Farley Mowat - Wolves & Whales

Farley Mowat (1921- ) is Canada's best-selling author and environmentalist. He has published 45 books and sold 17 million copies in over fifty languages. Outside Canada, he is not as well known as compatriot Margaret Atwood. But still, he is the most Canadian of Canadian writers because well, he writes about Canada. In Mowat's stories, Canada is not simply the setting or the background. It forms the foreground. So he is the Canadian author, just as Gordon Lightfoot is the Canadian musician.

He was born in Belleville, Ontario in 1921. He was the only child of Angus Mowat, a writer and librarian, who relocated his family several times in different places across Canada, a practise that Farley was to continue as an adult. As a boy, Farley loved nature and animals, and his room at times resembled a small zoo. His amusing stories The Dog Who Wouldn't Be (1957) and Owls in the Family (1961) vividly recollect that period. Later he joined the war effort and took an active part in the invasion of Sicily and Italy. From his war experiences he later wrote The Regiment (1955) And No Birds Sang (1979). After the war, Mowat studied Biology at the University of Toronto and wrote his first book, People of the Deer (1952). This book singlehandedly exposed the mistreatment of Canada's native people and made Mowat a celebrity overnight. As a result the Canadian government started shipping food to the Caribou Inuit people whose very existence they previously denied.

The impact of Never Cry Wolf (1963) was much greater. He was dropped alone in the frozen tundra to study the arctic wolf and examine why it slaughtered the arctic caribou. Here Mowat discovered that wolves are not a den of marauding killers, as per their fairy story portrayal, but a courageous family of skillful providers and devoted protectors of their young. His brilliant narrative re-examines the myth and the truth of wild wolves and man's true place among the creatures of nature. “We have doomed the wolf”, he says in his preface, “not for what it is, but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be – the mythological epitome of a savage, ruthless killer – which is, in reality, no more that the reflected image of ourself”.

In the sixties, Mowat became interested in Newfoundland Island that had joined Canada in 1949. He portrayed the land and its people in This Rock Within the Sea (1968) and, in perhaps his most entertaining account, his sailing in its waters in The Boat Who Wouldn't Float (1969). In a Mowat book, a sailboat has a character of its own (hence Who instead of That.) In his next book, A Whale for the Killing (1972) he examined the tragedy of a stranded whale in a Burgeo tidal pond and the local people's reaction to it. The locals reacted so strongly that Mowat was forced to leave his home and relocate.

Mowat's curiosity and research led him to various places and subjects, as different as Siberia in The Siberians (1970), Sibir (1970) and Tundra (1973) and Dian Fossey in Virunga (1977) and Woman in the Mists (1977). His account of the destruction of animal life in the North Atlantic in Sea of Slaughter (1984) barred his entry in 1985 in the United States when he tried to go for the book tour. The large negative publicity forced the Reagan Administration to reconsider and allow him to enter. But Mowat declined on the basis that it was for only one entry, his book tour, and hence he thought it was undignifying. He has received many awards for his three youth books: Lost in the Barrens (1956), The Black Joke (1962) and The Curse of the Viking Grave (1966). After the 1990's he has refreshed the accounts of the various periods in his life. Although these accounts are complimentary, quite often they are also contradictory to what he has said before.

Farley Mowat has fought through his writing for most environmental issues. His quote of “never let the facts get in the way of the truth” has been often misquoted to “never let the facts get in the way of a good story”. He has gained both praise and criticism, and like everyone who has fought for the environment, has amassed enemies. Yet whatever you may think of him as a person, you cannot deny that he has influenced and even singlehandedly changed public opinion on many issues. His stories are personal and friendly and at the same time gripping and fast moving. His writing style is simple and his vocabulary rich. His commitment to the environment, undeniable. You cannot remain neutral after reading a Mowat account. You become emotionally involved.

You either praise and admire him and drink to his health or try to hang him from the main mast of his sailboat.