The famed Canadian nature author Farley Mowat has died at 92, Tuesday evening, May 6, 2014, in Port Hope, Ontario.

Mowat’s books are treasure troves of wildlife stories, and in one notable case, he specifically collected information on a rare cryptid.

According to his book People of the Deer (1952: 313-316), an Inuit man told Farley Mowat, in the 1940s, that his father had encountered the little-known giant Canadian aquatic monster, the angeoa, at the end of the nineteenth century.  It overturned his informant’s father’s kayak, killing his companion.

The Angeoa is said to be an enormous whale or fish of Inuktitut mythology in Canada. Said to be solid black with a humongous fin and 50-60 feet long. It is reported in Dubawnt Lake in Nunavut, Canada. George Eberhart has pointed out the etymology is Inuktitut (Eskimo-Aleut).

Farley Mowat also, along with other passengers on a ship, said he say a shark’s dorsal fin in Lake Ontario in the 1960s.

Furthermore, as others have pointed out, Mowat in his book Sea of Slaughter looks back to the 16th and 17th century and reveals an abundant ocean ecosystem of astounding variety, which no longer exists. Mowat also remarked on the common practice during WWII was to use radar to identify targets and eliminate them prior to checking out whether they could be rare marine mammals, giant squids, Sea Serpents or Giant Octopuses.

Cryptozoologists might wish to review Farely Mowat’s books for hidden ethnoknown cryptid gems.

Mowat wrote 40 books based on his own adventures. His best-known are Never Cry Wolf and Lost in the Barrens.

Since Mowat was 13, according to the Associated Press, he

was fiercely dedicated to writing about the natural world. As a young teen he started a magazine called Nature Lore and had a column in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix.

Mowat was born in Belleville, Ontario, on May 12, 1921. The son of a librarian, he grew up in Windsor, Ontario, and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. His novels and other non-fiction works have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Never one to shy away from controversy, Mowat was outspoken about many environmental and social issues. He called Canada’s treatment of aboriginals “abominable,” said Canada’s annual seal hunt was, “perhaps the most atrocious single trespass by human beings against the living world that’s taking place today,” and said hunts in general were “symbolic of the massive destruction that we’ve visited upon life.”