Otherwise

by Farley Mowat

  Dog and skunk and mourners came together with impeccable timing.

  There was a great deal of screaming and shouting from the black-clad multitude, out of which Mutt appeared and lurched toward me seeking help and comfort. To my shame I have to admit I turned my back on him and fled the scene as fast as I could. He never did catch up with me because, blinded by skunk spray, he kept bumping into things. Why he was not killed while crossing busy Yonge Street I do not know. He eventually found his own way home, only to be banished to the backyard for the next several days.

  At 90 Lonsdale I spent a lot of the time in my bedroom. Its shelves were weighted with books, including Ernest Thompson Seton’s Two Little Savages and Wild Animals I Have Known; a lasciviously illustrated edition of Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais; and The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Being a librarian’s son, my taste in literature covered a lot of territory.

  The remaining space was occupied by my bed; by a desk upon which stood an old-fashioned microscope; and by a clutter of boxes containing birds’ nests and eggs, a stuffed gopher, a rattlesnake’s skin, and various animal bones.

  Cages housed a variety of living creatures, including injured animals picked up during my rambles, and one that was sent to me from New Mexico by my uncle Geddes Thomson. It was a tarantula, a formidable creature, whose hairy legs spread almost as wide as the fingers of my hand. It had an insatiable yen for exploration and, since it also possessed the skills of a Houdini, was more often out of its cage than in it. The tarantula and Helen were not on friendly terms. One evening Angus and I, drawn to the kitchen by my mother’s cries, found her perched on a stool, the spider eyeing her beadily from below while she lamented her brother Geddes’s ”perfectly fiendish sense of humour.”

  When not in my bedroom, I was often down in the cellar – not banished there in disgrace but because I had things to do in the dark and dusty space that housed a sprawling coal-fired furnace, an enormous coal bin, a concrete cistern for storing rainwater, and a pair of washtubs. In one corner Angus had built me a crude but serviceable darkroom. Here, under the eerie glow of a red safety lamp I developed film and made contact prints. I even made enlargements using a piece of equipment I constructed out of a wooden butter box, an old magic lantern, a sheet of ground glass, and a 100-watt bulb.

  Although most of my camera gear was makeshift, the camera was not. It was a Graflex – one of the most expensive and prestigious cameras of its time. A big, black, leather-covered box weighing several pounds, it contained a complex system of springs and mirrors which enabled the operator to compose a picture on a ground-glass screen viewed through a folding hood. My camera had come to me as a munificent gift from a wealthy Saskatoon bachelor who claimed he wanted to further my interest in nature but was perhaps more interested in my vivacious mother.

  Possession of the Graflex brought me considerable prestige, even though film for it was so expensive I could afford to take only the occasional picture. Those I did take were mostly of the Others – with one notable exception.

  Though Toronto was called the Good, it was by no means as prissy and puritanical as it was made out to be. It had its shady attractions, among which was the Casino, a live theatre in one of the seedier districts. The Casino was notorious for its striptease acts, and I doubt if there was a pubescent male in all of Toronto who had not visited or dreamed of visiting the Casino. I was no exception, but one had to be nineteen to get in. Furthermore I could not afford the one dollar ticket price.

  Then Dave Solomon, a schoolmate, offered to pay my way in to a Saturday matinee – if I would take a photo of a particularly celebrated stripper named Peekaboo.

  ”You got the camera to do it, Farl. And you can develop the neg and print off a bunch of pictures without nobody being the wiser. I bet I can sell a hundred of ’em – and we split the profits!”

  I did not leap at the bait, not because I had moral scruples but because the Casino’s sternly enforced ban on patrons photographing what took place on stage meant that if I was caught I could expect not only to be physically tossed out by the lumbering louts employed as bouncers but also risked losing my precious Graflex.

  Nevertheless I eventually gave in to temptation: Dave bought the tickets and I slunk in behind him trying not to look too dewy-faced. We slumped into seats near the front, where we tried to be as inconspicuous as possible. When Peekaboo came on stage in a blaze of crimson light and a skirl of seductive music, she so engrossed my attention that Dave had to shake my arm to bring me back to earth.

