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Farley Mowat has sold more books than any other Canadian author. His more than 40 books have been translated into over 20 languages, selling 18 million copies in 60 countries. He is also a renowned conservationist.

Originally from Richmond Hill Ontario, Farley’s family moved to Saskatchewan during the Great Depression. As a teenager, Farley published a column about birds in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix. He served in the Canadian army for most of the Second World War, entering the army as a private and retiring as a captain in 1945, having also been an Intelligence Officer during the latter years of the war.

 
On his return to Canada Mowat studied biology at the University of Toronto. It was his field work in the far north, and his observations of the Ihalmiut Inuit, that inspired him to write professionally. When his first novel, People of the Deer, was published in 1952 he became a controversial and immensely popular literary star. He has since travelled to all parts of Canada, and lived in Newfoundland, Ontario and Nova Scotia for long stretches.
 
Farley’s writing has covered vast terrains and themes, including his own childhood, the war, and the land and its animals. His 1963 memoir of his fieldwork, Never Cry Wolf, changed the stereotypical image of the bloodthirsty wolf. Sea of Slaughter (1984) is perhaps his masterpiece, a magnificent lament for the decimation of marine life in the North Atlantic ocean.
 
Farley won the Governor General’s Award for his 1956 children’s novel, Lost in the Barrens. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1981. For his conservation efforts, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society named a ship after him.
 
In 1992 Farley and his wife Claire started the Mowat Environmental Institute, creating “Farley’s Ark,” a 200-acre living research lab of flora and fauna at their summer home in Cape Breton. After 15 years working with the Nova Scotia Nature Trust, the Mowats donated Farley’s Ark to that organization, so that it could return to “its real owners--all the animals and plants that live on it.”
 
 
Click Here to View or to Hear the Farley Mowat Interview
 
 
Selected Books by Farley Mowat
  • People of the Deer (1952)
  • Lost in the Barrens. (1956)
  • The Desperate People (1959)
  • Owls in the Family (1961)
  • Never Cry Wolf (1963)
  • The Polar Passion (1967)
  •  This Rock Within the Sea: A Heritage Lost (1968)
  • A Whale for the Killing. (1972)
  • Tundra: Selections from the Great Accounts of Arctic Land Voyages (1973)
  • Death of a People: The Ihalmiut. (1975)
  • And No Birds Sang (1979)
  • Sea of Slaughter(1984)
  • My Discovery of America  (1985)
  • Virunga: The Passion of Dian Fossey (1987)
  • Woman in the Mists: The Story of Dian Fossey  (1987)
  • Rescue the Earth!: Conversations with the Green Crusaders (1990)
  • Born Naked (1994)
  • Walking on the Land  (2000)
  • No Man’s River (2004)
  • Bay of Spirits: A Love Story (2006)
  • Otherwise (2008)
     

 

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Books About Farley Mowat
  • Farley Mowat: Writing the Squib, by John Orange (1995)
  • Farley: The Life of Farley Mowat, by James King (2002)


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Links About Farley Mowat