Northern exposure page 1, 2

In Farley Mowat's case, though, it's hard to argue that the problem was only Canada's national brand of small-town envy. The scandal began with the May 1996 issue of Saturday Night, one of Canada's most prominent national magazines. On the cover was a black-and-white photo of Mowat, the northern sage, looking woodsy with his full beard and wool sweater. Another woodsy touch was the Pinocchio nose, electronically added to Mowat's face by the waggish art department. It wasn't a good sign. Seeing that cover, Mowat must have felt something like the guy whose girlfriend has just announced that she wants to tell him something -- on the Jerry Springer show. Sure enough, John Goddard's heavily researched story, "A Real Whopper," made devastating accusations about Mowat's first three nonfiction books: "People of the Deer," "The Desperate People" and "Never Cry Wolf."

Wrote Goddard: "Documents recently made public at the National Archives of Canada, and papers that the author himself sold years ago to McMaster University, show that Mowat did not spend two years in the Keewatin District in 1947 and 1948 as the books say. He spent two summer field seasons in the district -- totaling less than six months -- and mostly in a more southern part of the district than he describes. He did not casually drop in alone but traveled on both occasions as a junior member of well-planned scientific expeditions. He did not once -- contrary to the impression he leaves -- see a starving Inuit person. He did not once set foot in an Inuit camp. As for the authenticity of his wolf story, he virtually abandoned his wolf-den observations after less than four weeks."

The article reported that residents of the Northwest Territories often refer to Farley Mowat by the derisive nickname "Hardly Know-it." After noting the claims of scrupulous authenticity Mowat made within the books themselves, Goddard described a very different Mowat attitude displayed in notes and conversation. "I never let the facts get in the way of the truth," Goddard claims Mowat told him. Goddard also came across Mowat's self-proclaimed motto in a catalog of the author's papers: "On occasions when the facts have particularly infuriated me, Fuck the Facts!"

Ironically, the article confirmed Mowat's preeminent status in Canada by causing a national furor. Even political cartoonists weighed in -- the Edmonton Journal's Malcolm Mayes depicted Mowat's wife informing her husband, "The wolf's at the door, and he's got a few questions."

Mowat's friends -- including virtually the entire Canadian literary establishment -- rose to his defense and anxiously awaited the great man's rebuttal. It was swift and disappointing. Mowat gave interviews describing Goddard's article as "bullshit, pure and simple ... this guy's got as many facts wrong as there are flies on a toad that's roadkill." (On the other hand, he didn't mind the rude cover trick. "You know what they say about men with long noses," he reasoned.)

In a widely published statement, Mowat excoriated Saturday Night as another National Enquirer and savaged Goddard as a "hired gun" and "despicable." "His piece is stuffed with factual errors," Mowat wrote. "I don't have the space here to catalogue his errors of omission and commission ... Even more to the point, he consistently misses the truth behind the 'facts.'"

Putting the word "facts" in quotation marks hardly inspired confidence. Nor did his refusal to refute Goddard's major claims. Tellingly, both Mowat's attackers and defenders quickly staked out the same ground -- namely, the author's admitted reputation as a "teller of tales." Critics pointed out that similar accusations had been made before, notably by Frank Banfield of the Canadian Wildlife Federation in a 1964 article published in the Canadian Field-Naturalist. Banfield compared Mowat's 1963 bestseller to another famous wolf tale: "Little Red Riding Hood." "I hope that readers of "Never Cry Wolf" will realize that both stories have about the same factual content," Banfield wrote.

Sure, sure, replied the FOFs (Friends of Farley). That's the secret of his charm. Wrote one correspondent to Saturday Night: "There is more truth in one of his outrageous exaggerations than in a shelf-load of pretentious twaddle." A news story quoted naturalist and author Stuart Houston: "Anyone who knows Farley knows that he has a difficult time understanding where truth ends and his imagination begins ... and we love him for it." Mowat must have been touched -- it was the kind of stirring endorsement that his heirs could use to dispute his will.

"The primary consideration for a writer is to entertain," Goddard quotes Mowat as saying. "Using entertainment you can then inform, you can propagandize, you can elucidate ... As far as I'm concerned 'People of the Deer' did nothing but good for individual people, the survivors ... Nobody was going to pay any attention to them unless their situation was dramatized, and I dramatized it."

The pro-Mowat camp succeeded in pointing out that Goddard's attack overreached on some charges and inappropriately downplayed very real problems the Inuit faced. But many of Goddard's claims, among them that Mowat demonized the federal government and significantly distorted the official attitude toward both wolves and Inuit, went unanswered. More fundamentally, Mowat's reputation as a nonfiction writer was compromised, perhaps permanently.

Permanently, like a life sentence for murder. Three years later, few traces of the 1996 Saturday Night shootout are evident. Online reviews and biographies rarely mention the controversy, which apparently went largely unnoticed outside of Canada anyway. In the end, John Goddard appears to have been Farley Mowat's very own Gennifer Flowers. Charges were made, much harrumphing ensued, the charges remained unchallenged and no harm was done. Onward and upward for Slick Farley.

But some readers, particularly historians, will not forget so easily. The University of Toronto's Michael Bliss called the fudging "utterly appalling," while the University of Alberta's Rod Macleod suggested that those who lie for a good cause ultimately do that cause "more harm than good." But if the tempest has had any lasting effect for most Mowat readers, it seems to have been this: They identified what they valued about his writing and found themselves agreeing with the author's contention that, while they may fall short as history, his stories survive as ripping yarns that serve a greater good. Hollywood's attraction to "Never Cry Wolf" now seems perfectly fitting -- both Mowat and Tinseltown value storytelling over strict accuracy.

(Harder to interpret is maverick Vancouver writer/filmmaker Ken Hegan's short subject, "Farley Mowat Ate My Brother." Adapted from a radio play, the eight-minute flick tells of a Hegan frère who, irked by having to write boring book reports, leaves to lodge a personal complaint with the famous author, then mysteriously disappears. The joking accusation of cannibalism won Best Short at the New York Underground Film Festival in 1996, capping what was just a generally bad year for Mowat. Since Hegan's CBC-TV productions also include the short film "William Shatner Lent Me His Hairpiece," this work appears to be another example of the aforementioned national tendency to savage our most cherished national symbols.)

As for Farley Mowat the Canadian icon, today that role fits the man better than ever. You powerful nations can go on and choose as your national heroes any titans you want -- conquerors, noble patriots, swaggering studs whose names can serve as battle cries for bar fights or amphibious landings. But every country reserves the right to select the figureheads that represent it best. We've chosen Farley Mowat. Because, as you know, we Canadians are not real sure what we're all about.

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