Canada Books - Page 12

Nova Scotia, New Brunswick & Prince Edward Island (Regional Guide)

Karla Zimmerman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A good guide to carry along with you 4 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

We used this during our trip and enjoyed it a lot, most especially their restaurant recommendations. Their choices in Halifax and Charlottetown were right on. Their B&B recommendations were good too. I recommend carrying this with you on your trip.

Indispenisble 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This thing saved my butt last year.
I took a trip to Boston, and drove from Boston to Inverness, Nova Scotia on Cape Breton Island.
I went the scenic route, cutting through Maine to Calais / St Stephen, where I crossed the border into New Brunswick.
I had an atlas, I had maps, I had been studying maps of the entire Eastern seaboard for months and months. This was a solo journey so I wanted to be prepared. I decided to get the Lonely Planet guide on a whim. I figured I couldn't have too much information!
The thing about the Maritime Provinces that outsiders don't know, is that it's nearly impossible to get any good information on them from the conventional sources (internet, etc). Enter Lonely Planet guides.
The biggest way this book helped me was when I was in Saint John, NB which is where I stayed overnight between Boston and Cape Breton.
First of all, Saint John was surprisingly cute. I wish I would have had more time there. Secondly and more importantly, on the way through to CB, I stayed at a slightly crappy motel just outside of town which while not terrible, was not fantastic and I didn't feel entirely safe (just paranoia I think, but still...) That motel was NOT listed in the book, FYI. So on the way back, I decided to look elsewhere - in my book! Lo and behold, I find in the book the contact info for the summer dorm rental program at the University. Why yes, I'll gladly shell out $20 for a safe, clean room! I just needed a place to sleep after all, and it was perfect.
The book also gave me some great info on tiny little St Stephen, where I had a few minutes to stop before crossing the border, and I hit a chocolate shop recommended in the book. Divine. Wouldn't have had a clue without my guide book.
I'm quite sure my journey would have been entirely different, and less enjoyable without this thing.
Lonely Planet books are priceless. Get one.

Editorial Review:

Discover Nova Scotia, New Brunswick & Prince Edward Island

Master 18th-century cooking techniques while soaking up music and mutiny at Louisbourg.
Discover what festival-going Scots really wear under those kilts in Halifax and Antigonish.
Slap on a bib and loosen your belt at a PEI lobster supper.
Shore up your sea legs while spotting humpbacks and dodging icebergs on Newfoundland's waters.

In This Guide:

Dedicated Newfoundland & Labrador chapter.
Two fearless authors, 800+ hours and 8830km on the road.
Oodles of itineraries to please road-trippers, foodies, history buffs and Anne maniacs alike.
Evocative insights from a host of Atlantic Canadians.

Lost Cities of North & Central America (The Lost City Series)

David Hatcher Childress

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

How to read Childress 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 12 people found this review helpful.

There are two ways to read Childress. If you want to live in a button-down, straight laced world of academic archeologists, then every time Childress asks a question, just answer (to yourself) No! Then go about with your boring life.

But if you want to live a little wild, to peel back the layers & pierce the veil, then answer (again, to yourself) Yes! to every one of his questions. Should you do that, you will have a gay old time figuring out how the world all fits together!

Honestly, DHC's speculations are full of BS, but it sure is fun suspending your disbelief & reading these books. Someone mentioned that DHC really seems like a great guy, and you get that sense reading this book. Sounds like he would be a really cool guy to travel & chat with. His travel writing is straighforward, but exciting.

Unfortunately, the book is full of typos & poorly done photographs. After reading 5+ of the Lost Cities series, I don't even notice anymore, but it will bug some beginners.

A Travelogue of Archaeology 3 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Much of this book is pleasant escape reading, and some of the things discussed are intriguing, such as tunnel systems associated with some ruins. The book was spoiled for me, however, when I came to chapters dealing with things I knew of firsthand. One major Northwest petroglyph site is placed in the wrong state. There are just enough wrongo facts to make me wonder how many others masquerade as reality in the text. I will reread the book in the future and enjoy the mysteries of past cultures south of the border, while keeping a salt block handy for the rest of it. His books certainly hold true to the basic instructions for finding lost cities - ask the locals. Few lost cities are truly lost to those who live in the area. They're just forgotten. Enjoy this as a tale told by a traveler, and a collection of some of the more interesting legends of American mystery archaeology. I don't really think there are Egyptian treasures in the Grand Canyon, but I would be delighted if they were real. The same holds true for the treasure-laden tunnels of Death Valley...

