Remembering Farley Mowat
“I loved the Prairies because of the physical sensation of having no walls, of being in an open world”
Owls in the Family, I thought as Farley Mowat’s name scrolled by on my Twitter feed. Never Cry Wolf . However, I was sad to see that Mowat was the topic of conversation, not because he was a happy new discovery for someone, but because he has passed away at 92 years of age. Mowat wrote mostly biographical novels in his lifetime. He will be fondly remembered as a writer, a veteran and an activist.
Mowat was a Canadian provocateur—the kind often rendered invisible by our brash neighbours to the south. In fact, he was such a troublemaker that in 1985 the United States refused him entry, calling him an “undesirable alien”.
Really, what I love most about Mowat is his ability to make me nostalgic in a gosh-they-don’t-write-books-like-this-anymore kind of way. He wrote about places that, outside of Canadian literature, don’t receive much attention. The flatlands of Saskatchewan where the sky stretches out forever. The pleasures and sorrows of small-town rural life. The icy, mysterious North that stretches up past the bounds of some people’s imagination.
Mowat was born, and passed away in the month of May. Thinking about that, I returned to a passage from Owls in the Family. It is appropriate for this time of year, Mowat describes spring flawlessly, the long and slow change of season that as a prairie girl, I know so well:
Spring was late that year in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Snowdrifts still clung along the steep banks of the river in the shelter of the cottonwood trees. The river was icy with thaw water and, as we crossed over the Railroad Bridge, we could feel a cold breath rising from it. But we felt another breath, a gentle one, blowing across the distant wheat fields and smelling like warm sun shining on soft mud. It was the spring wind, and the smell of it made us walk faster. We were in a hurry to get out of the city and into the real prairie, where you can climb a fence post and see for about a million miles — that’s how flat the prairie is.
It might have been grade three or grade four that we read Owls in the Family. Because of Mowat, I got to dissect my first, and so far only, owl pellet. Owls swallow their prey in large chunks and their stomachs sort out the meat from the indigestible items that the owl spits out. There’s whole websites dedicated to the procurements of these little specimens. With the assistance of a small wooden stick and some tweezers, I dug gleefully into the discarded (and sanitized) ball of fur, hoping to find the remains of a whole animal. I carefully extracted each fragile beige bone and held it up against a sheet. I found the partial skull of a vole.
That pellet. Those books. Both form a part of the visual map that makes up my identity as a Canadian. Mowat knew the importance of this identity and the sacredness of the lands that make up our country. In his first book, People of the Deer, Mowat recollects time spent with the Ihalmiut and witnessed the exploitation of settlers of the People from Beyond. In 2001, he returned to the subject and levelled harsh criticism on the government for the disintegration of the Inuit people and culture.
Mowat learned to love nature the same way I did—we both wandered the riverbanks. He was in Saskatoon, and I was on the banks of the North Saskatchewan. He stays in Canada, despite the passing of his spirit. Mowat exists now as the product of his writing—woven into the tapestry of my existence as firmly as a love of the wide open prairie skies.
