Acclaimed Canadian author, environmentalist and activist Farley Mowat has died at age 92.
Mowat authored around 40 books, won numerous awards including the Governor General’s Award, was made an officer of the Order of Canada and was awarded a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame.
His time studying biology at the University of Toronto after returning home from the war would go on to inform his writing. Some of Mowat’s most famous and beloved books were based on his own expeditions and experiences, which allowed him to combine his love of nature and writing.
Mowat’s Never Cry Wolf, a fictionalized tale of Mowat’s actual encounter with wolves, was commercially successful — later being adapted into a film — and is credited for changing the perception and image of wolves in the public.
People of the Deer was about Mowat’s travels in the North and his experience with the Ihalmiut, a small population of Inuit people. The book was fiercely debated in Canada when it was first published, with churches, industry and the government vehemently denying the claims of forced government relocation, disease, famine and even the existence of the Ihalmiut people.
People of the Deer is said to have fuelled people’s interest in the North and the welfare of people in the North and Jim Bell, editor of the Nunatsiaq News in Iqualuit, is quoted as saying: “There are people alive today who would likely be dead or not even be born if Farley Mowat had not written about the famines in the Keewatin region in the 1950s…That is a legacy that can never be taken away from him.”
rabble sends its deepest sympathies to Mowat’s family: his wife Claire and two children, David and Sandy.
For more information on Mowat’s life please read here.
Farley Mowat by LezleyDavidson
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