Dangerous River: Adventure on the Nahanni

R. M. Patterson

List Price: $18.95 By: Boston Mills Press Amazon Marketplace: 5 new & used starting at $13.69

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

This is a Far North adventure you'll never forget! 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

"Dangerous River" is one of the finest Far North adventures ever written. R. M. Patterson and his partner Gordon Matthews were the last of a breed of men who tackled the Far North with nothing but stamina, courage, and consummate skill with rifle, pack and canoe. Trapping and searching for gold in the legendary South Nahanni River country in the 1920's, Patterson describes their adventures in language that makes the reader yearn to see one the premier rivers of the world. Patterson's style is laced with wonderfully dry British humor as well as a poet's skill in describing the breathtaking landscapes. You feel as though you're right beside him throughout his adventures and hungering to go there yourself. You can't ask more a writer and his book than that!

Editorial Review:

In the mid-1920s Raymond M. Patterson left a comfortable position with the Bank of England for a life in with wilds of Canada. Here, he hunted, trapped, fished and prospected his way along the rivers he would later write about. This spellbinding book, his most famous account, chronicles his two journeys down the treacherous Nahanni River between the Yukon and the Mackenzie River, spurred on by his irrepressible lust for adventure and his quest for gold. The New Yorker called this "a truly enchanting book."

Best Dives' Snorkeling Adventures (3rd Edition) (Best Dives Snorkeling Adventures)

Joyce Huber, Jon Huber, Claudia Sammartino

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A favorite of cruise ship travelers and island vacationers, Best Dives' Snorkeling Adventures invites anyone with a mask and snorkel to share the magic of ocean exploration. The new third edition covers hundreds of fabulous snorkeling beaches– places where one might drift across a blitz of dazzling corals or the remains of an ancient shipwreck.

It also includes complete vacation planning suggestions with details on diver-friendly resorts near the best sites and special guided tours throughout the Caribbean, Australia's Whitsunday Islands, the Bahamas; Bermuda; Turks & Caicos; Belize; the Galapagos Islands, Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, the Florida Keys, Florida Springs and Hawaii.

Starfish Ratings from one to five grade each snorkeling site, whether it be coral reef and ship or plane wreck, for interesting marine life, visibility and water clarity.

Adventures within the new edition are included for every age, interest and skill level. They include island cruises, offbeat excursions such as the Galapagos islands, dolphin, stingray and manatee encounters, reef wildlife tours, ancient shipwrecks, the first snorkel-thru museum, snorkel-kayak trips and romantic sail-snorkel tours.

Adventures within the new edition are included for every age, interest and skill level. They include island cruises, offbeat excursions such as the Galapagos islands, dolphin, stingray and manatee encounters, reef wildlife tours, ancient shipwrecks, the first snorkel-thru museum, snorkel-kayak trips and romantic sail-snorkel tours.

And it’s Dolphin Friendly. The authors have personally inspected the few dolphin swims included to make certain the dolphins were rescued from circuses or shows, are well cared for, enjoy interacting with people and would have otherwise been destroyed. No facilities that take dolphins from the wild are included.

Resorts for every budget include secluded hideaways with reef snorkeling off the beach or within walking distance. Also featured are campgrounds, and resorts with on-site water sport shops.

More than just a travel guide, "Snorkeling Adventures" offers first-aid tips for coral cuts and sea stings, a special chapter on sharks, procedures and an introduction to gear for newcomers. Maps, color and black and white photos, drawings, detailed topside directions and special dive-tour operators are covered as are select spots for children, novices and experienced open-water divers.

DAMRON Women's Traveller (The Best Lesbian Guide to the USA, Canada, European Cities & More

Gina Gatta

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Editorial Review:

The Damron Women’s Traveller is the most up to date and complete travel guide made by and for lesbians.

The Complete Guide to Bed & Breakfasts, Inns & Guesthouses: In the United States, Canada, & Worldwide (Complete Guide to Bed and Breakfasts, Inns and Guesthouses)

Pamela Lanier

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Not what we expected 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This guide was not what we expected. We were hoping it would cover more B&B's in Canada but unfortunately it does not. Also it aims at the more expensive places. We feel that the term "complete" is a little bit over the top... We should have informed ourselves better. Nevertheless the B&B's that are present in the book seem very nice to visit...

one of the few good B & B directories left 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

i stay in Bed and Breakfasts all over the country, they are really great. i use the internet to find a lot of them, most of my old directories were out dated. this is one of the few directories still left that has loads of good information in it. great directory.

