Farley Mowat was born in Belleville, Ontario, in 1921. He served in World War II from 1940 until 1945, entering the army as a private and emerging with the rank of captain. He began writing for a living in 1949 after spending two years in the Arctic. He remains an inveterate traveller with a passion for remote places and peoples. He has more than 40 books to his name, which have been published in translations in over twenty languages in more than sixty countries, including Never Cry Wolf, Owls in the Family, and Lost in the Barrens. He died in Port Hope, Ontario, on May 6, 2014.