Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)

Subject: RE: Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
From: gnu
Date: 10 May 14 - 07:45 PM

Farley Mowat – The Most Significantly Awesome Man I Have Ever Known

Commentary by Captain Paul Watson

Today is a very sad day for me.

The greatest Canadian I have ever known and one of my closest and dearest friends has died.

I spoke to him just a few weeks ago and he was as full of life as he always has been. His passion for nature as profoundly strong as ever and he was just as outspoken as ever – in defense of Canada's national parks, speaking up for the seals, leveling his pen and his wit at Canada's notorious nature-destroying Prime Minister's ruthless government.

I have known Farley Mowat all of my life from reading his books as a child to becoming a close friend of his over the last three decades.

I don't think I have ever known a person more committed and more passionate about nature, animals and wilderness than Farley.

He was also in my opinion the greatest and most courageous Canadian writer in Canada's entire history, whose many books have inspired generations of Canadians. Never Cry Wolf, A Whale for the Killing, Sibir, People of the Deer, Sea of Slaughter are just a few titles among his dozens of books translated into dozens of languages.

He honoured both Sea Shepherd and I by writing the forward to my book Ocean Warrior and by serving as the International Chair of Sea Shepherd International for more than two decades. And I was honoured to serve on the board of the Farley Mowat Foundation.

I will forever treasure the times I spent visiting him and his wife Claire in Port Hope, Ontario in the winter, or in the summer, at their home in Riviere Bourgeois in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.

He was my close friend and close advisor, an incredible inspiration and one of the most perceptive, intelligent and wonderful human beings that I have ever had the privilege to know.

I have sat at his desk and marveled that he produced his many books on an Underwood typewriter. Farley did not even have an e-mail address. His media was the pen and the typewriter and he was an absolute artist with both.

Sea Shepherd named a ship after him that carried his name to the Southern Ocean to defend whales and back again to the Canadian East coast to defend his beloved seals.

Although he saw that the future was bleak and that humankind was like a runaway train on a downhill slope without any brakes, he still was optimistic that some people would manage to save the world from ourselves.

He was a World War II combat veteran and collected the artifacts that formed the foundation of the Canadian War museum. He was bestowed with the Order of Canada although he always told me it was not such a honour coming from a government that had such contempt for nature and animals.

I have to admit I feel somewhat defeated by his loss. He has always been a source of strength for me as an advisor and what I will always treasure is just how damn courageously outspoken he was on every issue he was concerned about. The world for me is a lesser place without him in it.

For the last twenty years he kept telling me he was working on his last book and when completed the next book was his last and the book after that. I told him that he would never stop writing until the day he died and he never did stop writing.

He always seemed to me to be immortal. I saw myself in the future to be just like him, still working at 92.

Canada has lost their greatest literary treasure, the world has lost one of our most inspirational conservationists and Sea Shepherd and I have lost a wonderful friend.

Canada will one day name a national park in his honour for he has earned his place as a truly Canadian hero through talent, imagination, vision, courage and passion. Canada has a long history of contempt for people that they later almost canonize as heroes long after they die – people like Grey Owl, Louis Riel, Dr. Norman Bethune, Tommy Douglas, etc.

For despite his unpopularity with the conservative Harper government, Farley has always had the love and the respect of the Canadian people and he will not be forgotten.

Farley will always be with us as an inspiration. Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and I have had the great honour of having Farley with us as a friend and advisor.

We intend to carry on the struggle that he felt was most important and that is the defense and protection of the natural world, of the wilderness, of endangered species, of the oceans.

For myself I don't intend to let him down and because of him I never intend to retire and like him I plan to work for the Oceans, the planet and the future until that last day before I return to the Earth.

From all of us in Sea Shepherd International from all around the world we can say that we will miss this man and we will never forget him and what he has done, what he has written and how he contributed to the strength and resolve we need to stay the course.

Farley Mowat. We love you and we always will.

Subject: RE: Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
From: GUEST,rb
Date: 09 May 14 - 10:24 PM

"Sea of Slaughter", "Snow Walker", "The Serpent's Coil",
"Grey Sea Under","Siber", "The Black Joke", so many fine reads.
He wasn't big on social media. didn't have email. preferred the phone and letters. a great Canadian, human, and bane to the idiocies of gov't
I'll lift a glass in his honour.

Subject: RE: Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
From: Janie
Date: 08 May 14 - 08:36 PM

Thanks Mrr. I am listening to a book on CD now in the car so I can get it turned in before the rentals go to high, so have been missing my usual NPR fare during my morning and evening commutes.

From ATC
NPR remembrance

Morning Addition, from an interview
I'm an instinctive man, a subjective man. I've tried to fulfill the function tha

Subject: RE: Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
From: GUEST,Mrr at work
Date: 08 May 14 - 07:04 PM

There was a great thing on NPR about him today.