  ”She’s goin’ to take it all off!” he whispered hoarsely. ”You ready to shoot?”

  I eased my big machine out of the schoolbag in which I had concealed it; cocked the mechanism; raised it high; aimed; and, just as Peekaboo revealed her all, pressed the trigger.

  There was no flash (I had not dared use one and could only hope the stage lights would suffice) but the racket made by the Graflex’s focal-plane shutter and clattering mirrors sounded, at least in my ears, like the last trump. A hairy old man in the seat in front turned, shot me a furious look, and muttered:

  ”You get caught doin’ that, kiddo – they’ll kill ya!”

  Fortunately the Casino’s Wurlitzer organ was pealing out such a thunderous blast to herald the star’s moment of truth that it masked the noise made by the Graflex, and I escaped detection.

  I developed the precious negative that night and made an enlargement, watching nervously as the nude image of a woman swam into view beneath the rosy glow of the safety lamp. Fixed and dried, the glossy print revealed the statuesque Peekaboo in all her glory.

  During the next few days I made three or four dozen eight-inch-by-ten-inch enlargements that I dutifully handed over to Dave. At his insistence I even loaned him the negative so he could have more enlargements made in a hurry if sales went well.

  I never saw any of the prints or the negative again. Nor any of the money they were supposed to earn. Dave abruptly dropped out of my life, but years later I would learn he had become a successful entrepreneur with a mansion in Toronto’s ritzy Forest Hill Village.

  I like to think Peekaboo and I helped get him there.

  – 3 –

  ESCAPE

  Shortly before my arrival in Toronto, the TOFG had launched a little journal called The Chat. Consisting mostly of bird notes from club members, it was mimeographed and distributed when and if someone could be found to do the work. After I let it be known that I had founded and edited a somewhat similar publication in Saskatoon, I was catapulted into The Chat’s editorial chair.

  My western publishing venture – ten mimeographed pages mostly written by me – had been encouraged by Canada’s leading ornithologist, Percy Taverner. Hoping he might again be of help, I wrote to him at his Ottawa office.

  November 15, 1937

  Dear Mr. Taverner,

  I have certainly been enjoying myself in Toronto going around with a bunch of young fellows who look out for birds.

  I do not know if you have heard of the Toronto Ornithological Field Group or not. It is a club including all the younger bird enthusiasts in Toronto. The Club publishes The Chat which is the only ornithological bulletin of its kind in Canada so I consider it of great importance. Its phenomenal growth in the last few months shows definite promise of a widely read organ if it is encouraged. I am the Editor and am endeavouring to push it to the full extent of my powers.

  What is most needed now is the attention of those who are most prominent in Canadian ornithology so at the risk of presuming too much I decided to ask you for an Article….

  My news seems to have stunned Mr. Taverner for there was no reply. A month later I tried again.

  … Just to tell you The Chat is becoming a nationwide paper and our Subscription is rising in a very gratifying manner so we are very humbly expecting an article from you….

  Eventually the grand old man of Canadian ornithology and author of our bible – Birds of Canada – did send a brief congratulator
y message. Alas, it came too late to save my bacon.

  During the winter of 1937–38 the TOFG had been instructed by its mentors at the museum to make an exhaustive inquiry into the feeding habits of Asio flammeus, commonly known as the short-eared owl. Members were ordered to collect and analyze the contents of ”pellets” – compact little grey cylinders of bone, fur, and feathers – regurgitated by these owls at roosting sites.

  Although we were told the project was of prime scientific importance, I had my doubts. It was well known that short-eared owls dined almost exclusively on small rodents such as meadow mice. Collecting, dissecting, and analyzing quantities of pellets was unlikely to enlarge upon that knowledge. I concluded the project was a waste of time and ignored it until the day Jim Baillie handed me a manuscript report on the investigation for publication in The Chat. It contained enough turgid scientific lingo, complicated graphs, diagrams, and drawings of mouse bones to fill the next several issues of our little journal. Appalled, I offered to publish a synopsis but Jim shook his head.

