Bay of Spirits: A Love Story [Hardcover]

Farley Mowat (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 13, 2007

This is the story of a love affair with a people and a place, of the summers Farley Mowat spent sailing the Newfoundland coast with his wife Claire. It is an affectionate, unforgettable portrait of a time, a people, and a place, as well as the indomitable spirit of this island province.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this ruminative memoir, Mowat chronicles the disappearance of a way of life in Newfoundland and the chance encounter that brought him the love of his life. As a young writer in 1957, Mowat decided to travel on a tramp steamer among the small fishing villages known as outports that dotted the Newfoundland coast. These outports were the home of hardy and colorful fisherfolk of Basque, English, Irish and French descent. Government policy and the depletion of the regional fisheries by huge commercial trawlers were slowly forcing the locals out of their centuries-old homes. Mowat enjoyed the area so much that he bought a schooner for further exploration. Soon afterward, a young woman fleeing the overeager attentions of an amorous mutt stumbled on board his ship and romance quickly followed. Mowat and Claire Wheeler spent the next decade sailing in the rocky bays, thick fogs and sudden squalls of the region. The author of 40 books, mostly on nautical and adventure themes, Mowat has a deep understanding of the sea and the natural world. His observations of the outporters are equally perceptive and provide a fascinating window into a little known corner of North America. In this tender elegy to a lost Newfoundland, Mowat shows an amused tolerance for almost everything except the human greed that has inexorably destroyed his adopted home's cultures and environment. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Canada's most idiosyncratic province is as large a presence as Canada's most idiosyncratic writer in this moving memoir of the love of a woman and the love of a particular place. In 1957, Mowat boarded a steamer that plied Newfoundland's rugged coastline. It was love at first sight, and Mowat would revisit often until he bought his Happy Schooner. On one Newfoundland nautical adventure he met Claire Wheeler. He was married to another then and had two small children. Never trying to justify his behavior, Mowat presents how he transferred his affections and his domicile matter-of-factly. The emotional heart of the story lies in remote Burgeo, Newfoundland, where he and Claire settled. The book concludes bittersweetly when the killing of a trapped whale nearly becomes an international incident with Mowat in the thick of it. Mowat has visited whale killing before (A Whale for the Killing, 1972) but here offers a more personal perspective. In Newfoundland, he realized that, no matter how he loved this orneriest of provinces, he would forever remain a stranger. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (April 13, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 078671994X
• ISBN-13: 978-0786719945
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #251,919 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #37 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Regional Canada
  • #64 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Historical > Canadian

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A tale of two loves...but you'll want more of both., August 19, 2007

By 

M. Chapman "superedit" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bay of Spirits: A Love Story (Hardcover)

This is the tale of two love stories -- one covered extensively, one almost glossed over by books' end.

Farley Mowat came to Newfoundland in the early 1960s and fell in love, both with the land and its people, and with a young artist named Claire Wheeler. It's the former that Mowat dwells upon the most in this book, and as a reader I left frustrated because we learn so comparatively little about Claire and about their life together. It takes 1/3 of the book for Mowat to reveal that he was married when he met Claire, and that the the tug of his family -- including two sons -- delayed his eventual divorce. His former family is dismissed in a paragraph.

Having faced the music, Mowat settles down with Claire aboard his famously unseaworthy boat, "Happy Adventure", the star the classic "The Boat Who Wouldn't Float." Readers of "The Boat" will be startled by anecdotes, names and dates changing from one book to another. It gives creedence to the charge leveled against Mowat that he never lets the facts get in the way of a good story.

Ultimately this lovely book covers a period of but seven years, and ends just after Mowat's futile attempt to stop the people of his adopted home of Burgeo from killing a whale that has become trapped in a tidal pond. The whale died, the locals were savaged by the press, and the Mowats decided it was time to leave Burgeo and venture in Happy Adventure to Expo 67 (a voyage that nearly ended many times, if "The Boat" is to be believed.)

This is a wonderful book but I wanted more -- what happened to Happy Adventure? What happened to Mowat's sons? Where did they settle after the Expo trip? Much has happened between 1967 and now! -- I hope to hear more about the Mowat's voyages though these most interesting times.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Storm-tossed and falling in love - with a place and a woman, May 31, 2007

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bay of Spirits: A Love Story (Hardcover)

Farley Mowat's notion of an idyllic day's sail more often than not involves heavy seas in shallow, rocky waters, accompanied by gale force winds, pelting rain and/or pea-soup fog, in a leaky boat with engine issues.

Therefore armchair adventurers will enjoy this memoir of Mowat's 1960s love affair with "a special woman and a special world" as much as romantic sorts looking for travel among the bygone fishing villages of Newfoundland.

Readers familiar with Mowat, however, will know there must be bitter with the sweet. The Newfie fishing communities, fiercely independent and attached to their way of life like limpets to a rock, were in serious decline by the 1960s. The teeming schools of fish had disappeared under the relentless onslaught of the big fishing operations and the government wanted to resettle the fishermen in factory towns, bringing Newfoundland (which had only joined Canada in 1949) squarely into the 20th century.

The book opens with Mowat's harrowing and exhilarating trip aboard a 200-foot coastal steamer, one of six (now gone), which took freight and passengers to the outposts of Newfoundland, their main contact with the world.

