THE PEOPLE OF THE DEER

It was a fortunate day for the Eskimo, for the reindeer fancier, for him who is challenged by the thought of the new, the improvement of the old and the call of the North, when Mowat was inspired in 1935 by his uncle's talk about the Barren Lands of Canada. The book that resulted from his subsequent years as a traveller, naturalist, and explorer among the Ihalmiut people in the country north of Saskatchewan, approaches the stature of a work of art in the sustained, vivid prose which harmoniously records the fever of his longing to know the Barrens and his accurate characterizations of land and people- justifies itself as a valuable source of information about the present and potential economic and cultural development of the Arctic and the Eskimos. He observes phenomena like the amazing collective behaviour of reindeer herds, the joys and legends of the Eskimos in summer and winter and what they grow and catch and eat. The last pages, a short comment on the sensible policies pursued by the Danish government in Greenland, point to possible like methods of mutual development of white and Eskimo in Canada, so necessary for cultural and economic health. A seldom found ""perfect combination"" of the poetically descriptive and the scientifically factual.