  ”Won’t do, Mowat. Science is built on facts. All the facts. No short cuts. Print it all.”

  Reluctantly I obeyed, but was unable to resist adding my own editorial comment.

  What We Have Learned About Asio flammeus

  This owl has the revolting habit

  (when dining on a mouse or rabbit)

  Of glutching hair and bones and all,

  Which, in its stomach, forms a ball.

  So when the owl has had its sup

  It turns its head and brings it up.

  Could it be staying up so late

  That makes this owl regurgitate?

  Shortly thereafter I was replaced as editor of The Chat. This was not my first brush with duly constituted authority – nor would it be my last.

  When Angus took over Ontario’s public library system it encompassed more than a hundred libraries, some consisting of a couple of rooms in a village hall and some of grandiose monuments in the larger cities. He began his new labours by visiting all of them and was appalled by what he found. He reported to his superior, the provincial Minister of Education, that ”most of Ontario’s libraries seem to be little more than fossilized and badly housed collections of antiquated and worn out books cared for by underpaid and under-trained librarians who are expected to serve as custodians and guardians of relics rather than as purveyors of good reading to the public.”

  Angus Mowat set out to change all that. He began by ruthlessly ordering the discard of thousands of dusty and outdated volumes and their replacement (as fast as he could squeeze the money from a reluctant ministry) with books that had ”a little life in them.”

  He was even more passionate in pursuing his second goal, which was to inculcate enthusiasm and a sense of purpose in the librarians, most of whom were single women underpaid and undervalued both by their employers and by their communities. Angus described this problem in a letter to a friend:

  ”I find I must invigorate a number of mainly moribund libraries and an even larger number of librarians who are pitifully unhappy with the way things are going in their public and private lives but can’t do much about it. Quite a challenge for a little man with only one arm. [Angus had lost the use of his right arm to machine-gun fire during the Great War.] I don’t quite know how I’ll manage this, but I shall do my best for them.”

  As I was later to learn from certain of the librarians, he did very well. One woman recalled:

  ”Your father was like a banty rooster in charge of a flock of needy hens. The wonder is he lived as long as he did … or perhaps that is why he lived so long.”

  Although his contributions to Ontario’s library service were many and sometimes momentous, the double (or multiple) life he led resulted in the cumulative erosion of my mother’s sense of well-being. Having been brought up in relative innocence or, as it may be, ignorance, she did not know how to cope with the uncertainties that Angus’s dedication inflicted upon her. She was unable, as she once told me, to set her mind at rest by ”talking things out with your father” because Angus became furiously defensive if challenged on any issue, especially marital ones.

  Helen had other problems too. On her return from western exile she had believed she was finally to have a home of her own instead of ”always having to camp out like a gypsy in other people’s houses.”

  She still nurtured this hope even after Angus rented 90 Lonsdale Avenue. But one early spring day in 1937, as a consequence of a trip my father made to Montreal, her hopes were shattered.

  Nominally Angus’s visit to Montreal had been about library affairs; in fact, he had gone to look at a sailboat being offered for sale there.

  An avid sailor since childhood, he had ever since been seeking the ideal boat. The one he found in Montreal – a thirty-six-foot double-ended ketch of Norwegian design built for ocean cruising – turned out to be his ”Dream Ship.” Despite her hefty price, my father bought her on the spot.

  For a month he delayed telling us what he had done, while taking every opportunity to extol the joys of life on the ocean wave. Helen may have smelled a rat but I never guessed what was coming until the late April day he made the momentous announcement that he had found the boat in which we three would one day embark upon a voyage round the world.

  However, he added: in order to hasten that day we needed to economize, so we would have to move out of our present house, whose rental we could no longer afford.

  ”But where are we to go?” wailed my mother.

  ”We will live aboard our ship – she is to be called Scotch Bonnet – until I can buy us a house somewhere outside Toronto. It’s not fair to keep Farley in the city when he wants to be close to nature.”

