Farley Mowat

Farley McGill Mowat, (May 12, 1921 – May 6, 2014) was a Canadian writer and environmentalist. His works were translated into 52 languages, and he sold more than 17 million books. He achieved fame with the publication of his books on the Canadian north, such as "People of the Deer" (1952) and "Never Cry Wolf" (1963). The latter, an account of his experiences with wolves in the Arctic, was made into a film of the same name released in 1983. For his body of work as a writer he won the annual Vicky Metcalf Award for Children's Literature in 1970.
Mowat's advocacy for environmental causes earned him praise, but his admission, after some of his books' claims had been debunked, that he "never let the facts get in the way of the truth" earned harsh criticism: "few readers remain neutral". Descriptions of Mowat refer to his "commitment to ideals" and "poetic descriptions and vivid images" as well as his strong antipathies, which provoke "ridicule, lampoons and, at times, evangelical condemnation".
Early life and education.
Mowat was born May 12, 1921 in Belleville, Ontario and grew up in Richmond Hill, Ontario. His great-great-uncle was Ontario premier Sir Oliver Mowat, and his father, Angus Mowat, was a librarian who fought in the Battle of Vimy Ridge. His mother was Helen Lilian Thomson, daughter of Henry Andrew Hoffman Thomson and Georgina Phillips Farley Thomson of Trenton, Ontario. Mowat started writing, in his words "mostly verse", when his family lived in Windsor from 1930 to 1933.
In the 1930s, the Mowat family moved to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where as a teenager Mowat wrote about birds in a column for the "Saskatoon Star-Phoenix". During this time he also wrote his own nature newsletter, "Nature Lore". In the 1930s Mowat studied zoology at the University of Toronto but never completed a degree. He took his first collecting expedition in the summer of 1939 to Saskatoon with fellow zoology student Frank Banfield collecting data regarding mammals and Mowat focusing on birds. They sold their collections to the Royal Ontario Museum to finance their trip. Before enlisting Banfield published his field notes in the "Canadian Field-Naturalist". Mowat published his when he returned from World War II.
War service.
During World War II, Mowat joined the Canadian Army and was commissioned as a supernumerary second lieutenant into the Second Battalion, The Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment (affectionately known as the "Hasty Ps") on 19 July 1940. He went overseas as a reinforcement officer for that regiment, joining the Canadian Army in the United Kingdom. He saw very brief active service when the 3rd Infantry Brigade was shipped to Brest, France, in June, 1940, but was quickly withdrawn. On July 10, 1943, he was a subaltern in command of a rifle platoon and participated in the initial landings of Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily.
Mowat served throughout the campaign as a platoon commander and moved to Italy in September 1943, seeing further combat until December 1943. During the Moro River Campaign, part of the Italian Campaign, he suffered from battle stress, heightened after an incident on Christmas Day outside of Ortona, Italy when he was left weeping at the feet of an unconscious friend, Lieutenant Allan (Al) Park, who had an enemy bullet in his head. He then accepted a job as Intelligence Officer at battalion headquarters, later moving to Brigade Headquarters. He stayed in Italy with the 1st Canadian Infantry Division for most of the war, and was eventually promoted to the rank of captain.
Mowat moved with the division to northwest Europe in early 1945. There, he worked as an intelligence agent in the Netherlands and went through enemy lines to start unofficial negotiations about food drops with General Blaskowitz. The food drops, under the codename Operation Manna, saved thousands of Dutch lives.
Mowat also formed the 1st Canadian Army Museum Collection Team, according to his book "My Father's Son", and arranged for the transport to Canada of several tons of German military equipment, including a V2 rocket and several armoured vehicles. Some of these vehicles are on display today at Canadian Forces Base Borden's tank museum, as well as the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.
Mowat was discharged in 1945, at the conclusion of World War II, as a captain and was considered for promotion to major. However, he declined the offer as it would have required his volunteering to stay in the military until "no longer needed", which Mowat assumed meant duty with the Canadian Army Occupation Force (CAOF) (but might also have meant the conclusion of the war with Japan). He was entitled to the following medals as a result of his service: the 1939–1945 Star, the Italy Star, the France and Germany Star, the Defence Medal, the Canadian Volunteer Service Medal and the War Medal 1939–1945.
Post-war.
In 1947 Mowat was hired as field technician for American naturalist Francis Harper's study of the barren-ground caribou in the Nueltin Lake area—now Nunavut's Kivalliq Region, resulting in the publication of Harper's book entitled "Caribou of Keewatin." Two young Inuit were with them, including then-fifteen-year-old Inuk Luke Anoteelik (Luke Anowtalik) and his sister Rita, who were the sole survivors of starvation in an Inuit village. Luke Anowtalik went on to become well known for his distinctive carvings of antler and bone that are now in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada. Due to a clash of personalities, Mowat undertook his own explorations. "Harper later extracted a promise that neither would mention the other in their respective future writing, a promise also extracted from Mowat by later field companions for their lifetimes."
In the late 1940s, Mowat was hired by Frank Banfield—then Chief Mammalogist of the newly formed Canadian Wildlife Service—as field assistant in Banfield's ambitious multi-year investigation of the barren-ground caribou,
 which resulted in Banfield's influential 1951 publication entitled "The Barren-ground Caribou." Mowat, who was part of a four-researcher team, was fired by the chief of Canadian Wildlife Service because of complaints from the local population and lack of formal approval for some activities.
Literary career.
After serving in World War II, Mowat attended the University of Toronto. Mowat's first book, "People of the Deer" (1952), was inspired by a field trip to the Canadian Arctic he made while studying at the University of Toronto. Mowat was outraged at the conditions endured by the Inuit living in Northern Canada. The book turned Mowat into a controversial, popular figure.
