Farley Mowat

At 92 years old, Farley Mowat has this physical status:

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.: 219  Before enlisting Banfield published his field notes in the Canadian Field-Naturalist. Mowat published his when he returned from World War II.

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 is considered a saint by the God's Gardeners, a fictional religious sect that is the focus of Margaret Atwood's 2009 novel The Year of the Flood.

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.

Source

Literary career

Mowat attended the University of Toronto after being stationed in World War II. People of the Deer (1952), Mowat's first book, was inspired by a field trip to the Canadian Arctic that he made while studying at the University of Toronto. Mowat was enraged by the conditions endured by the Inuit in Northern Canada. Mowat was made into a controversial, well-known figure in the book.

In 1955, Mowat wrote The Regiment, a McClelland and Stewart author. Jack McClelland, who is best known for his promotion of Canadian authors, became his lifelong friend as well as his publisher. Lost in the Barrens (1956), Mowat's next book (a children's book), received a Governor General's Award.

Never Cry Wolf, Mowat's possibly fictionalized account of his experiences with Arctic wolves in the Canadian Arctic, 1963-1963), which is said to have played a role in changing popular perceptions of the animals.

To market Sea of Slaughter, Mowat began a book tour of the United States in 1985. Customs agents refused to admit to entrants who were considered "Communist sympathizers" at Pearson International Airport in Toronto. He was suspicious of believing gun lobbyists, who pleaded for his denial. In 1990, the law was repealed, and Mowat wrote about his participation in My Discovery of America (1985).

In 1985, Mowat became extremely interested in Dian Fossey, the American ethologist who studied gorillas. In 1990, her biography was published in Canada under the name Virunga: The Passion of Dian Fossey, and in the United States as Woman in the Mists: A woman in Africa's Dian Fossey's Life and Research Gorillas (1983), an allusion to Fossey's own recounting of her life and study Gorillas (1983).

Many of Mowat's books are autobiographical, including Owls in the Family (1962, about his childhood), The Boat That Wouldn't Float (1969, one of three books about his time in Newfoundland), and And No Birds Sang (1979), about his time in Italy during World War II.

Westviking was released in 1965, followed by The Farfarers 30 years later, which shows that a people named the Albans predated the Norse to the High Arctic, Labrador, and Newfoundland coasts.

Source

Awards and honours

• 1950s: Mowat won two Canadian "year's best" book awards for Lost in the Barrens, (Little, Brown, 1956), an adventure novel set in Northern Manitoba and southwestern North West Territories—namely, the Governor General's Award for Juvenile Fiction for 1956 and the 1958 Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award. In 1952, Mowat won the University of Western Ontario's President's Medal for best short story for "Eskimo Spring". In 1953, People of the Deer was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award by the Anisfield–Wolf Foundation. In 1956, Mowat won the Governor General's Award. And in 1957, the Book of the Year Award, Canadian Association of Children's Librarians, for Lost in the Barrens. Also, in 1958, Mowat won the Canadian Women's Clubs Award for children's book The Dog Who Wouldn't Be and the Hans Christian Andersen International Award.
• 1960s: In 1962, he won the Boys' Clubs of America Junior Book Award for Owls in the Family. In 1963, he won the National Association of Independent Schools Award. In 1965, he made the Hans Christian Andersen Honours List, for juvenile books.
• 1970s: In 1970, The Boat Who Wouldn't Float won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour and in 1972, it made the L'Etoile de la Mer Honours List. Mowat also won the Vicky Metcalf Award, 1970; Mark Twain Award, 1971; and the Curran Award, 1977, for "contributions to understanding wolves".
• 1980s: He was given the Knight of Mark Twain distinction in 1980. In 1985, he received the Author's Award, Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Letters for Sea of Slaughter. In 1988, Virunga was designated Book of the Year, Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Letters, and Mowat was named Author of the Year by the Canadian Booksellers Association. In 1989, he won the Gemini Award for best documentary script, for The New North.
• 1990s: In 1991, the Council of Canadians presented him with the Back the Nation Award.
• 2000s: In 2002, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship RV Farley Mowat (formerly M/Y Sea Shepherd III / M/Y Ocean Warrior) was named in his honour. Mowat frequently visited it to assist its mission and provided financial support to the group. In 2005, Mowat received the first and only Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Outdoor Book Award. On June 8, 2010, it was announced that Mowat would receive a star on Canada's Walk of Fame.
• 2010s: In 2014, only weeks after his death, a life-sized sculpture of Farley Mowat, commissioned by Toronto businessman Ron Rhodes and executed by the Canadian artist George Bartholomew Boileau, was unveiled at the University of Saskatchewan, located in Saskatoon, where Farley spent many of his formative years. His wife Claire was in attendance. Mowat had seen the finished clay, in the artist's studio, several months previously.