High Latitudes: An Arctic Journey

High Latitudes: An Arctic Journey
by Farley Mowat

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Book Summary Information

Author: Farley Mowat
Foreword: Margaret Atwood
Edition: Paperback
Published: 2003-02-10
ISBN: 1586420615
Number of pages: 350
Publisher: Steerforth

Book Reviews of High Latitudes: An Arctic Journey

Book Review: A tragic topic, an impressive writer
Summary: 4 Stars

A sad book. High Latitudes focuses on the disintegrating culture of North Canadian Natives. Much of the book is transcription of the natives in their own words and gives excellent insight into their plight. An overriding theme of the book is the devastating effect bureaucratic decisions of government and big business has had on these Inuits (Eskimos) and others.

This wasn't the adventure story I was expecting from Farley Mowat like "People of the Deer" in which he lived with an arctic community. This trip, taken in 1966, he travels by plane. Still none the less an adventure, he keenly describes a variety of northern communities including: Churchill ("a ...collection of mostly wooden structures between taiga and open tundra"), Povungnituk (the place that stinks), Old Crow (where "people catch lots of rats, won't let you go hungry there"), and many others. In typical fashion, Farley Mowat creates a gripping pathos about past cultures and events never to return, and often includes rich historical background for places he explores.

If you're a Farley Mowat fan, I would rate this as important but not as engaging as some of his other books (I've read four others: "People of the Deer", "And No Birds Sang", "Never Cry Wolf", and "The Boat Who Wouldn't Float"). The book ends somewhat abruptly but he saves a great anecdote from the Yukon Territory for the end. A frustrating aspect about the events you read about in this book is that they took place in the sixties. I'd like to know how these settlements he visited have done since then. I'll probably never know.

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Summary of High Latitudes: An Arctic Journey

In High Latitudes Farley Mowat chronicles for the first time a sometimes hazardous journey he took across northern Canada in 1966. He hoped to write a book that would let northern people speak for themselves and that would expose the speciousness of the political idea that the North was “a bloody great wasteland” with no people in it, and therefore resource developers could exploit it however they chose. For reasons Mowat describes that book did not get written then. But here it is now, with the original conversations recorded by Mowat during that epic journey. In vintage Mowat fashion the legendary writer delivers a sweeping narrative brimming with breathtaking nature writing, suspenseful storytelling, larger-than-life characters, ferocious humor, pitiless rage, iconoclastic insights, and compassionate concern.
In her foreword Margaret Atwood writes: “High Latitudes gives us, with passion and insight, a vertical section of time past — the time that preceded our present. The choices that were made then affect our now, just as the choices we make now will determine the future. . . . It’s both depressing and cheering to note the changes that have taken place since 1966. On the one hand, more damage and devastation, both natural and social, with global warming as a contributing factor. On the other hand, an increased optimism. . . But as Farley Mowat has always known, and as more and more people have come to agree, it’s a race against time, and time — not just for the North, but for the planet — is running out.”

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