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Farley McGill Mowat, (May 12, 1921 – May 6, 2014) was a Canadian writer and environmentalist. His works were translated into 52 languages, and he sold more than 17 million books. He achieved fame with the publication of his books on the Canadian north, such as People of the Deer (1952) and Never Cry Wolf (1963). The latter, an account of his experiences with wolves in the Arctic, was made into a film of the same name released in 1983. For his body of work as a writer he won the annual Vicky Metcalf Award for Children's Literature in 1970. Mowat's advocacy for environmental causes earned him praise, but his admission, after some of his books' claims had been debunked, that he "never let the facts get in the way of the truth" earned harsh criticism: "few readers remain neutral". Descriptions of Mowat refer to his "commitment to ideals" and "poetic descriptions and vivid images" as well as his strong antipathies, which provoke "ridicule, lampoons and, at times, evangelical condemnation". Early life and education Mowat was born May 12, 1921, in Belleville, Ontario, and grew up in Richmond Hill, Ontario. His great-great-uncle was Ontario premier Sir Oliver Mowat, and his father, Angus Mowat, was a librarian, who fought in the Battle of Vimy Ridge. His mother was Helen Lilian Thomson, daughter of Henry Andrew Hoffman Thomson and Georgina Phillips Farley Thomson of Trenton, Ontario. Mowat started writing, in his words "mostly verse", when his family lived in Windsor from 1930 to 1933. In the 1930s, the Mowat family moved to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where as a teenager Mowat wrote about birds in a column for the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix. During this time, he also wrote his own nature newsletter, Nature Lore. In the 1930s, Mowat studied zoology at the University of Toronto but never completed a degree. He took his first collecting expedition in the summer of 1939 to Saskatoon with fellow zoology student Frank Banfield, who collected data regarding mammals while Mowat focused on birds. They sold their collections to the Royal Ontario Museum to finance their trip.: 219  Before enlisting, Banfield published his field notes in the Canadian Field-Naturalist. Mowat published his when he returned from World War II. War service During World War II, Mowat joined the Canadian Army and was commissioned as a supernumerary second lieutenant into the Second Battalion, The Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment (affectionately known as the Hasty Ps) on 19 July 1940. He went overseas as a reinforcement officer for that regiment, joining the Canadian Army in the United Kingdom. On July 10, 1943, he was a subaltern in command of a rifle platoon and participated in the initial landings of Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily. Mowat served throughout the campaign as a platoon commander and moved to Italy in September 1943, seeing further combat until December 1943. During the Moro River Campaign, part of the Italian Campaign, he suffered from battle stress, heightened after an incident on Christmas Day outside of Ortona, Italy, when he was left weeping at the feet of an unconscious friend, Lieutenant Allan (Al) Park, who had an enemy bullet in his head. He then accepted a job as Intelligence Officer at battalion headquarters, later moving to Brigade Headquarters. He stayed in Italy with the 1st Canadian Infantry Division for most of the war and was eventually promoted to the rank of captain. Mowat moved with the division to northwest Europe in early 1945. There, he worked as an intelligence agent in the Netherlands and went through enemy lines to start unofficial negotiations about food drops with General Blaskowitz. The food drops, under the codename Operation Manna, saved thousands of Dutch lives. Mowat also formed the 1st Canadian Army Museum Collection Team, according to his book My Father's Son, and arranged for the transport to Canada of several tons of German military equipment, including a V2 rocket and several armoured vehicles. Some of these vehicles are on display today at Canadian Forces Base Borden's tank museum, as well as the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. Mowat was discharged in 1945, at the conclusion of World War II, as a captain and was considered for promotion to major. However, he declined the offer as it would have required his volunteering to stay in the military until "no longer needed", which Mowat assumed meant duty with the Canadian Army Occupation Force (CAOF) (but might also have meant the conclusion of the war with Japan). He was entitled to the following medals as a result of his service: the 1939–1945 Star, the Italy Star, the France and Germany Star, the Defence Medal, the Canadian Volunteer Service Medal and the War Medal 1939–1945. Post-war In 1947, Mowat was hired as field technician for American naturalist Francis Harper's study of the barren-ground caribou in the Nueltin Lake area—now Nunavut's Kivalliq Region, resulting in the publication of Harper's book entitled Caribou of Keewatin. Two young Inuit were with them, fifteen-year-old Inuk Luke Anoteelik (Luke Anowtalik) and his sister Rita, who were the sole survivors of starvation in an Inuit village. Luke Anowtalik went on to become well known for his distinctive carvings of antler and bone that are now in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada. Due to a clash of personalities, Mowat undertook his own explorations. "Harper later extracted a promise that neither would mention the other in their respective future writing, a promise also extracted from Mowat by later field companions for their lifetimes." In the late 1940s, Mowat was hired by Frank Banfield—then Chief Mammalogist of the newly formed Canadian Wildlife Service—as field assistant in Banfield's ambitious multi-year investigation of the barren-ground caribou, which resulted in Banfield's influential 1951 publication entitled "The Barren-ground Caribou." Mowat, who was part of a four-researcher team, was fired by the chief of Canadian Wildlife Service because of complaints from the local population and lack of formal approval for some activities. Literary career After serving in World War II, Mowat attended the University of Toronto. Mowat's first book, People of the Deer (1952), was inspired by a field trip to the Canadian Arctic he made while studying at the University of Toronto. Mowat was outraged at the conditions endured by the Inuit living in Northern Canada. The book turned Mowat into a controversial, popular figure. Mowat became a McClelland and Stewart author when they published his book entitled The Regiment in 1955. Jack McClelland, known for his promotion of Canadian authors, became his lifelong friend as well as his publisher. Mowat's next book, (a children's book) Lost in the Barrens (1956), won a Governor General's Award. In 1963, Mowat wrote a possibly fictionalised account of his experiences in the Canadian Arctic with Arctic wolves entitled Never Cry Wolf (1963), which is thought to have been.... Discover the Warner Shedd popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Warner Shedd books.