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Feb 24, 2014Liber_vermis rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
I came to this book thinking it was a novel on which the adventure movie of the same name was based. This book is a collection of about a dozen short stories involving the aboriginal peoples of northern Canada and their interaction with 'whites' over the past hundred years or so. The title is the Inuit name for "The Grim Reaper" who features prominently in the tough, unforgiving and close-knit subsistence lives of northern aboriginals. Mowat has a vividness and economy of writing style that makes these short stories shine like the snowy Barrens under a full moon. The concluding docu-story is a damning account of the Canadian federal government's program to relocate Inuit peoples to "colonize" high Arctic islands in order to assert sovereignty. This book should be on the bookshelf of "Canadian classics".