The Canadian Rangers stand sentinel in the farthest reaches of our country. For more than six decades, this dedicated group of citizen-soldiers has quietly served as Canada’s eyes, ears, and voice in isolated coastal and northern communities from coast to coast to coast. How does this minimally trained and lightly equipped force make a meaningful contribution to national defence and to building sustainable communities? One of Canada’s leading experts on northern issues answers this question using official records, extensive interviews, and on-the-ground participation in Ranger exercises. In this meticulously researched history, Lackenbauer reveals why the Rangers have evolved into a flexible, inexpensive, and culturally inclusive way to promote sovereignty, security, safety, and stewardship. This unique organization reflects a successful partnership between the modern state and residents of remote communities, a partnership rooted in local knowledge and crosscultural understanding.

Backpacker brings the outdoors straight to the reader's doorstep, inspiring and enabling them to go more places and enjoy nature more often. The authority on active adventure, Backpacker is the world's first GPS-enabled magazine, and the only magazine whose editors personally test the hiking trails, camping gear, and survival tips they publish. Backpacker's Editors' Choice Awards, an industry honor recognizing design, feature and product innovation, has become the gold standard against which all other outdoor-industry awards are measured.

Using examples from both adults and children, the authors explain and describe the complex integrated network of strategies that takes place in the minds of proficient readers, strategies that struggling readers have to learn in order to construct their own reading processes. The examples and scenarios of teacher/ student interactions in this book provide a sense of how it looks and what is sounds like to teach strategic actions to struggling readers.--[book cover].

Young kids have always had a fascination with snakes. Kids will learn everything there is to know about garter snakes. Includes fabulous two-page full-color spreads of the most popular snakes from around the world.

John McPhee's twenty-sixth book is a braid of personal history, natural history, and American history, in descending order of volume. Each spring, American shad-Alosa sapidissima-leave the ocean in hundreds of thousands and run heroic distances upriver to spawn. McPhee--a shad fisherman himself--recounts the shad's cameo role in the lives of George Washington and Henry David Thoreau. He fishes with and visits the laboratories of famous ichthyologists; he takes instruction in the making of shad darts from a master of the art; and he cooks shad in a variety of ways, delectably explained at the end of the book. Mostly, though, he goes fishing for shad in various North American rivers, and he "fishes the same way he writes books, avidly and intensely. He wants to know everything about the fish he's after--its history, its habits, its place in the cosmos" (Bill Pride, The Denver Post). His adventures in pursuit of shad occasion the kind of writing--expert and ardent--at which he has no equal.

Twenty-seven stories, both fiction and non-fiction, about animals and nature.

The international bestselling series with over 5 million copies sold in the U.S. alone! They have always scared him in the past—the Rangers, with their dark cloaksand shadowy ways. The villagers believe the Rangers practice magic that makes them invisible to ordinary people. And now 15-year-old Will, always small for his age, has been chosen as a Ranger's apprentice. What he doesn't yet realize is that the Rangers are the protectors of the kingdom. Highly trained in the skills of battle and surveillance, they fight the battles before the battles reach the people. And as Will is about to learn, there is a large battle brewing. The exiled Morgarath, Lord of the Mountains of Rain and Night, is gathering his forces for an attack on the kingdom. This time, he will not be denied. . . . Here is the fantasy adventure that launched the Ranger's Apprentice series, an epic story of heroes and villains that has become an international phenomenon. Perfect for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone, Christopher Paolini’s Eragon series, and George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire series.