Farley McGill Mowat (1921–2014) was born in Belleville, Ontario. The author of more than forty books, he was a popular and distinguished naturalist and conservationist whose internationally acclaimed novels, books for young readers, and memoirs have been translated into fifty-two languages and have sold more than seventeen million copies. Mowat’s oeuvre includes People of the Deer; Lost in the Barrens, a recipient of Canada’s Governor General’s Award; The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float; A Whale for the Killing; The Snow Walker; and Virguga: The Passion of Dian Fossy. 
 
Mowat is most widely known for his 1963 book Never Cry Wolf, which recounts his adventures as a biologist on a solo mission in 1946 to study Arctic wolves in the Keewatin Barren Lands in northern Manitoba. The book is credited with changing the stereotypically negative perception of wolves as vicious killers. New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof named Mowat’s The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, first published in 1957, one of the best children’s books of all time.
 
Mowat served in World War II from 1940 to 1945, entering the army as a private and emerging with the rank of captain. He began writing professionally in 1949 after spending two years in the Arctic. He was an inveterate traveler with a passion for remote places and peoples. 
 
Mowat was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1981. In 2002 the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society named a ship for him in recognition of his activism against the whaling industry.