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Sports & Recreation Canoeing

Canexus

The Canoe in Canadian Culture

edited by James Raffan & Bert Horwood

illustrated by Bill Mason

Publisher
Dundurn Press
Initial publish date
Jun 1988
Category
Canoeing, General, Reference
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780969078357
    Publish Date
    Jun 1988
    List Price
    $19.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781459727755
    Publish Date
    Jun 1998
    List Price
    $19.95

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Where to buy it

Description

Resonant, reflective, a legacy of the Canadian canoeing experience — Canexus: The Canoe in Canadian Culture is a first. "This book is cause for celebration," says Kanawa Canoe Museum founder Kirk Wipper, "because of the canoe, and because it is created by writers who are, themselves, enthusiastic paddlers."

From "Canoe Sport" to "Canoe Irony" and finding "Motives for Mr. Canoehead," Canexus opens doors to the primitive and explores the canoeing experience from an exciting variety of perspectives.

Travel with some of Canada’s best known canoeists to the mysterious Northwest Coast of BC, across constitutional waves on Meech Lake and into a landscape of the Canadian imagination. Hear great canoe stories, bake bannock, weather storms, ponder canoeing and gender roles. For all kinds of paddlers, and lovers of adventure and wilderness, Canexus gives the canoe its rightful place of prominence in Canadian culture.

With contributions by E.Y. Arima, Philip Chester, C.E.S. Franks, Shelagh Grant, Bob Henderson, Bruce Hodgins, Gwyneth Hoyle, William C. James, C. Fred Johnston, George Luste, Roderick A. Macdonald, Kenneth G. Roberts and Kirk Wipper.

"The writers in Canexus bring different perspectives & abilities to these essays, but all of them reinforce the idea of the canoe as an ancient, echoing symbol; one that can illuminate our place in the north like no other."
– M.T. Kelly, Winner of the Governor General’s Award for Literature

"An intelligent person’s guide to the place of the canoe in the Canadian culture and psyche…exciting, like fast white water and spray in your face…"
— Fred Bodsworth

About the authors

James Raffan is a prolific writer, speaker, and geographer, and the author of numerous books, including the bestselling Circling The Midnight SunEmperor Of The NorthBark, Skin And Cedar; and Fire In The Bones. He has written for a variety of media outlets, including National GeographicCanadian GeographicUp HereExplore and The Globe and Mail, and produced radio and television documentaries for CBC Radio and the Discovery Channel. His work has taken him all over the world. He is an international fellow of the Explorers Club, a past chair of the Arctic Institute of North America, and a fellow and past governor of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, service for which he was awarded many medals, including the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. From 2010 to 2013, he traveled through the Arctic Circle, spending time in Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, as he researched and wrote on culture and climate change in the North. He lives in Seeley’s Bay, Ontario. Visit him at JamesRaffan.ca or follow him on Twitter @raffjam.

James Raffan's profile page

Bert Horwood's profile page

Bill Mason's profile page