Otherwise by Farley Mowat

I'm a fan of Farley Mowat books. When Wayne and I first started coming to Canada on vacations in the 80's, we liked to read books that would give us a flavour of the country we would be visiting. Naturally, a few of those were written by Farley Mowat. Over the years, I've continued to collect his books and am proud to say I have about two-thirds of the forty-two he has authored, and have read more than half so far.

Mowat's most recent work is Otherwise. It's a memoir covering his youth, World War II service and subsequent revival in the Barrengrounds of the Arctic north. The "others" are the animals, both domestic and wild, that have been a core part of his being over the years. They inspired and sustained him in good times and bad.

If you've read several of Mowat's books, you know his life experiences have been retold in several ways. One of his earlier works, Born Naked (1993), also tells of his early life and love for animals and the north country. I'm glad that I read that book before Otherwise.

The war years were hard on everyone. Farley learned to make his way through and around the bureaucracy of the military. He was very inventive in an organization that didn't reward thinking outside the box. Upon returning to Canada, Farley wanted to get back to nature and a less complicated (and constrictive) way of living. Scientific expeditions took he back to his beloved Saskatchewan and the flora and fauna he knew so well, but it wasn't enough to make him feel re-connected. The opportunity to go on an expedition to the Barrengrounds to study caribou was the perfect (for him) solution. Based in a remote cabin at Windy River, he discovered his true calling, the preservation rather than destruction of nature and the people who depend on it for their livelihood: caribou, wolves and the native peoples of the north.

Many of Farley Mowat's books about the Canadian north (1981 Video: Ten Million Books), it's people and animals grew out of these early life experiences. The People of the Deer, his first book published in 1952, focused on the starving Ihalmiut people he met and lived with on this very expedition.

Are you a Farley Mowat fan? What's your favourite book? -- Margy