As Suzanne Methot states in a review of Mowat's "Walking on the Land": "Fact: the Ihalmiut existed, and they were relocated to useless expanses of land no fewer than three times, shunted about by a government intent on building a colonial vision from sea to sea to sea." According to Methot the vilification of Mowat, who was dubbed "Hardly Nowit" and pictured in "Saturday Night" magazine with a Pinocchio nose, continued into the 1990s. She describes the story told by Mowat as one "of horrifying neglect and outright stupidity on the part of the federal government." Of the controversy surrounding Mowat's epic, Margaret Atwood is quoted as saying: