Walking on the land - Hardcover

Mowat, Farley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1552631672 ISBN 13: 9781552631676

Publisher: Key Porter Books, 2000

No one has written as passionately or as articulately about the Arctic and its people as Farley Mowat. In Walking on the Land, he returns to write about the Arctic for the first time in two decades. Using a seminal trip he took through the eastern Arctic as his starting point, Mowat interweaves the stories and the fate of the Barrenground Inuit who were his friends with stunning, lyrical description of the land that was their traditional homeland. With great beauty and terrible anguish, Mowat traces the history of the Barrenground Inuit, revealing how the decimation of the caribou herds in the early part of the century, unleashed a series of famines and epidemics that virtually wiped out their population and left them reliant on a far-away government that understood too little of their needs and circumstances. Through his continued friendship with the survivors, Mowat brings us into the present, showing how the remnant population has survived. No Mowat work is complete without a cast of larger-than-life characters and his trademark marvellous storytelling. Walking on the Land is no exception. Old-time Hudson`s Bay company men, eccentric priests, wild bush pilots and well-meaning interlopers people the pages, bringing to life one of Canada`s most haunted places.

From the Inside Flap:

Using one of his own trips through the Eastern Arctic as a starting point, Farley Mowat interweaves the stories of the Barren Ground Inuit with stunning, lyrical descriptions of the Northern landscape.

With great beauty and terrible anguish, Mowat traces the history of the Inuit, revealing how the arrival of the Kablunait — white man — in the early part of the century and the subsequent obliteration of the caribou herds combined to unleash a series of famines and epidemics that virtually wiped out the Barren Ground Inuit population.

Full of larger-than-life characters — old-time Hudson's Bay company men, eccentric priests, wild bush pilots and well-meaning interlopers — Walking on the Land is an unforgettable account by one of Canada's most committed and impassioned voices.
From the Paperback edition.

From the Back Cover:

"Mowat's art is to make metaphors out of his personal experience, to bring home realities as through parable." — The Globe and Mail

"Farley Mowat is a brilliant writer." — James Herriot