Written very well...in mostly chronological order and weaving in her own words taken from her diaries, letters and book Gorillas in the Mist. It's a thriller, start to finish. Dian Fossey lived by and advocated active conservation - doing as opposed to beginning & ending at study (theoritical the...
Farley Mowat's youth was charmed and hilarious, and unbelievably free in its access to unspoiled nature through bird-banding expeditions and overnight outings in the dead of winter. The author writes of sleeping in haystacks for survival, and other adventures, with equal shares of Booth Tarkingto...
This collection of short stories by the Canadian writer Farley Mowat, is outstanding proof of his versatility. Although many of his best books are almost unplanned, coming to fruition after some sort of initial spontaneous combustion (I'm thinking of "People of the Deer" especially), the fictiona...
Awasin, a Cree Indian boy, and Jamie, a Canadian orphan living with his uncle, the trapper Angus Macnair, are enchanted by the magic of the great Arctic wastes. They set out on an adventure that proves longer and more dangerous than they could have imagined. Drawing on his knowledge of the ways o...
Since reading Mowat's "Sea of Slaughter," I can't get a certain picture out of my mind. It is of a sandy ocean beach, miles and miles long, where tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of morse came to socialize every summer until the middle of last century. The morse, or northern walrus...
Although I found the subject of Mowat's novel to be both interesting and horrifying I didn't get to the novel that I expected to read until the last portion of the book.The first two thirds of the book is all a, somewhat angry, rant about the evils of mankind, specifically of those who seek moder...
I don't know how true these memories are, but they are my memories, so they are true enough for this. Around 34 or 35 years ago, I went into my elementary school library and talked to Mrs. Dogleash (surely Mrs. Dalgliesh, like the famous Liverpool footballer and manager, but we always thought of ...
With soul so pure ONE MORNING before I am old and hoary I shall waken again to the sound of water slapping gently against the hull of a small vessel as she lies asleep beside the jetty in St. Pierre. I shall climb lazily out of my bunk, sniff the mingled smells of cod, coal smoke, and heather, th...
I was almost home. The black hills of Labrador rose distantly off the starboard bow, and off to port snaggle-toothed Cape Bauld, the northeastern tip of Newfoundland, thrust out of the sea. As the bleak indentations of Château, Red, and Forteau bays along the Labrador coast slowly fell astern, th...
Brunette Island came up fast and was left astern. The lighthouse on the end of the Fortune pier had not yet been lit as Black Joke came up into the wind a quarter of a mile off shore and hung there, her sails slatting until her crew had lowered them. The engine started with an explosive bark as K...
That summer and fall I did the same in the regiment’s home territories of Hastings County and Prince Edward County, a scant three hours eastward of Albion Township. Even before the 9th of September, 1939, the day Canada committed herself to the war against fascism, men and youths from the two adj...
The weather was generally good, and the sensation of freedom which we derived from the limitless land was as invigorating as the wide-ranging life we led. When we found ourselves in the territory of a new wolf family we would make camp and explore the surrounding plains for as long as was require...
RUPERT BROOKE “Fragment” MID-AFTERNOON, JULY 1, 1943. The loudspeaker in Troopdeck B crackled as the precise Oxford accent of the ship’s adjutant summoned all officers to assemble in the main lounge. I jumped excitedly from my seat beside one of my section corporals on a p...
I knew that the mouse—wolf relationship was a revolutionary one to science and would be treated with suspicion, and possibly with ridicule, unless it could be so thoroughly substantiated that there would be no room to doubt its validity. I had already established two major points: 1. That wolve...
Angus named her Miss Carter after our landlady, whom he did not like. He used to stand on our front steps at night loudly calling our Miss Carter by name, adding: “Come home, you little tramp!”, while the other one, who lived only a few doors down the street, presumably endured acute embarrassmen...
While a breakfast fire was being lit a fine gray drizzle had begun to fall and it was difficult to boil the kettle. The travelers were in a gloomy state of mind as they climbed into their canoes and set off across the open water through the drizzle. “You made enough noise last night to wake the d...
The Boy and the Black One From several of the people, and through many evenings of talk and of storytelling, I have gathered together the parts of this story. I tell them now not as history, but as living memories which are woven, impartially, from threads of legend and from threads of reality. H...
By the clock it was hardly noon. By the sun – but the earth had obliterated the sun. Rising in the new deserts of the southwest, and lifting high on autumnal winds, the desecrated soil of the prairies drifted northward; and the sky grew dark. In our small house on the outskirts of the city my mot...
With her academic credentials well on the way to being secured, and with regular help provided by some of the students from Cambridge and elsewhere who were eager to work at Karisoke, Dian was able to devote much more of her time to doing what she loved best—being with her gorillas. In 1972 there...
Since at that time we did not know the name of a single locality in the republic except Yakutsk itself, this posed a problem. “I’m sure there must be hundreds of places we’d like to see. However since you know them and we don’t, I’d prefer to leave the choice to you. One thing, though, I’d like t...