"Farley Mowat challenges the conventional notion that the Vikings were the first Europeans to reach North America. Mowat offers instead an unforgettable portrait of the Albans, a people originating from the island now known as Britain. Battered by repeated invasions from their aggressive neighbors--Celt, Roman, and Norse--the Albans boarded seaworthy, skin-covered boats and fled west. Their search for safety, and for the massive walrus herds on which their survival depended, took them first to Iceland, then to Greenland, and finally to the land now known as Newfoundland and Labrador."--P. [4] of cover.
In this provocative bestseller, Farley Mowat challenges the conventional notion that the Vikings were the first Europeans to reach northern Canada. Mowat offers instead an unforgettable portrait of the Albans, a race originating from the island now known as Britain. Battered by repeated invasions from their aggressive neighbours -- Celt, Roman and Norse -- the Albans boarded seaworthy, skin-covered boats and fled west. Their search for safety, and for the massive walrus herds on which their survival depended, took them first to Iceland, then to Greenland, and, finally, to the land now known as Newfoundland and Labrador. Skillfully weaving together clues gathered from forty years of research, Mowat presents a fascinating account of a forgotten history. The Farfarers affirms Mowat's status as one of Canada's most powerful chroniclers. "From the Trade Paperback edition.
The author of Why Angels Fall follows the odyssey of Thorvald, an eleventh-century Viking Christian, who left his Icelandic homeland to make an epic journey to Jerusalem, offering an intriguing study of western Christendom at a time of dramatic changes in Western Europe and the Holy Land.
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 of the wilderness and the implacable northern elements, Farley Mowat has created a memorable tale of daring and adventure. When first published in 1956, Lost in the Barrens won the Governor-General’s Award for Juvenile Literature, the Book-of-the-Year Medal of the Canadian Association of Children’s Librarians and the Boys’ Club of America Junior Book Award.
Following Farley Mowat’s bestselling memoir, Otherwise, the literary lion returns with an unexpected triumph. Eastern Passage is a new and captivating piece of the puzzle of Farley Mowat’s life: the years from his return from the north in the late 1940s to his discovery of Newfoundland and his love affair with the sea in the 1950s. This was a time in which he wrote his first books and weathered his first storms of controversy, a time when he was discovering himself through experiences that, as he writes, "go to the heart of who and what I was" during his formative years as a writer and activist. In the 1950s, with his career taking off but his first marriage troubled, Farley Mowat buys a piece of land northwest of Toronto and attempts to settle down. His accounts of building his home are by turns hilarious and affecting, while the insights into his early work and his relationship with his publishers offer a rare glimpse into the inner workings of a writer’s career. But in the end, his restless soul could not be pinned to one place, and when his father offered him a chance to sail down the St. Lawrence, he jumped at it, not realizing that his journey would bring him face to face with one of Canada’s more shocking secrets – one most of us still don’t know today. This horrific incident, recalling as it did the lingering aftermath of war, and from which it took the area decades to recover, would forge the final tempering of Mowat as the activist we know today. Eastern Passage is a funny, astute, and moving book that reveals that there is more yet to this fascinating and beloved figure than we think we know.
Step into the world of sagas, longships, and enigmatic Norse explorers with Farley Mowat’s captivating historical account, Westviking. The Viking sagas speak of a land called Vinland, a place of abundant resources and possibilities. Nearly a thousand years after the events those tales describe, Farley Mowat sets out to decipher these ancient accounts and trace their path along the rugged coastlines of the North Atlantic. In this celebrated classic, first published in 1965, Mowat’s immersive storytelling brings Viking culture to life as he tells the story of Viking settlement in Vinland—now thought to include areas of Newfoundland and New Brunswick—five hundred years before Christopher Columbus and John Cabot. With the vivid prose that made him a bestselling author and beloved storyteller, Mowat follows the stories of Norsemen like Erik the Red, Leif Erikson, Bjarni Herjolfsson and Thorfinn Karlsefni, unravelling their struggles and triumphs as they set sail for the uncharted waters of the New World—then face the challenges of a new and unfamiliar land. Meticulously researched and grippingly told, Mowat infuses his own adventurous spirit into the little-known story of the Viking culture that once took hold on the edges of North America.
This book presents a portrait of the Albans, a seafaring tribe who originated in the country now known as Scotland. Battered by repeated Celtic, Norse and Roman invasions, the Albans fled west, first to Iceland, then to Greenland and finally across the Atlantic to Canada.
Every child needs to have a pet. No one could argue with that. But what happens when your pet is an owl, and your owl is terrorizing the neighbourhood? In Farley Mowat’s exciting children’s story, a young boy’s pet menagerie – which includes crows, magpies, gophers and a dog – grows out of control with the addition of two cantankerous pet owls. The story of how Wol and Weeps turn the whole town upside down is warm, funny, and bursting with adventure and suspense.
