government M.P.]:
Would it be possible to have Dr. Porsild’s monograph on the subject given to those members who may be interested in it?
Mr. Lesage:
I thank the Hon. Member for his suggestion … and I will see to it that Dr. Porsild’s monograph is mimeographed and distributed to them. This would be one of the best answers to the allegations in the book “People of the Deer.”
Mr. Knight:
Let me suggest that in all fairness if Dr. Porsild’s statement is to be made public then the reply by Mr. Mowat should be made public so that the Hon. Members can come to their own conclusions.… If the government is going to mimeograph Dr. Porsild’s reply at public expense, then I suggest that it should mimeograph the other at the same time. Does not the Minister consider that this would be the fair way to handle the matter?
Mr. Lesage:
I do not want to enter into this controversy and I can see no reason at all why we should perpetuate it. And under the circumstances, since the Hon. Member objects, nothing will be mimeographed
.
—–
Although attempts to discredit
People of the Deer
wound down thereafter, Dr. Porsild fired a belated final shot that he presumably believed would prove mortal. Upon discovering the book had received the Anisfield-Wolfe Award for “its contribution to improved understanding of aboriginal problems,” Porsild, in his capacity as a Canadian government official, wrote to the chairman of the Anisfield-Wolfe Foundation in the United States.
I am sure Farley Mowat is pleased with the award and perhaps a little amused too that his “plea for the understanding help without which these people will vanish from the earth” has been heard
.
What worries me is that the Ihalmiut people never did exist except in Mowat’s imagination
.
During the next several years, I spent much time investigating the final fate of the Ihalmiut and the rest of the inland Inuit who, at the beginning of the century, had numbered as many as two thousand individuals and had inhabited a quarter of a million square miles of northern Canada.
Encouraged and even harassed by Jack McClelland, in 1959 I published my findings in
The Desperate People
, a book that provides the grim details of what I believe to have been an act (even if an inadvertent one) of genocide.
My opponents and detractors took a different tack with this new book. As Jack explained to a meeting of his sales staff that I attended:
“They’re keeping their heads down this time, and their mouths mostly shut. They’ve figured that if there’s no fur flying the press won’t pick up the story and it’ll die. Public interest will evaporate like spit on a hot plate. And the smartasses in Ottawa and in the missions and big business have got it right this time.”
Grinning lopsidedly at me through a haze of tobacco smoke, he summed it up.
“I hate to say this, Farley, but this book’s going to get the treatment those poor sods
in
it got: burial in an unmarked grave!”
Jack’s prediction proved accurate and the desperate people’s unmarked graves might well have disappeared forever had it not been for an incident that occurred four decades later.
In 1987, press lord Conrad Black added the venerable Toronto literary magazine
Saturday Night
to his stable. Black chose Kenneth Whyte to be
Saturday Night
’s new editor, and Whyte immediately set about trying to turn the elderly magazine into a money-making tabloid of the attack-dog variety. After printing a venomous “exposure” of a teenager who was devoting himself to a worldwide movement dedicated to helping disadvantaged youngsters, the “new”
Saturday Night
moved on to bestow a Judas kiss upon the political aspirations of a woman member of the federal parliament.
Then they had a go at me.
Early in 1996, Anna Porter, publisher of Key Porter Books, was asked to cooperate in preparing a feature “profile” of me for a forthcoming issue of
Saturday Night
. Since Key Porter was my publisher at
Would it be possible to have Dr. Porsild’s monograph on the subject given to those members who may be interested in it?
Mr. Lesage:
I thank the Hon. Member for his suggestion … and I will see to it that Dr. Porsild’s monograph is mimeographed and distributed to them. This would be one of the best answers to the allegations in the book “People of the Deer.”
Mr. Knight:
Let me suggest that in all fairness if Dr. Porsild’s statement is to be made public then the reply by Mr. Mowat should be made public so that the Hon. Members can come to their own conclusions.… If the government is going to mimeograph Dr. Porsild’s reply at public expense, then I suggest that it should mimeograph the other at the same time. Does not the Minister consider that this would be the fair way to handle the matter?
Mr. Lesage:
I do not want to enter into this controversy and I can see no reason at all why we should perpetuate it. And under the circumstances, since the Hon. Member objects, nothing will be mimeographed
.
—–
Although attempts to discredit
People of the Deer
wound down thereafter, Dr. Porsild fired a belated final shot that he presumably believed would prove mortal. Upon discovering the book had received the Anisfield-Wolfe Award for “its contribution to improved understanding of aboriginal problems,” Porsild, in his capacity as a Canadian government official, wrote to the chairman of the Anisfield-Wolfe Foundation in the United States.
I am sure Farley Mowat is pleased with the award and perhaps a little amused too that his “plea for the understanding help without which these people will vanish from the earth” has been heard
.
What worries me is that the Ihalmiut people never did exist except in Mowat’s imagination
.
During the next several years, I spent much time investigating the final fate of the Ihalmiut and the rest of the inland Inuit who, at the beginning of the century, had numbered as many as two thousand individuals and had inhabited a quarter of a million square miles of northern Canada.
Encouraged and even harassed by Jack McClelland, in 1959 I published my findings in
The Desperate People
, a book that provides the grim details of what I believe to have been an act (even if an inadvertent one) of genocide.
My opponents and detractors took a different tack with this new book. As Jack explained to a meeting of his sales staff that I attended:
“They’re keeping their heads down this time, and their mouths mostly shut. They’ve figured that if there’s no fur flying the press won’t pick up the story and it’ll die. Public interest will evaporate like spit on a hot plate. And the smartasses in Ottawa and in the missions and big business have got it right this time.”
Grinning lopsidedly at me through a haze of tobacco smoke, he summed it up.
“I hate to say this, Farley, but this book’s going to get the treatment those poor sods
in
it got: burial in an unmarked grave!”
Jack’s prediction proved accurate and the desperate people’s unmarked graves might well have disappeared forever had it not been for an incident that occurred four decades later.
In 1987, press lord Conrad Black added the venerable Toronto literary magazine
Saturday Night
to his stable. Black chose Kenneth Whyte to be
Saturday Night
’s new editor, and Whyte immediately set about trying to turn the elderly magazine into a money-making tabloid of the attack-dog variety. After printing a venomous “exposure” of a teenager who was devoting himself to a worldwide movement dedicated to helping disadvantaged youngsters, the “new”
Saturday Night
moved on to bestow a Judas kiss upon the political aspirations of a woman member of the federal parliament.
Then they had a go at me.
Early in 1996, Anna Porter, publisher of Key Porter Books, was asked to cooperate in preparing a feature “profile” of me for a forthcoming issue of
Saturday Night
. Since Key Porter was my publisher at
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