Otherwise (5 page)

The people in the funeral party appeared unaware of Mutt’s swift approach – except for the undertaker’s assistant, a tall young man who, alerted by my shouts, spun about in time to see Mutt bearing down, his queer, lopsided gallop giving him the appearance of drifting off to starboard, whereas in reality he was dead on target.

The skunk Mutt had been homing in upon now became visible trotting nervously among the tombstones, veering
from side to side as if uncertain whether Mutt or the large man with the top hat waving his arms in the air posed the more serious threat. The skunk would probably have preferred to avoid the gaggle of human beings gathered around an open grave, for his kind are generally pacific. But Mutt was fast. The skunk nervously ducked its head and broke into a trot.

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.

S
hortly 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.

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

Eventually the grand old man of Canadian ornithology and author of our bible –
Birds of Canada
–
did
send a brief congratulatory 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

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.