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Canucks sign defenceman Jim Vandermeer, add defensive depth, 'more push-back' (with video)
Daniel Sedin (right) and San Jose Sharks defenceman Jim Vandermeer skate during practice with the UBC Thunderbirds at UBC on Monday. The Canucks signed Vandermeer Monday.
Photograph by: DARRYL DYCK , THE CANADIAN PRESS
VANCOUVER - Jim Vandermeer knows his new team has a reputation around the league of not being quite tough enough and he hopes to change that.
"You guys all know that is kind of the rumour going around, that they needed a little more push-back to their game," Vandermeer said of the Canucks. "And I know I can bring that."
The 32-year-old defenceman, with 461 NHL games and 664 penalty minutes on his NHL resume, signed a one-year, two-way contract Monday with the Canucks. He'll make $600,000 at the NHL level and $275,000 in the minors.
Vandermeer skated at UBC with several of his new teammates during the lockout and at least a couple of them went to bat for him with Canucks' management. Defenceman Dan Hamhuis was one of them and thinks Vandermeer brings a physical presence that the Canucks could use.
"He is a guy that can settle down an opposing team's player who might be running around a bit and getting guys on our team off our game," Hamhuis said. "Jim is a guy that knows how to handle those situations and settle guys like that down. He's not a guy who needs to prove how tough he is, he's respected and guys know what he can do. That is something you would like to have."
Now all Vandermeer has to do is make the team and that doesn't figure to be easy. His signing leaves the Canucks, who signed free-agent veteran Cam Barker on Sunday, with nine defencemen with NHL experience.
"He's an experienced NHL player that brings an identity to the table," said Vancouver coach Alain Vigneault. "He's a physical tough defenceman that has got a lot of experience. Obviously, he is fighting for the seventh, eighth, ninth spot on our team and we'll sort that out here as we move forward."
With no pre-season games in which to make a statement, Vandermeer knows he'll have to show well in scrimmages scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday nights.
"You are battling for a job, you have to treat it like a game and go out there and obviously not be crazy and do anything stupid and try to hurt anybody, but you have to go out there and show them what you can do," said Vandermeer, a 6-foot-1, 214-pound native of Cochrane, Alta.
Vandermeer knows it is his physical game that will earn him a job with the Canucks.
"You can't get pushed around (as a team) whether it's post-season or regular season," he said. "I think the style of game that I provide is one that doesn't let our team get pushed around."
The two-way contract means Vandermeer could start the season with the AHL's Chicago Wolves.
"Obviously, that is not what I want to happen," he said. "But if that's the case I just have to work hard and play well and earn my way back if I end up going down."
The signings this week of Barker and Vandermeer do not bode well for Kevin Connauton, who came to camp hoping to land a spot as the No. 7 or 8 defenceman.
Connauton is skating at camp with the prospects and with no pre-season games likely won't be able to show enough to stick with the Canucks, who drafted the former Vancouver Giant in the third round in 2009.
"I just have showcase myself the best I can," Connauton said. "It's obviously a much shorter camp than usual so there's not as much time to do that.
"You can't get too focused on the numbers. For me, I am definitely trying to get one of last spots on the D corps. The whole go-down-and-develop stage of my career is kind of passed. I think I can develop up here. It's not a matter of playing games down in the American League. I want to be a guy that is up here practising with these guys. If it means I am not in every game, that's fine. I just want to be on this team and I am going to show them that I want to be here and I want to fight for a job."
Connauton has struggled at times this season, his third as a pro. A gifted offensive defenceman, Connauton has two goals and nine points in 31 games with the Chicago Wolves this season.
Vigneault said Connauton must continue to improve.
"He needs to play to his strengths," Vigneault said. "He's supposedly a good offensive defenceman, a good puck-mover who jumps up in the attack and gets his shot through on the power play and five-on-five from the point. He has shown that in some instances so far this year, he needs to continue to get better. Third-year pro is still a very young palyer. We believe a lot in Kevin and think he is going to get better."


