In May of this year Farley Mowat turned 83. His latest book, No Man’s River, shows that the grand old man of Canadian adventure writing hasn’t lost his touch. This is a first-person account of Mowat’s trip, in 1947, to the far north. But it’s far from being a straight wilderness narrative.

At the beginning of his tale, Mowat tells of how, as a soldier just back from the battlefields of the Second World War, he found civilian life in Canada almost unbearable. Recalling a trip he took to the caribou country of northern Manitoba with an uncle some 10 years earlier, he decided to head north again in an attempt to make some sense of his life, his home and native land, and the global conflict that had just finished.

The resulting book is classic Mowat, combining details of the rugged bushland with his encounters with – and commentary on – the Dene and Inuit people he meets as he presses further north. Hooking up with a Métis trapper named Charles Schweder gave Mowat further opportunity to explore the the native peoples of the region.

Although the main narrative succeeds well enough on its own, the book is enhanced by the frequent inclusion of excerpts from journals and diaries – mostly Mowat’s and Schweder’s. It is through these firsthand descriptions, now almost 60 years old, that the reader gets a true sense of what it was like to be on the trek, and how the worlds of Canadian whites and natives often came into conflict.

Veteran or not, Mowat has managed to supply, once again, a compelling adventure tale, spiced up with enough lively commentary to keep readers turning the pages all the way to the end.