Learning Guide: The Sea Wolves
A free learning guide companion to The Sea Wolves
The Learning Guide: We’ve designed this learning guide to be used alongside The Sea Wolves. Here, you’ll find thought-provoking discussion questions as well as ready-to-go lessons and extension activities centering on BC’s coastal wolves and other animals inhabiting the Great Bear Rainforest ecosystem. Paired with The Sea Wolves, this learning guide addresses a number of the Prescribed Learning Outcomes established by the BC Ministry of Education. We’ve linked each activity with science themes and outcomes for grades four to seven—and where applicable, we’ve made connections with social studies, math, art and Language Arts outcomes too.
The Book: The Sea Wolves sets out to disprove the notion of “the Big Bad Wolf,” especially as it is applied to coastal wolves—a unique strain of wolf that lives in the rainforest along the Pacific coast of Canada. Genetically distinct from their inland cousins and from wolves in any other part of the world, coastal wolves can swim like otters and fish like the bears with whom they share the rainforest. Smaller than the gray wolves that live on the other side of the Coast Mountains, these wolves are highly social and fiercely intelligent creatures. Living in the remote wilds of the Great Bear Rainforest, coastal wolves have also enjoyed a unique relationship with man. The First Nations peoples, who have shared their territory for thousands of years, do not see them as a nuisance species but instead have long offered the wolf a place of respect and admiration within their culture. Illustrated with almost one hundred of Ian McAllister’s magnificent photographs, The Sea Wolves presents a strong case for the importance of preserving the Great Bear Rainforest for the wolves, the bears and the other unique creatures that live there.
The Authors: Ian McAllister is a founding director of Pacific Wild, a Canadian non-profit wildlife conservation group. An award-winning author and photographer, he has spent more than twenty years working to protect the West Coast’s temperate rainforest. Ian lives with his family on an island in the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest. Nicholas Read, a lifelong lover of animals, works as a journalism instructor at Langara College in Vancouver, British Columbia. He has written for the Vancouver Sun, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and other publications, and has authored two prize-winning children’s books.