Grey Owl
Portrait by Yousuf Karsh, 1936
Born	Archibald Stansfeld Belaney (1888-09-18)September 18, 1888 Hastings, East Sussex, England
Died	April 13, 1938(1938-04-13) (aged 49) Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada
Education	Hastings Grammar School
Occupation(s)	Writer, Lecturer, Conservationist
Employers	Dominion Parks Service
Known for	Environmental conservation
Spouses	Angele Egwuna ​ (m. 1910)​ Ivy Holmes ​ (m. 1917⁠–⁠1922)​ Yvonne Perrier ​ (m. 1936)​
Partner	Gertrude Bernard
Children	4

Archibald Stansfeld Belaney (September 18, 1888 – April 13, 1938), commonly known as Grey Owl, was a popular writer, public speaker and conservationist. Born an Englishman, in the latter years of his life he passed as half-Indian, claiming he was the son of a Scottish man and an Apache woman.^{[lower-alpha 1]} With books, articles and public appearances promoting wilderness conservation, he achieved fame in the 1930s. Shortly after his death in 1938, his real identity as the Englishman Archie Belaney was exposed.^[2]: 210ff

Moving to Canada as a young man, Belaney established himself as a woodsman and trapper, before rising to prominence as an author and lecturer. While working for the Dominion Parks Branch of Canada in the 1930s, Belaney was named the "caretaker of park animals," first at Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba and then at Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan.^{[2]: 92, 108} His views on wilderness conservation, expressed in numerous articles, books, lectures and films, reached audiences beyond the borders of Canada, bringing attention to the negative impact of exploiting nature and the urgent need to develop respect for the natural world.^[3]

Recognition of Belaney includes biographies, academic studies, historic plaques in England, Ontario and Quebec, and a film based on his life, directed by Richard Attenborough.

Early life

Archibald Stansfeld Belaney was born on September 18, 1888, in Hastings, England, into an upper-middle-class English family. His father was George Belaney and his mother Katherine "Kittie" Cox. His paternal grandfather had come from Scotland and married in England.^{[2]: 8–11}

Kittie was George Belaney's second wife. Before Archie's birth, George had immigrated to the United States with his then-wife Elizabeth Cox and her younger sister, Kittie. After Elizabeth's early death, George married 15-year old Kittie. Within the year they returned to England in time for the birth of their son Archie. George was unable to settle down to steady employment and wasted much of the family's fortune on various unsuccessful business ventures. He agreed to return permanently to the United States in exchange for a small allowance. Archie remained in England in the care of his father's mother, Juliana Belaney, and his father's two younger sisters, Janet Adelaide Belaney and Julia Caroline Belaney, whom the boy would know as Aunt Ada and Aunt Carry. It was Aunt Ada who would come to dominate Archie's early life.^{[2]: 11–13}

Belaney attended Hastings Grammar School, where he excelled in subjects such as English, French and chemistry. "He mixed little with the other students in class, or afterwards. The shy, withdrawn boy, ashamed of having been abandoned by his parents, lived largely in his own world.^[2]: 15 Outside school, he spent time reading and exploring St Helen's Wood near his home. He also collected snakes. Belaney was known for pranks, such as using his chemistry set to make small bombs, which he called "Belaney Bombs".^{[2]: 14–21}

Fascinated by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Belaney read about them and drew pictures of them in the margins of his books. He prepared maps showing the linguistic divisions in Canada and the locations of the tribes. His knowledge impressed his aunt Ada:

She was amazed at his knowledge of the detail. These names came rolling off his tongue without any hesitation. He was not interested in the romantic picture of the Indians but in their mastery over nature, how they lived and survived in such a harsh climate, how they organized their lives, married, hunted, fished, trapped for furs, helped themselves to the bounty of nature but “farmed” the game so that the numbers of animals never grew less.^[1]: 37

Belaney left Hastings Grammar School and started working as a clerk in a lumber yard, where, on weekends, he and his friend George McCormick perfected knife throwing and marksmanship. He hated the job and ensured a sudden end to it by lowering a bag of fireworks down the chimney of the company's office. The resulting explosion almost destroyed the building. Although, in agreement with his aunt Ada, he was supposed to work longer in England, he was finally allowed to move to Canada,^{[2]: 23–24} with the understanding he would "learn to be a farmer while he was getting used to the country."^[1]: 39

On March 29, 1906, Belaney boarded SS Canada for Halifax, Nova Scotia. Arriving on April 6, he went to Toronto, where, with no intention of becoming a farmer, he worked for some time in a retail shop (perhaps Eaton's).^{[2]: 24, 36}