  Angus did not state the obvious: that a house in the hinterland would cost a lot less than one in the city. If indeed he ever did actually buy one.

  It was all too much for Helen. Pleading a migraine headache she took to her bed, where she stayed incommunicado for a week. Many years later she would tell me:

  ”I really couldn’t think what to do. I did think of leaving him but my own parents and family would have been bitterly opposed, and I would probably have lost you, my darling, for how could I have supported you on my own? So I decided I had to grin and bear it.”

  I had no idea of the tension Scotch Bonnet brought to my parents’ marriage. For me her coming was an open sesame to a world of high adventure. I believed Scotch Bonnet was capable of carrying us to the ends of the earth. I listened enthralled to Angus’s talk of voyaging across the Atlantic in the track of such bold venturers as Jacques Cartier and Martin Frobisher. My head filled with fantasies of sailing to golden islands ”below the Line” (the equator), where the palm-fringed atolls were alive with exotic wildlife, including dusky maidens. It seemed to me that the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, and Treasure Island were now all within my reach. It never occurred to me that Scotch Bonnet’s acquisition sounded a death knell to my mother’s hopes and dreams.

  My closest human companion at this time was Andy Lawrie, a tall, curly-haired, blue-eyed youth who, like me, suffered from a name affliction. Even as I had been dubbed Fartley Mowat by schoolmates in Saskatoon until I changed my name to William, he had been mocked as Annie Lawrie. These shared indignities drew us closer together.

  Andy was the only child of immigrant Scots parents who, having endured the economic purgatory of the Dirty Thirties, were determined their son should walk an easier path. When he showed a burgeoning interest in wild creatures, they set their sights on a university degree in zoology for him.

  We young naturalists were all under pressure from our mentors at the museum to seek careers in biology. It was impressed upon us that this was as exalted a vocation as any to which we could aspire. Especially promising neophytes were taken on field expeditions and taught how to collect birds, mammals, insects, fishes, and any other non-human or non-domestic creatures they might encounter. The word ”kill” was never used, ”collect”
being the preferred euphemism of those times for describing the slaughter of wild animals in what is now usually described as ”harvesting.”

  The professional biologists who oversaw us on our field trips may or may not have known that the word biology translates as the study of life. They practised it as an exercise in death and taught us to do likewise, employing poisons such as arsenic, strychnine, and cyanide; snares and traps ranging from household mousetraps to steel leg-hold traps strong enough to hold a bear; and a fearsome array of firearms, including shotguns with which to bring down birds from hummingbirds to eagles, and rifles with which to collect mammals ranging in size from squirrels to elephants.

  They also taught us acolytes how to preserve the creatures we ”collected.” Fishes, frogs, and most soft-bodied animals were immured in jars or vats of alcohol or formaldehyde. Insects were generally pinned in regimented rows to sheets of cardboard. Birds and small mammals were skinned then stuffed ”in the round” with cotton wool before being laid to rest (birds on their backs and mammals on their bellies) in trays stacked from floor to ceiling in hermetically sealed steel sarcophagi built to keep their contents safe from the ravages of time. Such mausoleums are the inner sanctums of all zoological museums. So far back as 1938 the Royal Ontario Museum of Zoology possessed almost a million such ”study skins.”

  Like all natural history museums, the ROMZ dispatched its collecting expeditions to the far corners of the globe, but relied heavily upon local collectors whose ranks Andy Lawrie and I and other members of the TOFG were being groomed to join. Then, as now, collectors were issued permits by the federal government, authorizing the killing of all manner of wild creatures in almost any place and at any season.

  A chance to prove myself worthy of such a permit came early in December when somebody spotted a white-eyed vireo in the willow swales of Toronto’s Ashbridges Bay. Since this southern species had previously been recorded only three times in Canada, the report of its arrival brought every birdwatcher in Toronto out to look for it. I was one of them, but in addition to my field glasses I carried a slingshot and a burning desire to prove myself worthy of the scientific mantle.