"Newfoundland is of the sea. A mighty granite stopper thrust into the mouth of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, its coasts present more than five thousand miles of rocky headlands, bays, capes, and fiords to the sweep of the Atlantic. Everywhere hidden reefs, which are called, with dreadful explicitness, sunkers, wait to rip open the bellies of unwary vessels."

Though Mowat saw little of the coast, due to foul weather and impenetrable fog, he was hooked. He bought a fish-slimed schooner, renamed it Happy Adventure and arranged to have it refitted for cruising.

But, flying in to reclaim his refurbished boat, he makes a dismaying discovery. "My wishes had conflicted with centuries of tradition, which dictated that space allotted to people aboard a boat must be kept to the irreducible minimum so as to leave as much room as possible for fish."

Then, on its maiden voyage the boat sprung a leak, a serious leak. The bilge pump jammed, the fog rolled in, water engulfed the engine and they (Mowat and his friend and longtime publisher, Jack McClelland) luckily ran aground. Next trip out they realized they should have had the compass adjusted while fixing the leak.

It was while working on Happy Adventure that Mowat met Claire Wheeler, a Toronto artist. It was love at first sight, but after several mostly idyllic (including the requisite sprinkle of sudden storms, engine troubles and fog) the pair go their separate ways. Mowat was already married, with two small children, a fact he had previously failed to mention to the reader and which naturally casts a bit of a pall.

Though Mowat makes no excuses, his friends and family - and hers too - seem remarkably enthusiastic about the romance. Either his first marriage was something awful, which does not seem the case, or his memory has reshaped itself. Eventually Mowat tells his wife and goes off with Claire.

They take up residence in Burgeo, Newfoundland, and continue spending summers sailing the coast and meeting its people. While a few communities are insular and suspicious, most are immediately hospitable, inviting the couple into their homes for meals, drink, stories and, when called for, a bed.

Arriving in Francois (Fransway) during a Force 7 gale, he and Claire are taken in by a friend who fed them rabbit soup and roast caribou. Mowat then "learned that it would be necessary for Les to take us to visit every single one of the family connections to show he and Carol weren't trying to hoard us. Visitors had to be shared, just like everything else in an outpost."

The anecdotes and tall tales Mowat collects form an endlessly fascinating portrait of people's work lives, bravery, quirks, superstitions, and customs. These are seamlessly complemented by historical research and interviews, documenting the long and inexorable decline of a proud, hardscrabble way of life. There is regret and sadness, but no self-pity among the Newfies.

Mowat has written more than 40 books, mostly about the people, places, creatures and history of a rapidly disappearing natural world. While this book meanders more than some, his customary passion, humor and eloquence draw the reader into his world.

But it's a world in which he remains an outsider. He is reminded of this from time to time, but the senseless killing of a lone whale (documented in "A Whale for the Killing") stranded in a nearby lake, ends the book and the Mowats' happy sojourn in Burgeo. Though many disapproved of the louts who slaughtered the whale for sport, more disapproved of Mowats' actions in bringing the press down upon them.

A postscript lists other Mowat Newfoundland books, including "This Rock Within the Sea" "Sea of Slaughter," and "The Farfarers." "The Boat Who Wouldn't Float" describes his restoration of the Happy Adventure.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A book with interesting parts but lacking in integrity, August 21, 2009

By 

min-bee (Nyack, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bay of Spirits: A Love Story (Paperback)

Farley Mowat writes well and his material is usually interesting. I don't like his mix of the personal and the "antropologic" in this tale of adultery. I found it disingenuous that on page 79 (hardcover edition) he reveals:"Claire had to return to Toronto and her job. I was a married man...." Then a few pages later, he gives Claire's response to his phone call:"I never expected to hear your voice once we were back in Ontario. I ... was sure it could never be more than a summer romance ... when you were a man with two small children." Well, eventually they found a way. When Mowat's wife refused him a divorce, he and Claire decided to call themselves man and wife and live "common law." It's ironic that in the chapter entitled "Seduction," Mowat tells how he reported a large suspicious vessel that refused to identify itself to the Canadian authorities, who obligingly sent a bomber to check out the vessel-- which still refused to reply--and then got the US Navy to send a destroyer to stop the vessel. The ship was the yacht of an otherwise low-profile millionaire who had skipped the paperwork and sailed into Canadian waters to do some illegal salmon fishing. Mowat waxes over the millionaire's "arrogance" in not following the legalities; Mowat makes disparaging comments on the yacht's release and accusingly mentions the great wealth of the yacht's owner as the deciding factor. Mowat's indignation is comical and ironic here. Was the yacht owner so different from Mowat, who ignored the paperwork that would make his "marriage" to Claire legal? And Mowat doesn't condemn another ship's official who refused to let him and Claire share a cabin because they didn't have a marriage license, but reversed himself when Mowat announced he wanted their fares refunded. So it was okay when money talked for "the Mowats," but not okay when it talked for the yacht owner. As another reviewer mentioned, this double standard casts a pall on the story--not to mention Mowat's integrity. This is a book that Mowat couldn't have written at the time the events were happening--too much social disapproval then. Nor do I think he would have included the oft-repeated swear word "she-c..t," which even today is very rarely seen in print.