First years in Canada

Toronto held no appeal for Belaney, and in the fall of 1906 he headed north. In an autobiographical manuscript, he later wrote about his experience as the train left the farmland of southern Ontario and entered the Canadian Shield:

Against the horizon & beyond the edge of the low range of hills that bounded a distance of full 30 miles, a heavy column of smoke rose & seemed to meet the sky where it turned & rolled off in immense billows to the south, the smoke of a forest fire. Over all shone the sun bringing into contrast the lights & shades of hill and valley. To me this was a wonderful sight; my first glimpse of the wilderness.^[2]: 35

Soon after arriving at Lake Timiskaming, located on the boundary between Ontario and Quebec, he encountered Bill Guppy, who later recalled "...his first meeting at the Temiskaming station with the 'decent young fellow, with such a friendly air, and so earnest about becoming a guide.' The veteran woodsman took him on, and would never forget this young Englishman who had '"individuality", a little something that made him stick out in any crowd.'"^[2]: 35

Belaney spent the winter of 1906-1907 with Guppy and his brothers, getting his first lessons in trapping. In spring Belaney and the Guppys left for Lake Temagami by canoe. During the long trip he experienced his first taste of portaging heavy loads over difficult trails. The Guppys found work for the summer as guides at the recently constructed Temagami Inn on Temagami Island. With no experience, Belaney was forced to work at the inn as a "chore-boy." He returned home to Hastings for a short visit during the winter of 1907-1908, perhaps to ask for money from his aunts. He learned then that his father had been killed in a drunken brawl in the United States.^{[2]: 37–39}

Belaney returned to Temagami in 1908 and continued working as a chore-boy at the Temagami Inn. According to Donald B. Smith, "He set out to lose the remaining traces of his English accent. He refined his story of his Indian boyhood in Mexico and the American Southwest."^[2]: 39 It was there that he met Angele Egwuna, who was working at the inn as a kitchen-helper. She spoke little English and he little Ojibwa, but a friendship developed. Through Angele he also met members of her family, who called him "gitchi-saganash" (tall Englishman). Her uncle gave him the nickname "ko-hom-see" (little owl), a name that would be transformed years later into “Grey Owl.”

The Egwunas invited Belaney to spend the winter of 1909-1910 trapping with them in the bush to the east of the south arm of Lake Temagami.

That winter Archie learned how the Temagami Ojibwa harvested their hunting territories, taking only those animals required for clothing and for food, leaving the rest to breed. They took only the increase. The Indians farmed the beaver most carefully, keeping count of the number of occupants, old and young, of each lodge.^[2]: 42

The time with the Egwunas improved both his proficiency with the Ojibwa language and the skills he needed to survive and make a living in the bush. Belaney would later report this as his "formal adoption" by the Ojibwa. The boy from Hastings was finally living the life he had dreamed of.^{[2]: 39–42}

In the summers of 1910 and 1911, Belaney worked as a guide at Camp Keewaydin, an American boys’ camp on Lake Temagami. On August 23, 1910, he and Angele Egwuna were married on Bear Island in a Christian ceremony. In spring 1911 their daughter Agnes was born.^{[2]: 43–44}

There is no clear record of Belaney's life in the winter of 1911-1912.^[2]: 45 He next surfaces, alone, in the summer of 1912 in Biscotasing. He worked in the surrounding area as a forest ranger during the summers of 1912-1914 and spent the winters in the bush on the trapline. In Bisco, Belaney began a relationship with Marie Girard, a Metis woman who worked as a maid in the boarding-house where he stayed. At his invitation she joined him on his trapline during the winter of 1913-14.^{[2]: 47–52}

There is again no clear record of Belaney's life in the winter of 1914-1915.^[2]: 52 In June, 1915, he sailed for England with the Canadian Army. Marie Girard died of tuberculosis in the fall of 1915, shortly after giving birth to their son, John Jero.^[2]: 53 In his first years in Canada, Belaney had established himself as a backcountry woodsman, with a keen appreciation for the wilderness. His debut as husband and father had not been a success.

