This guide book gives a good review of all the major mountain biking trails in Southern Alberta. The maps are good and there are entertaining photos throughout of some vintage mountain bikers.

The difficulty ratings are quite realistic, in my opinion.

This is an absolute MUST for everyone mountain biking in the Canadian Rockies. The maps and descriptions of the trail are extremly acurate and are extremly useful.

This is the most beautiful book of this region that I have ever seen, and I have read dozens! As a life-long hiker in this area, I can assure you that the trail discriptions tell you everything you need to know, and the photographs are exquisite. The historical sections are well written, entertaining, and incredibly informative. I can't imagine visiting this area without this book. Just reading this it almost makes you feel like an expert on this gorgeous region. Buy It!

Many times great heroes are forgotten in favour of more popular ones; however, in this book, Wayne Ralph presents not only an excellent account of Barker's war career, but also his life before and after the war. The reader is aquainted also with the facts that for years after the war deeply hurt most air force pilots. This book is the best I have read about William Barker.

As a long time interpreter of this fascinating historic site, I can testify that this book is as factual and well written as any on the subject. I am now into my second copy of it, and when I am performing my school show about the Goldrush, I still use it as a handy source of reference.

In Newfoundland, Canada, every kid in high school eventually has to read one of two books: "Lure of the Labrador Wild" or "Bartlett, The Great Canadian Explorer". When I was faced with the choice, I took Bartlett. Having now read both books again, years removed from high school days, I can say that it was an enviable dilemma.

Bartlett is the quintessential Newfoundland hero. Indefatigable, loyal, courageous to the point of fool-hardiness. Hard-living and hard-drinking, he was the man behind Peary's controversial trip to the North Pole in 1909 (Peary left Bartlett behind for the final push to the pole so that he could be the only white man to claim the glory) and the incredible voyage and destruction of the Karluk. In later years a scientist, film maker and celebrity, Bartlett truly did it all.

Horwood doesn't shield us from Bartlett's flaws and is equally vigorous in the elucidation of his incredible feats. The result is an exciting, compelling and intensely personal portrait of a larger-than-life figure - a true giant in the field of maritime exploration. Worth reading, in high school and beyond.

When I am at a lost to what to do next I get this book out and just read and look at the varity and skills it takes to accomplish them. After looking at this book I go straight to my easel and just put the pastel in hand and go for it. I absolutly love this book and would not go without it in my libary of books!I hope to see another one soon!

The title is somewhat misleading. This is an account of the Canadian SIGINT effort during WWII with a postwar chapter to bring it up to date.
Although one thinks of Canada as the empty "Great White North" there is a band of population in the provinces just north of the Border which in the Lakes area is actually south of Boston and New York. In this area are many prominent universities and research centers. It was in such that the beginnings of independent Canadian efforts began.
Even the notorious Herbert Yardley was involved until the US authorities told the Canadians to get rid of him or there would be no cooperation. Yardley was the erstwhile the chief of the US black chamber (code breakers) in WWI and after and when he was let go, he wrote a tell all book which resulted in the Japanese changing all their codes and ciphers in the 1930s.
The author is a well known researcher concerned with the Canadian scientific war efforts. He has thoroughly mined the relevent archives of the nations involved to tell the story of these efforts and cooperation with the US and Great Britain. Much on the interservice wrangling in the US and not very much on use of the information nor is there much on the mechanics of SIGINT and code breaking. This is an organizational history and deserves a place on the shelf of the specialist. Not for the casual general reader.

This is a must read for anyone in North America and Europe concerned with the growth and popularity of right wing or neo-conservative parties. Segal, a self-professed moderate conservative, thoroughly analyzes the neo-conservatism movement in Canada, the US, and Great Britain. He outlines how and why they have grown in popularity in recent years, and especially in the latest elections, in all three countries. For Segal, the neo-conservatives offer simple and politically expedient solutions to complex social, political, and economical problems. It is these simple solutions that have attracted people to these neo-conservative parties. After his neo-conservative overview Segal argues why moderate conservatives offer a balance between the rights of the individual and their responsibility to society. A balance which is missing in the neo-conservative concern for the individuals rights, and the liberals/socialist belief in a utopian state. The book concludes with Segal challenging all citizens to actively become involved with their community. Which is the base of a just and civil society. He then encourages people, "to reach beyond the narrow, beyond the small-minded, beyond the politics of insensitivity and envy," which for Segal is precisely what the neo-conservative movement propagates.

One of the last things Al Purdy worked on before his death last year (1999? or was it 2000? I forget the exact date) was a definitive edition of his collected poems; he helped select these, and wrote a preface. Coming just a few years after a previous anthology of his work, this edition incorporates much material from Purdy's later years, including his touching and apt lament for his friend Charles Bukowski. All the Purdy poems that I've come to love over the years are here; he writes with humour, warmth, and a delightful curmudgeonism, and with a great awareness of region and history, as they inform his experience of life in Canada. There are many very funny moments, like "When I sat down to play the piano," about Purdy being accosted by dogs with an "inexplicable taste for human excrement" when attempting to take a bowel movement in the snow in the Canadian north; but also much that is profoundly moving and true. Purdy's great gift is to take a mundane experience, rooted in a very concrete particular, and make of it something of universal human significance (for example, "Flat Tire in the Desert," which is about mortality). He was one of Canada's finest writers and this bookk is a worthy testament to that.