Personal life

Mowat was born and educated in Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

, Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

. She graduated from Havergal College

Havergal College

Havergal College is an independent boarding and day school for girls from Junior Kindergarten to Grade 12 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.Named for English hymn composer, author and humanitarian Frances Ridley Havergal, the school was founded in 1894 by a group of men led by The Honourable H...

 and the Ontario College of Art & Design

Ontario College of Art & Design

OCAD University is Canada's largest and oldest educational institution for art and design. It is located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on McCaul Street beside the Art Gallery of Ontario...

 as a Graphic designer

Graphic designer

A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, printed or electronic media, such as brochures and...

 and is married to author Farley Mowat

Farley Mowat

Farley McGill Mowat, , born May 12, 1921 is a conservationist and one of Canada's most widely-read authors.His works have been translated into 52 languages and he has sold more than 14 million books. He achieved fame with the publication of his books on the Canadian North, such as People of the...

. The couple split their time between Port Hope, Ontario

Port Hope, Ontario

Port Hope is a municipality in Southern Ontario, Canada, about east of Toronto and about west of Kingston. It is located at the mouth of the Ganaraska River on the north shore of Lake Ontario, in the west end of Northumberland County...

, and the Cape Breton

Cape Breton Island

Cape Breton Island is an island on the Atlantic coast of North America. It likely corresponds to the word Breton, the French demonym for Brittany....

 community of River Bourgeois, Nova Scotia

River Bourgeois, Nova Scotia

River Bourgeois is a small community in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, located in Richmond County on Cape Breton Island. Canadian writers and activists, Farley Mowat, and his wife, Claire, have their summer home there. It is the hometown of former NHL player Mike McPhee. His father still...

.

Career

Mowat began writing memoir

Memoir

A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...

s in the 1960s, leading in 1983 to her first book The Outport People, about the five years she and husband Farley spent at the start of their marriage in the outport

Newfoundland outport

An outport is the term given for a small isolated coastal community in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Originally the term was just used for coastal communities on the island of Newfoundland but the term has also been adopted for those on the mainland area of Labrador as...

 Newfoundland

Newfoundland and Labrador

Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada. Situated in the country's Atlantic region, it incorporates the island of Newfoundland and mainland Labrador with a combined area of . As of April 2011, the province's estimated population is 508,400...

 community of Burgeo. Her second book Pomp and Circumstances (1989) arose from witnessing protocol behind the scenes at the Governor General's

Governor General of Canada

The Governor General of Canada is the federal viceregal representative of the Canadian monarch, Queen Elizabeth II...

 residence Rideau Hall

Rideau Hall

Rideau Hall is, since 1867, the official residence in Ottawa of both the Canadian monarch and the Governor General of Canada. It stands in Canada's capital on a 0.36 km2 estate at 1 Sussex Drive, with the main building consisting of 170 rooms across 9,500 m2 , and 24 outbuildings around the...

 in Ottawa

Ottawa

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...

. A 2005 memoir Travels with Farley: A Memoir describes the couple's life in the Magdalen Islands

Magdalen Islands

The Magdalen Islands form a small archipelago in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence with a land area of . Though closer to Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, the islands form part of the Canadian province of Quebec....

, following the still-birth of their only child. She has also written a trilogy of young-adult fiction: The Girl from Away (1992), The French Isles (1994) and Last Summer in Louisbourg (1998).