In the Canadian Army

Belaney enlisted with the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force on May 6, 1915 during the First World War.^{[lower-alpha 2]} In June he was shipped to England and initially assigned to the 23rd Reserve Battalion in Kent. He later joined the 13th Battalion (Royal Highlanders of Canada), known as the Black Watch, and was shipped to the front line in France, where he served as a sniper. Fellow soldiers accepted his assumed Indian identity, with one writing that he "...saw him squirm up muddy hills in a way no white man could. He had all the actions and features of an Indian.... Never in all my life did I ever meet a man who was better able to hide when we would go out onto No Man’s Land."^{[2]: 55–58}

Belaney was wounded in the right wrist on January 15, 1916. Then on April 23 he was shot in the right foot, a serious injury from which he never fully recovered. He was shipped back to England, where it was found necessary to amputate a toe. From November 1916 to March 1917, he convalesced in the Canadian Military Hospital in his home town of Hastings.^{[2]: 58–60}

Encouraged by his aunts, Belaney renewed his childhood friendship with Ivy Holmes. Ivy, then 26, was an accomplished professional dancer, who had travelled extensively in Europe. Acquainted with her since childhood, he dispensed with the pretense of being Indian. She found that his stories about canoeing in Canada made the "backwoods sound terribly attractive." Belaney was silent about his wife and child back in Canada. They were married on February 10, 1917.^{[2]: 61–63}

The couple decided that Belaney would return to Canada and establish himself near Biscotasing, then send for Ivy, who "looked forward to seeing his beloved wilderness." Exactly how he thought that plan would work out, with a legal wife and child no more than 100 kilometers away and (as far as he knew) a mistress in the same town, is a mystery. Belaney left for Canada on September 19, 1917. Ivy never saw him again. He wrote to her for a year until he finally admitted that he was already married. Ivy divorced him in 1922.^{[2]: 63, 170}

Back to Canada

Belaney returned to Canada in September, 1917, and was discharged from the army at the end of November. His most pressing concern was his wounded foot, which was painful and limited his mobility - an unfortunate prospect for someone who wanted to go back into the bush. In October he received treatment at a hospital in Toronto, but achieved little success. He had other worries: What to do about his first wife, Angele, and his daughter Agnes? What to do about his second wife, Ivy, still in England and expecting to be sent for? What to do about his illegitimate son, Johnny, born to his deceased mistress Marie? After meeting with Angele, he returned to Biscotasing at the end of 1917, alone.^{[2]: 64–65}

Belaney soon gained a reputation for drunkenness and disorderly conduct in Bisco.^{[2]: 68–69} Despite this, he made a favorable impression on many people, one person recalling "[I] liked immensely this endearing rebel. Archie was one of the nicest things that happened to me when I was growing up."^[2]: 71

Belaney spent much of 1918 recuperating and gradually regained control of his right foot, but the disability remained for the rest of his life, with his foot sometimes swelling to twice its normal size.^[2]: 68 He did not approach Johnny and the boy did not learn who his father was till years later.^[2]: 67 He finally admitted to Ivy that he was already married, which ended their relationship. (He would be served divorce papers in 1921.) Now he had a new worry: His aunts were furious with him and regarded his treatment of Angele and Ivy as "nothing less than diabolical."^[2]: 71

In the summer of 1919, Belaney worked on a survey party in the bush. A co-worker recalled "The 'Mexican half-breed' had an unattractive side. 'He was taciturn and morose, with a violent, almost maniacal temper.'"^[2]: 68

His best friends in Bisco were the Espaniels, an Indigenous family with whom he lived in the early 1920s. He joined them for two winters trapping at Indian Lake on the east branch of the Spanish River. Belaney also maintained a cabin on his hunting ground nearby at Mozhabong Lake.

From the Espaniels, Archie learned the “Indian way of doing things” — which in Jim Espaniel’s words “the white man calls conservation.” Archie must keep track of the number of lodges in his hunting territory and the age of their inhabitants. Most important of all, he must leave a pair behind in each lodge.^{[2]: 71–72}

Belaney's command of the Ojibwa language also benefited from his time with the Espaniels.

In the summers of 1920 and 1921, he worked as the deputy forest ranger on the Mississagi Forest Reserve.

Here Archie was at his best, on the five three-week tours through the huge reserve, checking on the summer ranger stations situated 50 to 60 kilometres from each other.... [Belaney] loved the wilderness. He insisted that [the men under his supervision] carefully check all camping sites for fire and also work on the trails, keeping up the portages to the different lakes in their district, allowing access in case of a fire.^[2]: 70

Worried about the logging of Ontario's remaining old-growth pine forests, Belaney wanted the Mississagi area made into a park. In a fledgling attempt at conservationism, he posted signs saying "GOD MADE THIS COUNTRY FOR THE TREES DON’T BURN IT UP AND MAKE IT LOOK LIKE HELL” and “GOD MADE THE COUNTRY BUT MAN DESTROYED IT.”^[2]: 70

Inspired by his boyhood reading of authors such as Fenimore Cooper and Longfellow, Belaney invented his own elaborately choreographed "war dance," which "...surprised the local Ojibwa and Cree for, as fur buyer Jack Leve put it, 'the Bisco Indians didn’t know his brand of Indian lore.'"^[2]: 73 Local reactions to the war dance were mixed, with some people saying it was good fun, while others said it was just an excuse for drinking. Some Indigenous men joined in, while others thought the dance was evil.^[2]: 73

