One of the greatest things about where we sit at this point in time is we now have three decades to reflect back on when it comes to our cultures history. We’re also at a point where our cultures story can be reflected on from all it’s various early origins whether it’s the United States, Europe, or in this case Canada. The latest offering to shred historians comes in the form of Out West: Snowboarding, Westbeach, and a new Canadian Dream.With this jaunt down memory lane Dano Pendygrasse set out to showcase what was happening nation wide from the 1980′s till the present in the great white north. Westbeach just happened to be the company that was used as the anchor from which every facet of their chapter of our cultures history is documented. Even at times perhaps a little to heavy of an anchor, but then again they are the guys that put this project together and opened their archives so faulting them on that aspect is negligible.

Nostalgia becomes a funny thing as you get older, while hopefully we never become the bitter burned out jocks sitting at the local watering hole in some backwoods town recollecting how we scored the winning touchdown at the homecoming game in high school or in our case the cab 5 melon to win the local slopestyle. It is fun to look back at the trends, people, and progression of our culture. It’s like a family photo album through the first couple decades of our lives.

Back then if you were to see somebody else on a snowboard, anybody to do with snowboarding, you would immediately just talk because you wanted to share experiences- “Where have you gone? What have you done? What are you riding?”- because it was all so new. I mean, everything was new.

Paul Culling page 17

Now when you think about how global snowboarding is, especially to those of us that have lived and breathed it for a vast majority of our life, you can’t help but think have we forgot where we started and what it’s all about? This becomes a theme in the later chapters of the book when it talks about the giant corporations invading and where pro snowboarding is at.

As with all industry, though, and all sports, when things mature they become more conservative. Today the impact of decisions made by a couple of guys making clothes is far less consequential than the decisions of a fifteen-or forty-million-dollar brand. As a result, snowboarders give way to professional businessmen and people feel like they can’t afford to take chances anymore.

Dano Pendygrass page 116

So this is where it stands at 120 pages filled with quotes, stories, and pictures of the last three decades of snowboarding it did an amazing job keeping me interested in what was going on. As a non-Canadian who was highly influenced by the Whiskey series of movies it was great to not only read about that chapter and those guys, but to take in all the other aspects that our friends to the north have given us. Much like the mandatory reading of Todd Richards book P3: Parks, Pipe, and Powder I would put Out West: Snowboarding, Westbeach, and a new Canadian dream on the same list. If you have a chance scoop this book up and enjoy some easy reading showcasing something we all love.

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