Editorial Review:

Now in its 25th year, this B and B connoisseurs' favourite presents the great boutique accommodations of the world. From upscale guesthouses to country inns, each establishment has been hand-selected for its special touches and exceptional features, making "The Complete Guide to Bed and Breakfasts, Inns and Guesthouses" a guide that no traveller should be without.

Raven Travelling: Two Centuries of Haida Art

Peter Macnair, Daina Augaitis, Marianne Jones, Nika Collison

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A Fine Companion Book to a Wonderful Exhibit, But... 4 out of 5 stars.
13 of 13 people found this review helpful.

This companion volume to the astonishing "Raven Travelling" exhibit, currently (through mid-September '06) on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery in downtown Vancouver, B.C., features fine photographs and several articles, ranging from evocative to scholarly, that will serve as an introduction to Haida art, thought, and cultural/political/ecological concerns. The exhibit will then travel to more easterly Canadian cities--you'll do yourself a favor to time any plans taking you to Canada to intercept "Raven Travelling" in its travels!

The title of both exhibit and book refer to a cycle of Haida myths starring the irrepressible and irreverent Raven. The Haida are ancient island dwellers indigenous to northwest British Columbia (and more recent migrants to even more northerly islands which lie within Southeast Alaska). The Haida were and are exceptional artists, painters, sculptors, weavers, and architects of monumental long-houses and totem poles. Their woodworking technology and stewardship over giant red cedar trees allowed them to craft swift and capacious sea-going canoes.

Their culture and artwork at first flourished through contact with the Euroamerican newcomers, were then devastated by smallpox and cultural-religious-economic imperialism, and--still more remarkably, testifying to the enormous resilience and strength of spirit of the Haida people (and their allies among the newcomers)--have rebounded to earn renewed acclaim.

The ancient homeland of Haida Gwaii (the Queen Charlotte Islands to us newcomers) is becoming an eco-tourist destination, even as the Haida fight efforts to log off the remaining old-growth forest cover.

The exhibit brings together over 300 pieces of formline-carved, painted, and woven objects (and occasional, more-geometrically decorated weavings) fashioned over more than two centuries of Haida artistic production. One can view masks and fragile argillite pipes collected by New England sea captain in the early 1800s, bracelets and model totem poles traded to early tourists and pioneering ethnologists, powerfully-symbolic "coppers" and provocative manga graphic art, most of superb quality, often as fresh as the day they left the maker's hands, gathered from a host of prestigious museum collections and knowledgeable private enthusiasts, and cunningly arranged.

The Vancouver mounting of the exhibit is not flawless, though the selection and sequence of the pieces is hard to fault. The main problem is lighting: several magnificent, bentwood bowls displayed in one corner are poorly lit; the design on one of two arrogant coppers is difficult to discern behind distracting reflections; many beautiful engraved gold or silver bracelets, pendants, and rings could benefit from some means of magnification, so their fine details could be appreciated; an enormous carved chest from the hands of the "Chicago Settee Master" is mounted so that one of its two carved and painted faces is impossible to inspect; and an entire case of carvings and engravings from the "Silent Era" of legally-imposed repression and displacement lacks any lighting at all!

These are quibbles, however: anyone with even the mildest interest in native culture or any art originating outside that of the European mainstream will find endless beauty and fascination in this show.

Highly commendable is the effort throughout to treat the artists--whether past or present--as individual and, in many cases, identifiable persons, each with his or her own biography, history, and motivations, rather than to treat the masters behind the art as anonymous, faceless, and generic "tribal crafts-people."

As my title for this review indicates, the "Raven Travelling" book makes a fine companion volume to this superb exhibit, but it too has its drawbacks. For those who have some minimal prior acquaintance with this art and culture, too many of the otherwise-interesting articles are recycled, including several previously-published essays by artist Bill Reid and a commentary by artist Robert Davidson (both incomparable artists, whose esthetic and philosophical viewpoints are arresting and engaging).

While the photographs, both those of the exhibited pieces and the archival photographs of people and places, are marvelous indeed, many of the archival photos have, likewise, been repeatedly reproduced before. While these arguably-"redundant" photos are as meritorious as the "recycled" essays (and frequently subserve the admirable aim of individuating the artists), and while a case can certainly be made for seizing this opportunity to make them accessible to a wider audience, their inclusion comes at some cost: this attractive volume is NOT a complete catalog and does NOT, therefore, serve to fully memorialize the exhibit from which it springs.

