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Allan Mow, Journalist Accused of Fabricating Mystery, Dies at 66
 
April 1, 2010 - Allan Mow, who in the 1980s achieved national prominence as the author of an indigenous ghost story that captivated the reading public in the province of British Columbia, where many continue to believe the story was not fiction, died on Thursday, March 18 in the capital city of Victoria, where he had lived since 1985. He was 64.
A spokesperson for the Victoria Police Department said Mr. Mow's body had been recovered from the Victoria Harbour, and that the Regional Coroner's office had ruled it a suicide. Mr. Mow's sister, Regina Diane Marias, of Victoria, said her brother had suffered from depression and paranoia for most of his life, as a result of the 1980 events from which he first earned his reputation. Mr. Mow had been missing since March 17, when he attended a gala promoted as "The St. Patrick's All Night Long Boat Party" aboard the Victoria Princess Cruise Ship.
It is presumed that Mr. Mow jumped overboard, as officials for Victoria Princess did not notice or report any altercation, nor indeed note Mr. Mow's disappearance until contacted by Victoria Police. A flyer for the cruise, as well as the circled question, "Do You Need a Girlfriend?" in an advertisement for Seductresses Unlimited, a local escort agency, were found by Ms. Marias in Mr. Mow's downtown bachelor suite, who searched the apartment when her brother failed to return her phone calls for several days. Citing the agency's policy of client confidentiality, a spokesperson for Seductresses Unlimited said she could not confirm police allegations that Mr. Mow was accompanied on the cruise by a woman known to operate under the alias "Candi". Before disconnecting she added, unprovoked, "Can I just say, though? - poor Allan! He'd been with us from the beginning."
A semi-reclusive author who developed a national cult following shortly after working as a news reporter for The Daily Clarion, then a daily, now a weekly, in Valley Southside, British Columbia, Mr. Mow is credited as the inspiration for what emerged as a national anti-property development movement, which raised awareness of the importance of preserving the architectural heritage of small towns across Canada. In The Frollett Homestead, a five-part series published in 1980, Mr. Mow claimed to have met, and interviewed, an octogenarian "witch doctor", named Tobias Elliott, who Mow believed to be the last living descendant of a now-extinct, migratory aboriginal tribe called the Chippeweyans.
In Mr. Mow's story, the tribe had unique psychokinetic powers which they employed for many uses, including the resistance of real estate development. Soundly debunked by historians across the country, many of whom pointed out that Mow had simply borrowed, and loosely modified, the name of his fictional tribe from the Chipewyan, a tribe of Dené, who presently number approximately 11,000. The Frollett Homestead circulated for years amongst conspiracy theorists and fans of the paranormal, not as a work of fiction, but as a historical document. Many of his detractors have long maintained that it was Mr. Mow himself, who began photocopying and distributing the story to such groups, a claim the author denied repeatedly.
The more dedicated amongst Mow's followers called themselves "Homesteaders" and organized, particularly during the movement's apex from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s, national conventions, where they speculated on the actual, physical location of the Homestead, and sold a range of Frollett Homestead-inspired paraphernalia, including a now-legendary T-shirt that bears Mow's likeness and the legend "Mow Knows"; in 2007, one such shirt, from the original 1984 screen printing, sold for a record $1,650, on the Internet auction site eBay to an unknown buyer in Fort Nelson, B.C.
Mow was surprised by the popularity of his story, and maintained a critical distance from it. Although he never disavowed its authenticity, neither did he formally offer his support of the Homesteaders movement, which lobbied the City of Valley Southside, unsuccessfully, to name May 15 "Allan Mow Day". That date has achieved a special place in Homesteader lore as the date of publication of the last of the five installments, and the last day, in 1980, of Mow's employment at The Daily Clarion. For "professional misconduct" Mr. Mow's employment was terminated by the newspaper, which has maintained official silence about Mow's tenure there, and the newspaper's subsequent vilification by Homesteaders, who have accused The Daily Clarion of destroying, or concealing, evidence that would verify the claims made by Mr. Mow in The Frollett Homestead. The Daily Clarion did not respond to interview requests.