Subject: RE: Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
From: PHJim
Date: 08 May 14 - 01:45 AM

I love to walk along the trail that runs between the A.K.Sculthorpe Marsh and Lake Ontario in Port Hope. I often would pass Claire and Farley walking their dog. I was just telling my wife that I hadn't seen them on the trail for a while. She reminded me that Farley was 92 and it's not an easy walk.
When I first moved to Port Hope, I lived in an apartment over a feed mill and Farley and Claire lived two doors north. Apparently he had one of the most comprehensive libraries on the Canadian north in his washroom. When he moved to King Street, I took a tour of the old Mowat home and could see the book shelves surrounding the toilet.
A few years back, Port Hope had a Port Hope Reads Farley month, ending with a ceremony in the Capitol Theatre. The library had a life sized cut out of Farley in his Khaki shorts. It stayed there for a long time, wearing a Santa Hat at Christmas, but has been absent for a year or two. I wonder if it will reappear now.
As I type this, I'm waiting for my coffee, in a cup reading, "Port Hope reads Farley, April, 2005" with an Inuit print on the other side.

Subject: RE: Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
From: EBarnacle
Date: 07 May 14 - 11:47 PM

I never read a word of his writing that I did not appreciate and which was not well crafted. The Dog Who Wouldn't Be was one of the first books I took out of the local library on my own. "Already stuffed, by God."

Subject: RE: Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
From: J-boy
Date: 07 May 14 - 11:03 PM

One of my favorite books by Farley isn't a nature book at all. "And No Birds Sang" is his brilliant and horrifying account of his combat duty in the Canadian military during the Second World War. The Italian campaign. As someone mentioned earlier it informed his entire outlook.

Subject: RE: Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
From: Janie
Date: 07 May 14 - 10:37 PM

My Dad always said "don't ever let the truth get in the way of a good story." Resonates with Mowat's "never let the facts get in the way of the truth."


I actually think there is no such animal as "truth" but there are perspectives, paradigms and mythologies that convey those perspectives that are life enhancing and empowering to all of creation as we know and are capable of experiencing it within the limitations of the senses of sentient beings existing on this little rock orbiting a lesser star within a universe or universes far beyond our capacity to sense, much less comprehend. Facts matter. So does mythology in our human quests to understand that which is beyond our capacity to understand.

Mowat's perspective and writings empowered so many of us to look through "new eyes" to a certain extent.

Subject: RE: Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
From: gnu
Date: 07 May 14 - 09:47 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAbU7Ha3jTA

If you have ever been in a Beaver and seen how the pilot controls the fuel, you will have a much greater appreciation of that movie scene. Boredom? How do you fight boredom, Tyler?

My uncle knew this man. They met up north. Uncle Chic told me stories about him. Cool stories.

RIP Mr. Mowat.

Subject: RE: Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
From: Amos
Date: 07 May 14 - 08:53 PM

A great North American voice and a passionate and compassionate man. Sorry his era is over.

Subject: RE: Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 07 May 14 - 08:51 PM

Along with "My Side of the Mountain" by Jean Craighead George (read in the summer between 4th & 5th grades), "Never Cry Wolf" (read in 5th grade, I think) was key in shaping my interest in biology and perspective on nature and humans.

I haven't read much more of Mowat's writing, in part because of my disappointment in finding his story to be largely fabrication. The product of his passion for "the truth" as more important than facts, I guess. What I've read has always been well-written, though.

Thanks for the links, above. Interesting to read more about him and how he was shaped in part by PTSD from his experience in Italy in WWII.

~ Becky in Long Beach

Subject: RE: Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
From: Janie
Date: 07 May 14 - 08:33 PM

I to really enjoyed several of his books and learned alot from them. Like Tony, Never Cry Wolf is one that will always be on my bookshelf and that I have read more than once.

Rest in Peace, and my condolences to his family and all who loved him.

(Hope this post takes. Have tried several times so finally refreshed.)

Subject: RE: Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 07 May 14 - 03:21 PM

Also no idea he yet lived - now I shall have to reread his works.

Subject: RE: Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
From: GUEST,sciencegeek
Date: 07 May 14 - 02:54 PM

another favorite gone... I just finished reading "Owls in the Family" the other day.

Subject: RE: Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
From: GUEST,Tony
Date: 07 May 14 - 02:20 PM

Never Cry Wolf is one of my half-dozen favorite books of all time.

Subject: RE: Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
From: Ed T
Date: 07 May 14 - 02:18 PM

Writer/Neighbour//friend, Silver Donald Cameron on Farley-1979

Subject: RE: Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 07 May 14 - 01:58 PM

A good writer. I enjoyed Terry Gross' interview of him on NPR's Fresh Air years ago.

Subject: RE: Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
From: Greg F.
Date: 07 May 14 - 01:23 PM

Oh, no - Another man done gone. One of my absolute favorites.

Subject: RE: Obit: Farley Mowat (1921-2014)
From: Ebbie
Date: 07 May 14 - 01:21 PM

Good gracious. I had no idea he was still alive. RIP, Farley.

Subject: Obit: Farley Mowat
From: GUEST,#
Date: 07 May 14 - 01:15 PM

A great Canadian writer died today at the age of 92.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/acclaimed-canadian-author-farley-mowat-dead-at-92/article18511064/