Mowat, Claire 1933- (Claire Angel Wheeler Mowat)

views updated

Mowat, Claire 1933- (Claire Angel Wheeler Mowat)

PERSONAL:

Born February 5, 1933, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; daughter of Louis Ward and Winifred Wheeler; married Farley Mowat (an author), March 29, 1965. Ethnicity: "English." Education: Ontario College of Art, associate's degree, 1956. Politics: New Democrat. Religion: Anglican.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Port Hope, Ontario, Canada; and River Bourgeois, Nova Scotia, Canada.

CAREER:

Commercial artist, graphic designer, and writer.

WRITINGS:

The Outport People (memoir), McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1983.

Pomp and Circumstances (nonfiction), McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1989.

The Girl from Away (young adult novel; first volume of a trilogy), illustrated by Malcolm Cullen, Key Porter (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1992.

The French Isles (young adult novel; second volume of a trilogy), Key Porter (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1994.

Last Summer in Louisbourg (young adult novel; third volume of a trilogy), Key Porter (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1998.

Travels with Farley (memoir), Key Porter (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) 2005.

Contributor to radio broadcasts of Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Contributor to periodicals.

SIDELIGHTS:

Claire Mowat once told CA: "The Outport People is a memoir of life in a small outport of Newfoundland, the easternmost province of Canada. An ‘outport’ is their name for a small, coastal (and usually isolated) community. Pomp and Circumstances is a look at the office of governor general of Canada. It is also a description of how a state visit works. It is based on my own experience as a lady-in-waiting to the wife of the governor general of Canada on a state visit to the Nordic countries in 1981.

"The three novels The Girl from Away, The French Isles, and Last Summer in Louisbourg form a trilogy for young adults. The principal character, Andrea Baxter, is featured in all of them. She becomes one year older with each subsequent novel: thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.

"The stories are set in Atlantic Canada. The Girl from Away centers on adventures in Newfoundland during the Christmas season. The French Isles is a story that takes place mainly in St. Pierre et Miquelon, a tiny, island territory belonging to France but adjacent to Newfoundland. It is an area where fishing disputes with Canada often occur. Last Summer in Louisbourg is set in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, specifically in the Fortress of Louisbourg, a recreation of a French fortified village that actually stood there in the eighteenth century. The story is contemporary because my heroine has a summer job there, but there are many references to real historical events throughout the novel.

"I did not intend originally to become a writer," Mowat continued. "I liked drawing and painting, and so I chose to study at an art college. However, I discovered, somewhat later, that I was far more effective and successful whenever I wrote—letters, journals, articles, and eventually books. I am more fulfilled when I reach people through the written word rather than through the visual arts.

"I enjoy reading books by women who have gone to live amid a human culture in which they did not grow up and who have then reflected upon it and written about it. This, perhaps, led to my first book, The Outport People. However, I imagine I have been influenced, to some extent, by every book I have ever read.

"I grew up in a big, industrial city—Toronto. Over the past thirty years or so, I have lived in several rural locations in the Atlantic provinces of Canada where the lives that people live are, to me, more interesting than was my early life in Toronto.

"Generally I write in the afternoons. I work on various old, non-automated typewriters. I have nothing against computers. It's just that I have never found anyone who could teach me how to use one. When it comes to machinery of any kind I am handicapped or challenged, or whatever current buzz words are used to describe a person who has trouble learning to operate even a new radio or toaster or lawnmower. No doubt I write more slowly than a lot of authors, but that's not such a bad thing."