Mowat became a McClelland and Stewart author when they published his book entitled "The Regiment" in 1955. Jack McClelland, known for his promotion of Canadian authors, became his lifelong friend as well as his publisher. Mowat's next book, (a children's book) "Lost in the Barrens" (1956), won a Governor General's Award.
In 1963, Mowat wrote a possibly fictionalised account of his experiences in the Canadian Arctic with Arctic wolves entitled "Never Cry Wolf" (1963), which is thought to have been instrumental in changing popular attitudes towards the animals.
In 1985, Mowat started a book tour of the United States to promote "Sea of Slaughter". He was denied entry by customs agents at Pearson International Airport in Toronto, which was justified by laws that allowed American customs officials to deny entry to entrants they thought were "Communist sympathizers". Believing gun lobbyists were behind his denial, he came forward with his suspicion. The law was overturned in 1990, and Mowat wrote about his experience in "My Discovery of America" (1985).
Mowat became very interested in Dian Fossey, the American ethologist who studied gorillas and was brutally murdered in Rwanda in 1985. His biography of her was published in 1987, in Canada under the title "Virunga: The Passion of Dian Fossey", and in the United States as "Woman in the Mists: The Story of Dian Fossey and the Mountain Gorillas of Africa"—an allusion to Fossey's own recounting of her life and research "Gorillas in the Mist" (1983).
Many of Mowat's works are autobiographical, such as "Owls in the Family" (1962, about his childhood), "The Boat Who Wouldn't Float" (1969, one of three books about his time living in Newfoundland), and "And No Birds Sang" (1979, about his experience fighting in Italy in World War II).
In 1965 "Westviking" was published, followed 30 years later by "The Farfarers", which suggests a people he called the Albans preceded the Norse to the High Arctic and the Labrador and Newfoundland coasts.
Criticism.
In a 1964 book review published in "Canadian Field-Naturalist", Frank Banfield of the National Museum of Canada, a former Canadian Wildlife Service scientist, compared Mowat's 1963 bestseller to Little Red Riding Hood, stating, "I hope that readers of "Never Cry Wolf" will realize that both stories have about the same factual content". Mowat responded to Banfield's criticisms in a letter to the editor of the "Canadian Field-Naturalist", and signed it "Mowat's wolf Uncle Albert". L. David Mech, a wolf expert, is cited by Warner Shedd, a former regional executive of the World Wildlife Federation, as noting that no scientist, Mowat notwithstanding, has ever encountered a wolf population that primarily subsists on small prey, as claimed in Mowat's book. Mech additionally states, "...Mowat is not a scientist, and his book, although presented as truth, is fiction."
"The New York Times Book Review" published a dismissive review of "People of the Deer" on February 24, 1952. "The Beaver" was quite hostile in its first review. The second review, by A. E. Porsild, was equally hostile, questioning the existence of the Ihalmiut. Despite a few harsh reviews, however, "People of the Deer" was generally well received; published in the Atlantic Monthly, and "showered with glowing international reviews."
Duncan Pryde, a Hudson's Bay Company trader who pioneered the linguistic study of Inuit languages, attacked Mowat's claim to have picked up the language quickly enough in two months to discuss detailed concepts such as shamanism, pointing out that the language is complex and required a year or more for Europeans to master the basics. Pryde said that when Mowat visited his post at Baker Lake in 1958, he could barely speak a single word in the Inuit language.
Canadian Geographic published excerpts from "The Farfarers" with the comment that it was "a highly speculative blend of history and archeology. In it, Mowat again draws upon Norse sagas, the chronicles of Irish monks, accounts of Roman travellers, as well as the works of modern historians and archeologists. It is both detailed and, as with all early history, sketchy. The written record for much of the period covered is scant and the archeological record spotty. Still, such speculative writing can suggest avenues of exploration and study for future researchers. No professional archeologists are known to share Mowat's theories but that does not disturb him. A literary gadfly for much of his long career, Mowat is happy to stir up debate and challenge academics to match the visions that he champions and defends with such vigour and relish."
Awards and honours.
Mowat was made an "Officer of the Order of Canada (OC)" in 1981. He also received the Canadian Centennial Medal (1967) the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal (1977), the 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada Medal (1992), Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal (2002), and Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012).
Farley is also the namesake of the lovable sheepdog in the comic strip by Lynn Johnston, "For Better or For Worse". Johnston and Mowat were long-time friends.
Affiliations.
Mowat was a strong supporter of the Green Party of Canada and a close friend of the party's leader Elizabeth May. The Green Party sent a direct mail fundraising appeal in Mowat's name in June 2007, and that same year Mowat became a patron of the Nova Scotia Nature Trust by donating over of his land in Cape Breton to the Nature Trust. He was also an honorary director of the North American Native Plant Society. Mowat was described as "a life-long socialist."
Farley Mowat Library.
In 2012, independent Canadian publisher Douglas & McIntyre announced they had created the Farley Mowat Library series and would be re-releasing many of his most popular titles, with new designs and introductions, in print and e-book format.
Later life.
Mowat and his second wife Claire spent their later years together in Port Hope, Ontario and their summers on a farm on Cape Breton Island. They attended a local Anglican church in Port Hope about monthly, Claire emphasizing that Mowat was more spiritual than religious, and Mowat stating that he probably believed in God the same way his dog did, and that such ceremonies were important in tying people to each other and the world.
Mowat died on May 6, 2014, less than one week before his 93rd birthday. He maintained his interest in Canada's wilderness areas throughout his life and could be heard a few days before his death on the CBC Radio One program "The Current", speaking against the provision of Wi-Fi service in national parks. He is buried at the historic St. Mark's Anglican Church cemetery in Port Hope.
Works.
The "Top of the World Trilogy"