Across the vast expanse of northern lands from eastern Siberia to Greenland, Aboriginal peoples created fifty to sixty different models of kayaks. This book treats Canada’s share of this spectrum, which is broken down into three kayak groups: Mackenzie, Central Canadian and East Canadian. This is an initial survey of the history and construction of kayaks in the Canadian Arctic.
Across the vast expanse of northern lands from eastern Siberia to Greenland a great variety of native kayaks were created by the Koryak, Chukchi, Aleut, Yuit and Inuit. Some fifty or sixty different models can be distinguished, and further subvarieties as well, which scholars group into about a dozen major lots or families. Canada's share of this spectrum is the subject of this essay which deals with three kayak groups, labelled for convenience "Mackenzie", "Central Canadian", and "East Canadian". Each is treated mainly in terms of historical records and construction. Variation within each grouping is discussed, but without more study a definitive statement is not possible. This essay is just an initial survey of Canada's kayaks. A score of scale lines drawings, mostly of kayaks in the Canadian Museum of Civilization, are included along with some photographs.
Eastern Arctic Kayaks is the product of years of kayak study by two of the world's experts. Combining analyses of form and function with historical background and illustrations of kayaking techniques, this volume will appeal to recreational kayakers and scholarly readers alike. An excerpt from John Brand's Little Kayak Book series makes this British publication available to American readers for the first time.
The canoe is a symbol unique to Canada. One of the greatest gifts of First Peoples to all those who came after, the canoe is Canada's most powerful icon. Within this Canexus II publication are a collection of essays by paddling enthusiasts and experts. Contributing authors include: Eugene Arima, Shanna Balazs, David Finch, Ralph Frese, Toni Harting, Bob Henderson, Bruce W. Hodgins, Bert Horwood, Gwyneth Hoyle, John Jennings, Timothy Kent, Peter Labor, Adrian Lee, Kenneth R. Lister, Becky Mason, James Raffan, Alister Thomas and Kirk Wipper.
" ... [This book] leads you step-by-step through the process of creating your own lashed-frame, fabric-covered, custom-fitted Greenland kayak, using inexpensive, easy-to-find materials and common woodworking tools. ..."--Back cover.
In 1981, Nigel Foster flew to Canada’s Baffin Island to begin a solo kayak trip south toward northern Labrador. After crossing the 40-mile wide Hudson Strait in howling winds and fighting a 10 knot tide race, Foster crash-landed on a small island in the dark. He had frostbitten fingers and was 300 miles from the closest village. With unimaginable good fortune, eight days later he ran across an oil tanker and hitched a ride south. He had survived—marking one of the most notable solo crossings in history—but the failure of the second portion of the trip he had originally planned haunted him. In 2004, Foster returned to northern Labrador with his then girlfriend (now wife) Kristin Nelson. Launching from Kuujjuaq in Northern Quebec, the couple paddled the Ungava Bay coast—which has one of the largest tidal variances in the world—to the place Foster had boarded the oil tanker 23 years earlier. From this remote location, the couple completed the trip to Nain that Foster originally planned for 1981. They encountered more polar bears than people. The story of the two trips forms the backbone for On Polar Tides—Originally self-published as Stepping Stones in 2009—which offers an intimate and insightful view of Ungava and Labrador. The new, revised edition includes gripping recollections of the polar adventures and 54 color photographs.
The first two papers describe King Island and North Baffin kayaks, their construction and their equipment. Other articles are on kayak design variation, Greenland kayaks, “kayak fear”, Canadian revival and the fascinating Aleut designs. All papers are illustrated and reflect the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s collection.
Bringing together American and Canadian scholars of Great Lakes prehistory to provide a holistic picture of caribou hunters, this volume covers such diverse topics as paleoenvironmental reconstruction, ethnographic surveys of hunting features with Native informants in Canada, and underwater archaeological research, and presents a synthetic model of ancient caribou hunters in the Great Lakes region.
Identifies and summarizes thousands of books, article, exhibition catalogues, government publications, and theses published in many countries and in several languages from the early nineteenth century to 1981.
Humans are a striking anomaly in the natural world. While we are similar to other mammals in many ways, our behavior sets us apart. Our unparalleled ability to adapt has allowed us to occupy virtually every habitat on earth using an incredible variety of tools and subsistence techniques. Our societies are larger, more complex, and more cooperative than any other mammal's. In this stunning exploration of human adaptation, Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd argue that only a Darwinian theory of cultural evolution can explain these unique characteristics. Not by Genes Alone offers a radical interpretation of human evolution, arguing that our ecological dominance and our singular social systems stem from a psychology uniquely adapted to create complex culture. Richerson and Boyd illustrate here that culture is neither superorganic nor the handmaiden of the genes. Rather, it is essential to human adaptation, as much a part of human biology as bipedal locomotion. Drawing on work in the fields of anthropology, political science, sociology, and economics—and building their case with such fascinating examples as kayaks, corporations, clever knots, and yams that require twelve men to carry them—Richerson and Boyd convincingly demonstrate that culture and biology are inextricably linked, and they show us how to think about their interaction in a way that yields a richer understanding of human nature. In abandoning the nature-versus-nurture debate as fundamentally misconceived, Not by Genes Alone is a truly original and groundbreaking theory of the role of culture in evolution and a book to be reckoned with for generations to come. “I continue to be surprised by the number of educated people (many of them biologists) who think that offering explanations for human behavior in terms of culture somehow disproves the suggestion that human behavior can be explained in Darwinian evolutionary terms. Fortunately, we now have a book to which they may be directed for enlightenment . . . . It is a book full of good sense and the kinds of intellectual rigor and clarity of writing that we have come to expect from the Boyd/Richerson stable.”—Robin Dunbar, Nature “Not by Genes Alone is a valuable and very readable synthesis of a still embryonic but very important subject straddling the sciences and humanities.”—E. O. Wilson, Harvard University
