Farley Mowat Biography

Farley Mowat is one of Canada’s best-selling authors, known for his stories and memoirs that celebrate the natural beauty of the far North, including 1963’s Never Cry Wolf. Mowat grew up in Ontario and Saskatchewan, with a healthy dose of outdoor and wild critter experience. During World War II he was in Italy and Germany as a platoon leader and intelligence officer, and after the war he studied biology at the University of Toronto (class of 1949). His first novel was 1952’s People of the Deer, the story of an Inuit tribe’s struggle to survive. It set the tone for the rest of Mowat’s career — tales about nature, with an underlying message of environmentalism. He’s written memoirs, fiction, non-fiction and juvenile fiction, mostly books about Canada and the Arctic, but also books about Vikings and about researcher Dian Fossey. He’s won just about every Canadian literary honor, and in 1981 was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. During the 1980s he enjoyed some international celebrity, thanks to the 1983 film version of Never Cry Wolf. Mowat has also been criticized for playing fast and loose with scientific facts, but he’s still considered one of Canada’s favorite authors. His other works include Lost in the Barrens (1956), Owls in the Family (1962), The Curse of the Viking Grave (1968), A Whale for the Killing (1972) and Sea of Slaughter (1984).