{"id":5542,"date":"2014-05-07T14:28:37","date_gmt":"2014-05-07T21:28:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=5542"},"modified":"2014-05-10T15:27:56","modified_gmt":"2014-05-10T22:27:56","slug":"farley-mowat-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2014\/05\/07\/farley-mowat-gone\/","title":{"rendered":"Farley Mowat Gone"},"content":{"rendered":"

from Quill & Quire<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Beloved Canadian author Farley Mowat dead at 92<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\"Farley_Mowat\"
\n<\/a>Photo by Fred Phipps<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Farley Mowat \u2013 nature lover, gadfly, and author of the Canadian classics\u00a0Never Cry Wolf\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Lost in the Barrens\u00a0<\/em>\u2013 has died at the age of 92.<\/p>\n

The iconic Canadian author of novels, memoirs, non-fiction books, and books for children, was born in Belleville, Ontario, in 1921 (his father claimed he was conceived in a canoe). He enlisted in the army during the Second World War and was sent overseas, where he fought in the bloody and extended Italian campaign that cost many Canadian soldiers their lives. According to\u00a0Sandra Martin\u2019s obituary in\u00a0The Globe and Mail<\/em><\/a>, it was in Ortona that Mowat started drafting the manuscripts that would become the canonical children\u2019s tales\u00a0The Dog That Wouldn\u2019t Be\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Owls in the Family<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Beloved for his children\u2019s writing and his passion for environmental causes, Mowat\u2019s career was not without controversy. Particularly damaging to the author\u2019s reputation was a 1996 cover article in\u00a0Saturday Night\u00a0<\/em>magazine that claimed Mowat had exaggerated or outright falsified facts and other information in his first book,\u00a0People of the<\/em>\u00a0Deer,\u00a0<\/em>set among the Inuit of the Arctic. The author of the article, John Goddard, also claimed infelicities in\u00a0The Desperate People<\/em>, the sequel to\u00a0People of the Deer<\/em>, and Mowat\u2019s classic memoir,\u00a0Never Cry Wolf<\/em>. Years before James Frey was excoriated on Oprah\u2019s couch, Mowat found himself forced to defend his approach to what is now known as \u201ccreative non-fiction,\u201d saying he preferred truth to facts and that he wrote in a grey area between the two.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Mowat\u2019s\u00a0most memorable defence of his practice<\/a>\u00a0occurred onstage at Toronto\u2019s International Festival of Authors in 1999. When interviewer Peter Gzowski asked about his fidelity to facts in his writing, Mowat exploded, \u201cFUCK the facts!\u201d<\/p>\n

Of his own writing, Mowat was self-effacing. \u201cI\u2019m a simple man,\u201d\u00a0he told\u00a0Q&Q<\/em>in 2008<\/a>. \u201cI loathe all talk of \u2018artistry\u2019 in writing.<\/p>\n

[ click to read full obit at Quill & Quire<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from Quill & Quire Beloved Canadian author Farley Mowat dead at 92 Photo by Fred Phipps Farley Mowat \u2013 nature lover, gadfly, and author of the Canadian classics\u00a0Never Cry Wolf\u00a0and\u00a0Lost in the Barrens\u00a0\u2013 has died at the age of 92. The iconic Canadian author of novels, memoirs, non-fiction books, and books for children, was born […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}