Canadian Ingenuity: Mowat’s engaging books raised crucial awareness

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The boy did not sit on the fence regarding nature. From a young age, Farley Mowat felt a kinship, a “common ground with—and sympathy and understanding for—the non-human creatures of the planet,” said James King in Farley: The Life of Farley Mowat (HarperCollins 2002). Along with life stories, Mowat wrote captivating books promoting environmentalism through appealing fiction and non-fiction. While some readers were troubled by his creative rejigging of facts, Mowat’s messages of social action remain relevant today.  

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Mowat could scarcely be anything but writer and activist. Shy and a natural storyteller, he spent many childhood days alone, “wandering through boreal forests, observing, collecting, measuring, valuing,” noted King in Quill and Quire. Farley McGill Mowat was born in Belleville, Ontario on May 12, 1921 to Angus and Helen Mowat, both of nearby Trenton. The Mowat family enjoyed a long and prominent history in eastern Ontario.  

Among Mowat’s ancestors was Premier Oliver Mowat, born in Kingston, Upper Canada on July 22, 1820, and the premier’s brother, Presbyterian reverend John Bower Mowat, born in Kingston on June 8,1825. The reverend was appointed Queen’s University’s Chair of Theology and Hebrew, and was Farley Mowat’s great-grandfather.  

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The activist’s father, Angus Mowat, on the other hand, was rebellious and was regularly disappointed with life. He had difficulty settling down and moved his family long distances frequently for work until he at last received a prestigious job as chief librarian in Trenton. Angus Mowat passed down his traits of creativity and imagination to his son, along with the nagging feeling of being an outsider. The boy’s mother held little sway in the family. 

Writing was in the young Mowat’s blood. In his early teens, Farley Mowat wrote poems and published “a regular column based on his observations of birds in The Star-Phoenix after his family moved to Saskatoon,” said Gerald J. Rubio, and editors Karen Grandy and Daniel Baird in The Canadian Encyclopedia, March 15, 2022.  

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Encouraged by his father, Mowat prepared to enlist for military duty in WW2. Aiming to join the Royal Canadian Air Force, the 18-year-old was refused for being too young. The hopeful candidate was small in stature, a slender man standing five-foot-seven inches, and when he turned 19, he tried again. Once more, he was disappointed. This time, “although he was in perfect health, he weighed four pounds less than the official minimum of 120,” stated King.  

In 1942, Mowat finally was recruited. Completing officer training, the commissioned Lieutenant shipped overseas as a member of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment—dubbed the Hasty Ps.  Participating in mind-jarring battles, surviving dreadful conditions, and enduring gruesome death all around him, Mowat found a resolution and courage that he didn’t know he had. And a promotion, too. At war’s end, the battle-scarred Captain Mowat was discharged.  

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Taking advantage of the veteran’s educational benefit, Mowat enrolled at University of Toronto. Struggling with attendance, Mowat nonetheless achieved good grades. The “sixty dollars a month in veteran’s pay provided by the Army” gave him extra incentive, noted King, along with a pretty classmate who caught his attention.  

Mowat fell head-over-heels for Frances Thornhill. Both enjoyed solitude, similar values, and she had been a member of Women’s Royal Navy Service. Compatible, Farley and Frances married in 1947. The Mowats had two sons, Sandy and David. They divorced in 1960.  

Accepting a summer job as biologist in the Northwest Territories in 1947, Mowat’s task was to determine the role of wolves in the drastic decline of caribou. “During his time in the North, he discovers that trappers, not wolves, were largely responsible for the decimation of the caribou herds,” stated Astrid Lange in “Farley Mowat: a timeline of his life,” Toronto Star, May 7, 2014.  

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Submitting short stories to magazines, one of Mowat’s first pieces was published in the Saturday Evening Post on July 29, 1950. He earned “$750, a fee much higher than anything Farley would have received in Canada,” King stated. The author submitted seven stories over the next two years, and two were accepted by Canadian magazines. The five rejected articles were accepted by American magazines, and the publishers “paid about six times the going rate in Canada.”  

Friends with Native people who subsisted in the frosty north, Mowat “became outraged at the problems of the Inuit, all of which he attributed to white misunderstanding and exploitation,” described Rubio. Mowat wrote his impressions of the Ihalmuit, part of the Inuit residents living in the far north, in People of the Deer in 1952. His first book, “made him an instant, albeit controversial, celebrity.”  

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While many appreciated Mowat’s book, loud detractors emerged from the Canadian government. Jean Lesage, then Minister of Northern Affairs and Natural Resources, claimed that the Ihalmuit were pure fiction. Dr. A.E. Porsild, a civil servant with the Department of Resources and Development, publicly refuted the author’s account of Inuit living conditions and vociferously discounted Mowat’s writing. “Although Porsild did not intend to do so,” King said, “he helped to establish Mowat’s reputation as a fierce, controversial champion of Native and ecological issues.”   

His writing credentials firmly established, Mowat produced another book about northern Canadians, titled The Desperate People (1959). The reading world was just getting a nibble of Mowat’s skill, with his best work to come in the next year. 

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A more personal story based on the study of wolves from his northern summer job, Mowat published Never Cry Wolf in 1963 with McClelland and Stewart. Using his notes from the summer of 1947. Mowat defended the wolves with aplomb, and said King, “the character and behaviour of the wolves is rendered vividly, language literary rather than scientific.” Crafting images with compassion and understanding, Never Cry Wolf quickly rose to the top of the international best seller list.  

The author married his second wife, Claire Wheeler, on March 29, 1969. Born Toronto in 1933, Wheeler was a graphic designer and later an author who, among several books, wrote the young adult trilogy beginning with The Girl From Away in 1992. Wheeler embraced her husband’s ideals about environmentalism, and she joined him on his many travels.  

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Researching Vikings in England and their time in the New World, Mowat wrote Westviking in 1965, and published a children’s book, The Curse of the Viking Grave in 1966. Many more books followed, highlighting people, animals, and ecological issues, such as The Siberians (1970), A Whale for the Killing (1972), and Sea of Slaughter (1984).  

Recognitions poured in. In 1978, Mowat received the Queen Elizabeth Jubilee Medal, and three years later, was made Officer of the Order of Canada. However, when on a promotional tour for Sea of Slaughter in 1985, he was refused entry to the United States. Under the McCarran-Walter Act, officials considered Farley Mowat a fit with “anarchists, communists, or anyone deemed ‘prejudicial to the public interest,’” said Lange. He was later allowed in briefly.  

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The blurring of facts and fiction in his early northern books erupted again in the 1990s. Although Mowat took liberties to write engaging, heart-grabbing stories, the author’s supporters had an argument against the negative publicity. Lange stated that Mowat “did more to raise crucial awareness about the north than any other Canadian.” 

More awards came in appreciation of Mowat. In 2002, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society named their flagship ‘Farley Mowat,’ and in 2010, he was honoured with a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame in Toronto. A co-founder, he was a lifetime member of The Writers Union of Canada.  

At age 92, Farley Mowat died on May 6, 2014 in Cobourg, Ontario. Holding a feisty passion for all living nature, Mowat held important issues up for public scrutiny, inspiring critical change and preservation. The author of over 40 books remains a vibrant beacon of Canadian activism.      

Susanna McLeod is a writer living in Kingston, Ontario.  

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