MOwat doesn't seem like a good choice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farley_Mowat"The Toronto Star has written that Mowat's memoirs are at least partially fictional. In a 1968 interview with CBC Radio, Farley admitted that he doesn't let the facts get in the way of the truth (Canada Reads). Once, when Mowat said that he has spent two summers and a winter studying wolves, the Toronto Star wrote that Mowat had only spent 90 hours studying the wolves. This hurt Mowat's reputation badly.
An article in the May, 1996 issue of Saturday Night written by John Goddard lays out a somewhat more in-depth criticism of Farley's celebrated works, especially Never Cry Wolf. As a result of these kinds of persistent and recurring claims, it's difficult to say with authority whether some of Farley's books, billed by many as non-fiction, are just that."
http://www.salon.com/people/bc/1999/05/11/mowat/index1.html"Wrote Goddard: "Documents recently made public at the National Archives of Canada, and papers that the author himself sold years ago to McMaster University, show that Mowat did not spend two years in the Keewatin District in 1947 and 1948 as the books say. He spent two summer field seasons in the district -- totaling less than six months -- and mostly in a more southern part of the district than he describes. He did not casually drop in alone but traveled on both occasions as a junior member of well-planned scientific expeditions. He did not once -- contrary to the impression he leaves -- see a starving Inuit person. He did not once set foot in an Inuit camp. As for the authenticity of his wolf story, he virtually abandoned his wolf-den observations after less than four weeks."
The article reported that residents of the Northwest Territories often refer to Farley Mowat by the derisive nickname "Hardly Know-it." After noting the claims of scrupulous authenticity Mowat made within the books themselves, Goddard described a very different Mowat attitude displayed in notes and conversation. "I never let the facts get in the way of the truth," Goddard claims Mowat told him. Goddard also came across Mowat's self-proclaimed motto in a catalog of the author's papers: "On occasions when the facts have particularly infuriated me, Fuck the Facts!"
....Critics pointed out that similar accusations had been made before, notably by Frank Banfield of the Canadian Wildlife Federation in a 1964 article published in the Canadian Field-Naturalist. Banfield compared Mowat's 1963 bestseller to another famous wolf tale: "Little Red Riding Hood." "I hope that readers of "Never Cry Wolf" will realize that both stories have about the same factual content," Banfield wrote.
Sure, sure, replied the FOFs (Friends of Farley). That's the secret of his charm. Wrote one correspondent to Saturday Night: "There is more truth in one of his outrageous exaggerations than in a shelf-load of pretentious twaddle." A news story quoted naturalist and author Stuart Houston: "Anyone who knows Farley knows that he has a difficult time understanding where truth ends and his imagination begins ... and we love him for it." Mowat must have been touched -- it was the kind of stirring endorsement that his heirs could use to dispute his will.
"The primary consideration for a writer is to entertain," Goddard quotes Mowat as saying. "Using entertainment you can then inform, you can propagandize, you can elucidate ... As far as I'm concerned 'People of the Deer' did nothing but good for individual people, the survivors ... Nobody was going to pay any attention to them unless their situation was dramatized, and I dramatized it."
The pro-Mowat camp succeeded in pointing out that Goddard's attack overreached on some charges and inappropriately downplayed very real problems the Inuit faced. But many of Goddard's claims, among them that Mowat demonized the federal government and significantly distorted the official attitude toward both wolves and Inuit, went unanswered. More fundamentally, Mowat's reputation as a nonfiction writer was compromised, perhaps permanently.
Permanently, like a life sentence for murder. Three years later, few traces of the 1996 Saturday Night shootout are evident. Online reviews and biographies rarely mention the controversy, which apparently went largely unnoticed outside of Canada anyway. In the end, John Goddard appears to have been Farley Mowat's very own Gennifer Flowers. Charges were made, much harrumphing ensued, the charges remained unchallenged and no harm was done. Onward and upward for Slick Farley.
But some readers, particularly historians, will not forget so easily. The University of Toronto's Michael Bliss called the fudging "utterly appalling," while the University of Alberta's Rod Macleod suggested that those who lie for a good cause ultimately do that cause "more harm than good." But if the tempest has had any lasting effect for most Mowat readers, it seems to have been this: They identified what they valued about his writing and found themselves agreeing with the author's contention that, while they may fall short as history, his stories survive as ripping yarns that serve a greater good."