In contrast to his public reputation, as a man possessed of many of the same mystical skills attributed to Tobias Elliott, and a man believed by his followers to be able to alter destiny psychokinetically, Allan Mow was described by friends as difficult and uncommunicative, a long-haired barfly who spent the majority of his time altering the patterns of his own mind, usually through gin. Beloved by bartenders throughout Victoria, and also in Vancouver, where he travelled occasionally to speak at Homesteaders conventions, Mr. Mow did not again obtain regular employment as a journalist following his termination from The Daily Clarion. From 1981 until 1987 he worked irregularly as a roofer in Victoria, until freelance writing, usually related to The Frollett Homestead, and speaking fees from conventions, both the result of the persistence and growth of the Homesteaders movement, supplied Mr. Mow with enough income to quit this line of work. In an interview with the Victoria Times Colonist in 1992, on the tenth year anniversary of the publication of The Frollett Homestead, Mr. Mow said, "F--- it, I was too old to roof anymore anyway. Have you ever tried it? S--- gets scary up there."
Born in Victoria in 1946, Allan Mow attended the University of Victoria for a year in 1965 before moving to Regina, Saskatchewan where he obtained an undergraduate degree in journalism from The University of Regina, in 1968. He worked on small- to mid-sized weekly, and, later, daily, newspapers without distinction, save for the Frollett affair, for the duration of his short-lived journalistic career. According to Ms. Marias, most of his writing jobs were terminated by the employer for insubordination, earning him a reputation that forced him to the otherwise unremarkable Valley Southside where a combination of sunshine, and, briefly, a girlfriend, gave Mr. Mow the most fruitful, if short-lived, period of his career.
"Allan, may he rest in peace, didn't even know himself anymore what was true or not," Ms. Marias said. "Let's be honest: my brother drowned himself to death about twenty years before he drowned himself to death. Witch doctor? Please. What would I say to all of those people who think he was? Pull your head out, I guess? Pull your head out, and get a job. Oh, and stop phoning me." She went on to explain that she had had to change her telephone number more times than she would "care to count," as a result of overzealous Homesteaders seeking biographical information, or updated contact information, about her brother.
In addition to Ms. Marias, Mr. Mow is survived by three grandchildren.
 | The Frollett Homestead |  |
A long-rumoured book based on the original stories, written by Okanagan College professor Colin Snowsell, will be published in late April 2010.
Here's what we know so far:
  A "Valley Vignettes" Special Five Part Report
Published between April 18 and May 25, 1980
as part of The Daily Clarion's centenary
celebration of Valley Southside's founding
By Allan Mow, Staff Reporter
What starts out as a simple newspaper report on a decaying farmstead and the family that once lived there, turns into a tour de force of writing at the hands of Colin Snowsell.
"I found it impossible to regard the Frollett Homestead and not hear the chants of the ghosts of children, children who play there no longer. Children grown old. Children passed on. The day I visited the Frollett homestead I kept looking at my octogenarian host, only to see beside me a boy not yet eight."
The Frollett Homestead A Novella by Colin Snowsell
WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY GARY NYLANDER
64 pages, paperback, limited edition of 500 copies signed by the author.
A publication of the Okanagan Institute | ISBN 978-0-9810271-4-2 | $20
Click the Add to Cart button below to order yours now.
PLEASE JOIN US FOR THE OFFICIAL OKANAGAN LAUNCH:
Kelowna May 6, 2010 - 5pm at the Bohemian Café
Vernon May 12, 2010 - 5pm at the Kalamalka Café
Penticton May 18, 2010 - 5pm at Hooked on Books
For more information and to ensure your reservations, click here.
 Colin Snowsell holds a MA in Communications Studies from the University of Calgary. He is finishing a PhD through the
Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. An interview he did with Chuck Klosterman in Spin Magazine, on Morrissey and his Latino fans, now appears in Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas (2006). Snowsell believes a line from that article - "Frankly, Snowsell doesn't know why all this happened, either" - continues to summarize his intellectual endeavours, but perhaps not in the way Klosterman intended. The more one reads and the more one thinks, the more questions one raises and that, Snowsell would like to remind Klosterman, is kind of the point of the whole thing. Presently, Snowsell is thinking about Canadian cowboy mythology, steakhouses and diners. Maybe he is just hungry. Always, Snowsell thinks about Raymond Chandler and Los Angeles in the 1930s, the decline of Britpop, the appeal of shoegazing, Nightmare Alley, The Wire, the short stories of John Cheever, Swedish indiepop, and who would win in fights between: Gene Tierney and Linda Darnell; Alain Delon and Buck Owens; Montgomery Clift and The Clash; 50 Cent and David Caruso. Despite his fondness for pop culture, Snowsell still thinks Theodor Adorno was right.
