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Passings: Farley Mowat

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Farley Mowat

Canadian author and environmental advocate

Farley Mowat, 92, one of Canada’s most widely read authors and an advocate for environmental causes, died Tuesday, according to a statement on his website. No other details were provided. He lived in Port Hope in Ontario province.

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Mowat wrote some 40 books, many based on his own adventures and travels. Among his best-known works are “Never Cry Wolf” (1963), a fictional narrative about Mowat living among wolves in sub-arctic Canada; and “Lost in the Barrens” (1956), which follows a Cree Indian boy and a Canadian orphan’s adventures in the Arctic. He said he was lucky to be able to combine his two passions: writing and nature, calling the latter “the only subject I really want to write about.”

From the age of 13, Mowat was fiercely dedicated to writing about the natural world. As a young teen he started a magazine called Nature Lore and had a column in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix.

Farley McGill Mowat was born in Belleville, Ontario, on May 12, 1921. The son of a librarian, he grew up in Windsor, Ontario, and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. His novels and other nonfiction works have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Never one to shy away from controversy, Mowat was outspoken about many environmental and social issues. He called Canada’s treatment of aborigines “abominable,” said Canada’s annual seal hunt was “perhaps the most atrocious single trespass by human beings against the living world that’s taking place today,” and said hunts in general were “symbolic of the massive destruction that we’ve visited upon life.”

Times wire reports

news.obits@latimes.com

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