Authors: Farley Mowat
Eastern Passage (11 page)
Ten days later I wrote again:
Hugh Kane has been in touch with the H.B.C. They say they don’t intend to print my reply. When Kane asked them to print a paid ad for the book in which the more salient points of my reply would appear they refused to do that either
.
It’s been suggested I start a libel suit against them but this seems impossible for financial reasons and because the Bay would appeal again and again until I was too broke to stand upright
.
Perhaps I am taking this all too seriously, but it is certainly not doing my disposition any good. Frankly, I am getting so upset about the whole affair that my writing is grinding to a halt. So where do I go from here?
Dudley’s advice was that I get back to work and bury myself in a new book until the storm blew over. I partly did as he suggested, but the work I chose had nothing to do with writing. I decided to leave that strictly alone until sufficient scar tissue had formed. Instead I built a workshop-cum-garage where I could fool around making furniture or doing maintenance on Lulu Belle. I also enlarged our house, which had been cramped to start with and would be even more so when we started a family. I added a wing containing one large and one small bedroom.
By the end of August, I had almost succeeded in pushing the
People of the Deer
imbroglio to the back of my mind. However, in September it came thundering out again when fellow freelance writer Scott Young sent an op–ed piece called “Storm out of the Arctic” to the Toronto magazine
Saturday Night
.
Young’s piece was not so much concerned with buttressing my accusations against the northern establishment as with my right, indeed obligation, to make such charges. However, without informing Young,
Saturday Night’s
editor, R.A. Farquharson, sent a copy of “Storm” to Dr. Porsild, at the same time offering him three pages of the magazine in which to reply. Both pieces appeared, side by side. Scott was outraged, especially so when Farquharson denied him space for a subsequent rebuttal.
While Scott fumed, I dashed off a response of my own. It read, in part:
No anthropologist in Canada or elsewhere has attacked my book. Botanist Dr. Porsild is the sole academic or scientific accuser. A formidable list of reputable authorities, including Dr. Ralph Linton, chairman of Yale University’s Department of Anthropology; Dr. Wm. S. Carlson, president of the University of Vermont and leader of the Fourth Greenland Expedition; Vilhjalmur Stefansson, renowned arctic explorer; Lord John Tweedsmuir, one-time arctic trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company; Dr. E. Carpenter, an expert on Eskimo ethnology at the University of Toronto; and Mr. Hugh MacLennan, one of Canada’s foremost writers, have given their support to my book and to my contentions in whole or part, and the majority of them have done so in print
.
Furthermore, in 1951 the “non-existent” Ihalmiut were visited by M.J. Michea, an anthropologist from the French National Museum who is now preparing a monograph on the Ihalmiut. M. Michea has been kind enough to give me a statement that in his opinion my book is accurate in all important aspects, and that it is the best study of an Eskimo group he has ever read
.
It has proved impossible to obtain information about the current state of the Ihalmiut from official sources which continue to claim that the Ihalmiut do not exist. However, contacts in the Canadian military, which has established a weather station at Ennadai Lake in the centre of the Ihalmiut country, report that, as of mid-1952, twenty-seven Ihalmiut still survived but that their condition was deplorable and they were existing principally on handouts from the soldiers, who appear to be showing a good deal more humanity than has our government
.
Perhaps after all the Ihalmiut are no more than ghostly shadows who can be erased from existence, and from history, in order that men of little conscience can sleep easier
.
Mr. Farquharson’s reaction to this, and to a second letter from me, was this refusal to print either of them:
Obviously if we run your letters we are duty bound to show them to Porsild first, so you can understand why we do not wish to continue this controversy
.
To my surprise (and undeniable relief) the public paid little attention to this new assault upon
People of the Deer
and its author. In fact, by the end of November the entire ruckus seemed to have receded as harmlessly as summer lightning.
There was, however, a brief eruption in the House of Commons in mid-January 1953, when the Member of Parliament for Saskatoon, Robert Knight, queried the Honourable Jean Lesage, Minister of Resources and Northern Affairs, about my book. The following direct quotation is from
Hansard
.
*
Mr. Knight:
… The last time this subject was under discussion I brought to
[the Minister’s]
attention certain allegations that had been made in “People of the Deer” by Farley Mowat. I think that at that time the Minister said he would look into the subject … if the allegations in the book are true it is a terrible indictment of neglect upon the part of somebody
.
[Mowat’s]
allegations were that a certain tribe of Eskimos have been allowed, through various circumstances, to disintegrate and that in fact their numbers were decreased and depleted through starvation.… I should like to know if the Minister has anything to tell us about it. It is a rather serious business. It involves the lives of people. It involves their extermination by starvation.… What are the comments of the Minister upon the whole situation …?
Mr. Lesage:
I said, and I do not believe I can say anything more
, [the book]
is false, the allegations are false. If the Hon. Member wishes to have a detailed criticism
[Porsild’s review]
of that book indicating the extent to which the information upon which the book is based is false, I am sure that my office and my Deputy Minister
[the man who had fired me from the government service when Fran and I were at Brochet]
would be delighted to send it to the Hon. Member.… There is nothing more false than that part of the book which says that a certain tribe was allowed to perish by starvation. There is no grounds at all for that allegation.… I do not have in mind all the facts concerning the allegations in this book but I shall be delighted to have an officer give the Hon. Member all the information he requires in order that his soul, as a Member of Parliament, may be at peace, and that he will not believe he has been at fault in allowing starvation to occur in this country without any measures being taken against it
.
Mr. Knight:
Since the Minister has said categorically that these things are false, I should like to say that I too have
information from what I consider to be a fairly competent authority stating that such allegations are largely true…
.
Mr. Lesage:
At the time the book was written and the events occurred to which my Hon. Friend has referred, I was not very well versed in either northern affairs or Eskimo affairs. However I am now informed by responsible officers in my Department that the information in the book is false.… My officers are in a position to satisfy
[Mr. Knight]
that there was no delay by the proper officers in doing what was necessary to cope with an emergency
.
Mr. Knight:
I think it would be wise if the information which the Minister asserts his officers can give were to be given publicly to the whole country
.
Mr. Adamson [a government M.P.]:
Would it be possible to have Dr. Porsild’s monograph on the subject given to those members who may be interested in it?
Mr. Lesage:
I thank the Hon. Member for his suggestion … and I will see to it that Dr. Porsild’s monograph is mimeographed and distributed to them. This would be one of the best answers to the allegations in the book “People of the Deer.”
Mr. Knight:
Let me suggest that in all fairness if Dr. Porsild’s statement is to be made public then the reply by Mr. Mowat should be made public so that the Hon. Members can come to their own conclusions.… If the government is going to mimeograph Dr. Porsild’s reply at public expense, then I suggest that it should mimeograph the other at the same time. Does not the Minister consider that this would be the fair way to handle the matter?
Mr. Lesage:
I do not want to enter into this controversy and I can see no reason at all why we should perpetuate it. And under the circumstances, since the Hon. Member objects, nothing will be mimeographed
.
—–
Although attempts to discredit
People of the Deer
wound down thereafter, Dr. Porsild fired a belated final shot that he presumably believed would prove mortal. Upon discovering the book had received the Anisfield-Wolfe Award for “its contribution to improved understanding of aboriginal problems,” Porsild, in his capacity as a Canadian government official, wrote to the chairman of the Anisfield-Wolfe Foundation in the United States.
I am sure Farley Mowat is pleased with the award and perhaps a little amused too that his “plea for the understanding help without which these people will vanish from the earth” has been heard
.
What worries me is that the Ihalmiut people never did exist except in Mowat’s imagination
.
During the next several years, I spent much time investigating the final fate of the Ihalmiut and the rest of the inland Inuit who, at the beginning of the century, had numbered as many as two thousand individuals and had inhabited a quarter of a million square miles of northern Canada.
Encouraged and even harassed by Jack McClelland, in 1959 I published my findings in
The Desperate People
, a book that provides the grim details of what I believe to have been an act (even if an inadvertent one) of genocide.
My opponents and detractors took a different tack with this new book. As Jack explained to a meeting of his sales staff that I attended:
“They’re keeping their heads down this time, and their mouths mostly shut. They’ve figured that if there’s no fur flying the press won’t pick up the story and it’ll die. Public interest will evaporate like spit on a hot plate. And the smartasses in Ottawa and in the missions and big business have got it right this time.”
Grinning lopsidedly at me through a haze of tobacco smoke, he summed it up.
“I hate to say this, Farley, but this book’s going to get the treatment those poor sods
in
it got: burial in an unmarked grave!”
Jack’s prediction proved accurate and the desperate people’s unmarked graves might well have disappeared forever had it not been for an incident that occurred four decades later.
In 1987, press lord Conrad Black added the venerable Toronto literary magazine
Saturday Night
to his stable. Black chose Kenneth Whyte to be
Saturday Night
’s new editor, and Whyte immediately set about trying to turn the elderly magazine into a money-making tabloid of the attack-dog variety. After printing a venomous “exposure” of a teenager who was devoting himself to a worldwide movement dedicated to helping disadvantaged youngsters, the “new”
Saturday Night
moved on to bestow a Judas kiss upon the political aspirations of a woman member of the federal parliament.
Then they had a go at me.
Early in 1996, Anna Porter, publisher of Key Porter Books, was asked to cooperate in preparing a feature “profile” of me for a forthcoming issue of
Saturday Night
. Since Key Porter was my publisher at the time and about to publish a new book of mine, Anna was happy to oblige and assumed I would be too.
Although my earlier experience with this magazine had not led me to regard it with much affection, I made myself available to be interviewed by the man hired to write the piece. My wife and I invited him to our home (where he shared our hospitality without giving any intimation that he carried a knife under his shirt). I also arranged for him to have extensive access to the Farley Mowat archives at McMaster University.
Stupidly, I did not realize anything was amiss until
Saturday Night
wanted a portrait taken of me. This resulted in a most peculiar photographic session in an abandoned Toronto warehouse where I was costumed, posed, and lighted as if for a portrait of Dracula. Even then (although I now had an uneasy feeling about the whole affair)
I did not realize I had been set up until the May issue of the magazine appeared, with me on its cover wearing a sinister expression and an enormous Pinocchio nose.
There was worse inside.
The “profile” turned out to be a character assassination constructed largely from the canards the Hudson’s Bay Company, Porsild and various government officials, and others had spread about me during the imbroglio over
People of the Deer
. The intent of the piece was now crystal clear – it was meant to bury me.
Some of my partisans thought I should sue, but others who had crossed swords with Conrad Black’s empire (and who had the scars to prove it) persuaded me that suing him or his minions would be a feckless enterprise unless I possessed his seemingly bottomless pockets.
In the end, it hardly mattered. Whyte’s venture into yellow journalism proved of small benefit to the magazine. Quite the opposite. Within a few years,
Saturday Night
itself was dead and buried … some called it suicide.
*
No Man’s River,
published in 2004 by Key Porter Books, Toronto, eventually came from this journal
.
*
The official verbatim record of the House of Commons, vol. 96, no. 31, Tues. Jan. 19, p. 1243, etc
.
4SPREADING MY WINGS