Snowsell's essays have been published in This Magazine, Maisonneuve and PopMatters. Earlier versions of Snowsell have appeared on MuchMusic (in the role of Calgary alt-indie impresario), obtained a journalism diploma from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and worked in corporate communications at Greyhound Canada's head office in Calgary. Prior to joining the Communications faculty at Okanagan College, Snowsell taught professional communication at the
University of Saskatchewan.
The text is accompanied by a suite of photographs by Gary Nylander that shadow the tone and temperment of the writing, and the story. Nylandeer is a staff photojournalist at Kelowna's Daily Courier. His work has received numerous awards including the 2003 Canadian Press News Picture of the Year, and have been shown in the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University.
"Already respected as a sharp, sly observer of present-day pop culture, Colin Snowsell reveals himself here as an expert spinner of tall tales and mind-twisting historical mysteries. The Frollett Homestead pulls you in with skill and charm, and I finished it longing for more of its ineffectual journalistÊ hero, Allan Mow, and his world in which newspapers and crusty old country folk still matter. This little book is a genuine delight." - Will Straw, Professor, Department of Art History & Communication Studies, McGill University, author of Cyanide and Sin and co-editor of the Cambridge Companion to Rock and Pop.
I wrote The Frollett Homestead in 2007, the week after I moved from Montreal to Saskatoon, where I lived for one year before carrying on West to Kelowna. I wrote it because I was broke, unemployed, living in a basement suite and wondering if it was even technically possible to have ruined so thoroughly what had seemed like a promising academic career. I wrote because I didn't know what else to do, and I couldn't afford TV, or the Internet or booze. I was tired of writing the academic essays I'd been writing for more than a decade, and uninterested in the small stories about feelings and romantic break-ups, and the quotidian minutiae that everyone else seemed to be writing about. I wanted to write a story that was fantastic, that allowed my philosophical training a forum less confining than treatises, and that took me from a bleak present to places I knew only as a happy youth.
My parents, Doug and Ann, were both raised in Kelowna, before leaving for Vancouver to attend university. I spent occasional Christmas and summer holidays here. But when I wrote this story, I hadn't been in Kelowna, for almost 20 years, and I had not, prior to my appointment at Okanagan College, ever lived here. I had no idea, when I wrote The Frollett Homestead, that I would be living in Kelowna when the story was published, and that, because of this, the majority of readers would be from The Okanagan Valley who might be inclined to view this story as thinly veiled local history about real places. It's not, not really. The imprecision of adolescent memory forced me to invent and this forced invention based on shards of memory is, I feel, the source of the mystery. What you can't remember you can't describe, so all you can do is make shit up.
I wanted to write a short mystery like Henry James' Turn of the Screw, and that's where the tone comes from, maybe. The idea of an abandoned place found by following an unlikely turn in the road comes from a scene in the horror film Silent Hill. After that, there's some realness: there really is a homestead, and I really did visit it last when I was 14, and the way I remember it bears probably no more relation to its actual condition than this story does to anything about the Okanagan. Like my narrator, I couldn't find that homestead anymore, even if I wanted to. It's ok, though, because I don't.
- Colin Snowsell, Kelowna BC, December 2009
"The Frollett Homestead is a poignant and compelling novella that takes the reader on a journey to unexpected places and to a deep mystery. Nothing is quite as it seems. Nothing can be taken for granted. The writing is crisp and eloquent and the powerful tale that Snowsell weaves won't be easily forgotten." - David Taras, Professor, Department of Communication and Culture, University of Calgary, author of The Newsmakers: The Media's Influence on Canadian Politics, and Power & Betrayal in the Canadian Media
"The last reporter honestly reporting, Allan Mow persists in his pursuit of the truth, though coworkers mock his interest in his community's past as quaint and mawkish. As his hero argues for the local, Snowsell's prose deftly argues for the enduring power of our language, its sinewy precision a perfect representation of the hero's seemingly doomed project."Ê - Sean Johnston, author of All This Town Remembers
"The Frollett Homestead is a joy to read: a puzzle, a ghost story, and a psychological study. It is both amusing and thoughtful, challenging our expectations and simple understandings. Like Nylander's photographs, Snowsell's prose is masterful and individual. And he is more than a promising writer: he is a full-blown talent." - Caterina Edwards, author of Finding Rosa.
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