the valley has been the amphitheatre in which much of British Columbia's and Canada's most dramatic history has played out. The Slocan was briefly the Paris of the west, with its fabulous silver strikes of the 1890s; it became the refuge of Doukhobors first fleeing Russia's tyranny, then Canada's; it was the prison for Canadian Japanese interned during the Second World War. It has attracted hunters and gatherers, farmers, orchardists, industrialists, artisans, and loggers. It was, and remains, a hippie nirvana of sorts. The Slocan: Portrait of a Valley paints an engaging, vivid portrait of a living valley and tells the compelling stories of its people.