And this would be my chief complaint: while "exhibit catalog" perhaps sounds like a drier, more-scholarly, and less-appealing tome than does "coffee-table" photo-essay display volume, it seems to me that--with sufficient care and thought--and a little less recycling of contents, this book could have admirably served both functions. Once this exhibit has been seen in all its venues over the next year or so, it will be--for most purposes--gone for good unless appropriately memorialized. Those of us who have the good fortune of encountering the exhibit will be able to revisit it in memory, but many others--who might have "viewed" the exhibit over and over again through a comprehensive catalog--will now never have that opportunity.

Perhaps there ought to be a law! Somewhere, in the back of an otherwise-commendable book such as this one, ALL the pieces exhibited should be listed, giving appropriate collection data and provenance, in whatever minute font economy might dictate, with at least one well-chosen and well-lit b/w "glamor" photo of EACH and EVERY exhibited piece (again, not in full-page spread, but at whatever size adequately rewards detailed inspection while still accomodating printing costs).

Though this is not that ideal volume, it remains a magnificent and rewarding introduction to Haida art and culture. Despite the pieces and information that are missing, what it does include is incomparable (and, in at least a few cases, such as the hard-to-view copper, which appears in a clear color photo in the book, makes up for the exhibit's mounting gaffes).

Peter MacNair's meditation on the art and the artists of the 19th Century is a thorough and valuable resource, prepared by one of the five or six pre-eminient scholars of this art-style, and would be worth the price of the entire volume as a stand-alone, lavishly-illustrated essay. (Again, though, I have one quibble: an interior house post, knowledgeably-attributed to the "Chicago Settee Master" by prior scholars, is here identified in a photo caption as the work of Paul Jones, who is in prior scholarly work identified as the owner of the house, but not as the artist who carved the pole--traditionally, these would rarely have been the same individual. Elsewhere in his text, MacNair discusses the "Chicago Settee Master" and his distinctive style in some detail. I was left wondering whether house-owner Jones and the "Chicago Settee Master" have now been determined to be one and the same, or whether objects previously-attributed to the CSM are now being re-attributed to two different carvers.)

Again, these are the veriest quibbles. "Raven Travelling" is a sumptuous resource; even the quality of ink, paper, and printing are of the highest--in fact, I have heard it rumored that once the initial print run has sold out, it may not be economically-feasible to publish further editions.

So, snap up this magnificent volume while you can!

Editorial Review:

The core of this powerful assemblage is an exploration of the extraordinary achievement of Haida art, as art. Interwoven throughout the text and the finely reproduced images is a skillful intermingling of key themes: the defining myths of origins; the structures of ownership and privilege; the relationship of the people to the land; the influence of the early master-carvers; the monumental achievements of Charles Edenshaw, Bill Reid, Robert Davidson, and many others; the Haida and colonialism; and hybrid tendencies in contemporary Haida art. From oral histories and genealogies to the breakout aesthetics of contemporary Haida work in many media, this book celebrates a great art in a contemporary context.

Woodall's North American Campground Directory with CD, 2009 (Woodall's North American Campground Directory)

Woodall's Publications Corp.

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Editorial Review:

Campground/RV park listings include facility descriptions, driving directions, camping fees, telephone numbers, pet restrictions, phone/modem hookups at sites, handicap accessibility, county information, park e-mail addresses, and more.

Parques Nacionales de Canada

B. Maybank

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Souvenir of Canada

Douglas Coupland

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

My opinion of this book is biased by my love of Canadians... 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

I was fortunate to have found this book a couple of years ago when I was in Vancouver,BC, and I was nothing but thrilled to see 1) a new Coupland book, 2) a book about Canada, and 3) a picture book for adults. And since I've had it I have found myself reading it several times.

Coupland fans who didn't like the "non-fiction journal" style of "Polaroids from the Dead" may not enjoy this book. But Coupland fans who vist his website for art as well as literature, or try to make gallery shows when Coupland's work is being displayed, will absolutely cherish this book.

Coupland spends anywhere from a couple of paragraphs to a couple pages talking about Canadaian facets like Cigs, Hockey, the Maple Leaf, Poutine, and the Trans Canadian Highway.

This is a must have for die hard Coupland fans, Canadians, US citizens who have spent any amount of time near the border, and everyone else in the know.

Editorial Review:

Renown writer and artist Douglas Coupland's valentine to Canada looks at how it feels to be a Canadian now and imagines what it might feel like to be a Canadian in the future. From collective memories, Coupland locates objects like stubbie beer bottles and ookpiks, Kraft dinner and maple walnut ice cream. With the same witty sensibility, he considers significant events and relevant issues, like Canada's relationship with the United States, Medicare, and the landscape itself in this colorful, lively mix of image and text.