Sea Kayaking covers the basics of equipment and technique, including types of paddles and strokes, as well as such essential skills as how to read the weather and the water, how to navigate with and without GPS and how to travel with a group.Still regarded as “the bible” for both new and experienced kayakers after more than thirty years in print. Drawing on his many years of experience paddling in all climates, John Dowd presents practical advice on dealin...

A couple's affectionate retrospective of their decade spent living off the grid, in a coastal paradise for paddlers, whale watchers, and naturalists.Twenty years ago, two empty-nesters with a love of the outdoors stumbled upon a vacant beach house on a small island in Clayoquot Sound, part of an off-grid, ten-acre stretch nestled within a provincial park reserve. Escape to Clayoquot Sound is an extended love letter to this place, chronicling the decade Joh...

THE ARC IS WIDE, the zigzags are many in John Dowd’s candid and compelling memoir of eight decades of ventures, adventures, and misadventures—from his youth in postwar New Zealand to grandfatherhood on a Canadian homestead. In between, Dowd threads back and forth around the world at speed, taking or making jobs for himself as he goes, his journal close at hand.We are swept right along: with him we grub it out in the New Zealand bush, culling invasive deer. We cross an ocean and cli...

This book elucidates how technology has impacted the discourse and practices of higher education. Dowd situates current educational movements centered on new technologies, such as the Do It Yourself (DIY) movement, within broader ideological concepts concerned with education, progress, technology, and work. Knowledge of how the discourse and practices of higher education have been impacted enables teachers to create learning environments that are conducive to the cultivation of ethically i...

A warning and a wake-up call to learn history so we are not doomed to repeat it. A must-read for anyone who longs for a promising future for our great nation.What is wrong with America today? Is it possible that America could crumble and our democracy fail?Questions like these plague Americans and cause us to be anxious about the future of the "land that we love." Individuals may come to different conclusions, but there seems to be a common thread - the dee...