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...

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...

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...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD ADVENTURE TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAROn 1 April 2011, rower and adventurer Sarah Outen set off in her kayak from Tower Bridge for France. Her aim was simple: to circle the globe entirely under her own steam - cycling, kayaking and rowing across Europe, Asia, the Pacific, North America, the Atlantic and eventually home. A year later, Sarah was plucked from the Pacific ocean amid tropical storm Mawar, her boat broken, her spirit even m...

“This tightly written tale rollicks along at a great pace.”—FINANCIAL TIMESWhen adventurer Jason Lewis regained consciousness beside a busy Colorado highway, lower limbs shattered by a hit-and-run driver, he knew he was lucky to be alive. But would he ever walk again, let alone finish crossing North America by inline skates?So begins part two of The Expedition, a stirring saga of hope, determination, and the kindness of strangers as Jason,...

Inspired by travel writer Ted Simon, Tony Robinson-Smith quit his job in Japan, returned home to England, and then set out once more with only a a knapsack, a map, and a dream to travel the world with both feel on the ground. Nearly six years later, he returned home having fulfilled his dream and then some. Using his journals and memories as his primary sources, Robinson-Smith tells an exhilarating story that begins and ends in England. His adventures include hair-raising trips on African ...

“An Epic.”—THE GUARDIAN   We rejoin The Expedition for its third and final instalment with Jason, now seasoned adventurer, and April, American schoolteacher at sea for the first time, battling to keep their pedal-powered boat Moksha from being dashed against Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Crossing the infamous Coral Sea, they’ve endured gale force winds, rogue waves, and powerful currents pushing them off course for ...

#1 BC bestselling book of 2017Winner of the 2018 BC Book Prizes' Bill Duthie Booksellers Choice AwardA collection of stories chronicling the characters and dramas that capture life in small coastal communities.In this story collection, Pat Carney follows the rhythms of day-to-day life in coastal BC. Featuring a revolving cast of characters—the newly retired couple, the church warden, the musician, the small-...

Indonesian Ferry Sinks. Peruvian Bus Plunges Off Cliff. African Train Attacked by Mobs.Whenever he picked up the newspaper, Carl Hoffman noticed those short news bulletins, which seemed about as far from the idea of tourism, travel as the pursuit of pleasure, as it was possible to get. So off he went, spending six months circumnavigating the globe on the world's worst conveyances: the statistically most dangerous airlines, the most crowded and dangerous ferries, th...

Ben Fogle's life to date has been action-packed to say the least. He has rowed across the Atlantic, walked to the South Pole, run the Sahara and skated across Sweden. He has encountered remote tribespeople in deepest Papua New Guinea, caused a Boeing 747 to dump £100k of fuel before making an emergency landing in Sao Paolo, and been mistaken for Prince William on numerous occasions. He has chased a tarantula round his back garden, survived a flesh-eating tropical disease that required two ...