The tale of snowboarding in Canada is about as coloured as the medals on a grizzled war vet, and its story is marked by one of tremendous ups, a few not-so-glorious dips, with a bunch of colourful characters and fashion trends thrown into the mix for good measure. Beyond publications like Snowboard Canada, Canadian-made shred vids, and a handful of ‘zines, rags and blogs that have come and gone (remember Vehicle and Sequence, or when Concrete had “Powder” as a sidekick in its name?), nothing has been assembled that truly chronicles just how rich and compelling this story is. That is, until now.

Needing no introduction, and widely held in a special place of the heart by many north of the 49 shreds, venerable Canadian brand Westbeach is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. To mark the milestone, the Vancouver-based crew put forth The Heritage Project, a retrospective spanning the last three decades of snowboarding in Canada and how the brand played a pivotal role from its earliest raw-dawg, hand-diggin’ pipe days to the current level of progressive riding going down today.

Through various mediums, The Heritage Project features a timeline documentary blog, timeline video series, and, the crown jewel—a much-anticipated book that just rolled off the press called, “Out West: Snowboarding, Westbeach and a New Canadian Dream.” Westbeach put lensman Dano Pendygrasse on the daunting task of diggin’ through the archives and cobbling the book together. The copy I received—signed by none other than founder Chip Wilson, who subsequently went on to Lululemon fame—does an incredible job at chronicling the fascinating story of how Canada contributed to snowboarding’s growth, alongside the role Westbeach played while riding shotgun the entire time. At 120 pages deep, trust me when I say that the book truly runs the gamut from the original roots of Canada’s knuckledraggers right up through the glory days of the ’90s and the influence of the now-defunct Westbeach Classic on proliferating the overall scene. If not for any of the above, it’s worth a look just to get a laugh of some of the OG Westbeach gear—or what passed as “gear” at the time—that was dug out of parents’ basements and dusty closets and submitted by pros and fans alike.   Westbeach is releasing chapters online every two weeks all season long.

Check out the first chapter online here. Better yet, put a piece of shred history on your bookshelf and shell out a measly $12.95 US or $14.95 Cdn for it. Buy it here.

Here are a few sneak peek pages from the book.