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Transracial Adoption
adoption, act by which the legal relation of parent and child is created. Adoption was recognized by Roman law but not by common law. Statutes first introduced adoption into U.S. law in the mid-19th cent., and today it is allowed in all states of the United States and in Great Britain. Adoption is generally a judicial proceeding, requiring a hearing before a judge. Adoption statutes usually provide that the consent of the parents or guardian of the child—and that of the child, if above a certain age—must be obtained. An adopted child generally assumes the rights and duties of a natural legitimate child. Similarly, the rights and duties accompanying natural parenthood generally accompany adoptive parenthood (e.g., the right of custody and the obligation of support). The natural parents have no right to control an adopted child, nor have they any duties toward it, but in some states the child does not lose the right to inherit from them.
In many cases children are adopted by relatives. Many states now permit adoption by unmarried adults; some allow adoption by homosexual couples. Most adoptions are of the same race. Transracial adoptions are controversial, pitting issues of culture and heritage against the need of a child for a stable parent-child relationship as early in life as possible, regardless of race. The Multiethnic Placement Act (1994) made it illegal for U.S. states to hold up adoptions solely in order to match racial or ethnic background of the child.
In adoption by unrelated adults, the courts have traditionally attempted to ease adjustment to the adoptive family and protect the privacy of the (often unwed) mother by maintaining secrecy regarding the child's birth parents. Since the 1970s, however, a growing number of adopted children have attempted to identify their birth parents, and "open adoption," in which adoptive and birth parents maintain a relationship, has become more accepted. Questions of parental rights and where these stand vis-à-vis the rights and best interests of the child have also been highlighted in cases in which the courts tranferred custody of adopted or fostered children to birth parents who had previously given them up.
Many children are adopted through public or private agencies, but a growing number are adopted through private placement, in which the prospective adoptive parents advertise for or are otherwise put into contact with a birth mother, usually with the help of a lawyer who is familiar with the process and the legal requirements of the individual states. As birth control and abortion have become more available and as the stigma formerly attached to unwed motherhood has lifted, fewer infants have been put up for adoption, making it increasingly difficult for prospective parents to find young children to adopt (see also infertility). In many cases, parents have adopted babies from outside the United States, particularly South Korea, and Mexico and other Latin American countries, but the increased demand has also been accompanied by black-market adoption arrangements. In 1980 the U.S. Congress passed the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act to give support to foster families who adopt and to families who adopt children with disabilities.
See also foster care, guardian and ward.
See M. Kornitzer, Adoption (2d ed. 1967); M. L. Leavy, Law of Adoption (3d ed. 1968); M. K. Benet, The Politics of Adoption (1976); P. Bean, ed., Adoption: Essays in Social Policy, Law, and Sociology (1984); E. W. Carp, Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption (1999).

subset: commoncrawl


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On January 13, 1888, thirty-three men gathered at the Cosmos Club in Washington D.C., and made a plan to form a new scientific society that would support research and spread the word about their findings (see photos and bios of the founders).
125 years later, watching this video Hangout with explorers on all seven continents, I think they'd be pleased to know it worked.
To kick off a full year of celebrating this anniversary, we gathered explorers from around the world together with public participants for an epic Google+ Hangout to talk with each other about the new age of exploration in which we live. Generations after that meeting of just thirty-three men from across the United States, this event spanned the globe as well as the human experience, and ultimately involved thousands of people watching from their homes around the world as well.
Watch the highlights video above or the full replay here, and see below to learn more about these thrilling explorers and the work they've done and will continue to do, and join us as we keep doing what we've always done together: explore.
This gathering of explorers on all seven continents included: ocean explorer Robert Ballard in North America, primatologist Jane Goodall in Europe, Crittercam engineers Greg Marshall and Kyler Abernathy in Antarctica, wildlife conservationist Paula Kahumbu in Africa, archaeologist Cecilia Mauricio in South America, paleontologist Mike Archer in Australia, conflict resolution specialist Aziz Abu Sarah and biologist Krithi Karanth in Asia, cave diver Kenny Broad, research engineer Albert Lin, and long-time NG host Boyd Matson.
NEXT UP: Hangout with archaeologist Guillermo de Anda live in an ancient Maya cave, February 8th with NatGeo on Google+.
Learn More
Full 90-Minute Replay of the Hangout
Google Map of the Explorer's Fields of Action
Join the Society at NationalGeographic.com