Ten Million Books : An Introduction to Farley Mowat

Canadian author, humorist and storyteller W.O. Mitchell talks about his career as a writer and performer. Known for his witty radio and television appearances, Mitchell shows a more serious side as he reveals his personal views on writing and on the meaning of life and death. Passages from Who Has Seen the Wind and the Jake and the Kid stories reflect the many facets of this self-proclaimed "folksy foothills philosopher" from the Prairies.

When Karsten Heuer and Leanne Allison (Being Caribou), along with their two-year old son Zev and indomitable dog Willow, set out to retrace the literary footsteps of Farley Mowat they meant it literally. Their 5000KM trip -trekking, sailing, portaging and paddling from the Prairies to the Maritimes - is captured in the documentary Finding Farley. They paddle east from Calgary, towards the prairies (the geography of Born Naked and Owls in the Family) and then traverse the same paths that Farley took more than 60 years earlier, which became the foundation for Never Cry Wolf, and People of the Deer. The travelers also get an earful about the long-standing controversy that attends Farley's work. When the family reaches their final destination, Mowat's Nova Scotian summer home, it is, as Karsten says, "An affirmation of what the land and animals had already told us...Stories aren't so much written or created as they are released, expressing what's been there all along.".

Alden Nowlan survived rural poverty to become the winner of Canada's 1967 Governor General's Award for poetry. His empathy with ordinary people ran throughout his work as poet, journalist, short-story writer, novelist and playwright. His writing is admired far beyond his native Maritimes, but he never forgot his roots, which he drew on for inspiration. This film, shot just before his death in 1983, records him reminiscing and reading from his work.