Belaney's big day arrived on Victoria Day, May 23, 1923. The Sudbury Star reported: "War Dance Given at Biscotasing. A Big Celebration Held on Victoria Day. In honour of the good queen to which his grandfather and namesake had sent his epic poem, The Hundred Days of Napoleon, Archie put on the greatest war dance of his life."^[2]: 74

In April, 1925, a particularly egregious piece of misbehaviour resulted in an arrest warrant being issued for Belaney. Soon after, he left Bisco for good, returning to Temagami and taking up again with Angele, who bore him a second daughter, Flora, in 1926. Amazingly, there is no record of Angele ever reproaching him for his treatment of her, and she appeared to accept his wayward conduct to the end.

Angele never forgot his last words to her that fall: “I go away. I will come back sometime. I like travel.” She still loved him, and as she knew that he “liked to go and travel in the Indian way,” she made him a new leather costume. She saw him off at the train station in the fall of 1925. Angele never saw Archie again.^{[2]: 75–76}

By then, Belaney had already begun his fourth relationship.

Transformation into Grey Owl

Grey Owl feeding a jelly roll to a beaver.

The transformation of Archie Belaney from a backcountry woodsman into the popular writer and public speaker Grey Owl began in 1925. His concern, expressed in books, articles and public appearances, was the vanishing wilderness and the consequences of this for the creatures living in it, including man. His message was “Remember you belong to nature, not it to you.”^[5]: 127

In the late summer of 1925, 36-year-old Belaney began courting 19-year-old Gertrude Bernard. Their relationship would last eleven years, till 1936,^[5]: 111 and prove to be both tumultuous and a crucial factor in Belaney's transformation.^[6]: 11 They met at Camp Wabikon on Lake Temagami, where he was working as a guide.^[7]: 1ff She was of Mohawk Algonquin descent.^[8] Her father's nickname for her was “Pony,” but Belaney would give her another name, “Anahareo,” which he derived from “Naharrenou,” the name of the Apache chief who was her great-great-grandfather.^{[7]: 18, 33} According to her account in Devil in Deerskins: My Life with Grey Owl, Belaney's answer to her father's question about his background was this: “I come from Mexico. [M]y father was Scotch and my mother was an Apache Indian.”^[7]: 9 Anahareo did not discover Belaney's true identity until his death and exposure in 1938.^{[7]: 180 [lower-alpha 3]}

In February, 1926, Anahareo joined Belaney in the Abitibi region of northwestern Quebec, where he was earning a living trapping.^[7]: 12 Their courtship was eventful at times, with Anahareo stabbing Belaney with a knife at one point.^[7]: 63 In summer Belaney proposed to her. Due to his undissolved marriage to his first wife, Angele Egwuna, the couple could not marry under Canadian law, but the chief of the Lac Simon Band of Indians declared them husband and wife.^[5]: 52

After a summer working as a fire ranger in Quebec, Belaney was back trapping again in the winter of 1926/27. Anahareo accompanied him on the trapline and was horrified by what she experienced:

Nothing in her small-town up-bringing had prepared her for the heart-wrenching sight of the frozen corpses of animals who had died in agony while trying desperately to escape from the unyielding metal jaws of the leghold traps. Nor could she bear to watch as Archie used the wooden handle of his axe to club to death those who were still living.^[5]: 52

Anahareo holding a beaver.

She attempted to make him see the torture that animals suffered when they were caught in traps.^[9] According to the account given in Pilgrims of the Wild, Belaney located a beaver lodge, which he knew to be occupied by a mother beaver, and set a trap for her. When the mother beaver was caught, he began to canoe away to the cries of the kittens, which greatly resemble the sound of human infants. Anahareo begged him to set the mother free, but, needing the money from the beaver's pelt, he could not be swayed. The next day he rescued the baby beavers, which the couple adopted.^{[10]: 27–33} As Albert Braz stated in his article "St. Archie of the Wild", "[P]rimarily because of this episode, Belaney comes to believe that it is 'monstrous' to hunt such creatures and determines to 'study them' rather than 'persecuting them further.'"^[9]: 212

In 1928, lured by stories of abundant wildlife and bush, Belaney and Anahareo, along with the adopted beavers, McGinnis and McGinty, moved to southeastern Quebec, where they were to reside until 1931. Their intention was to set up a beaver colony, where the beavers would be protected and could be studied. Arriving in Cabano in autumn to find the vicinity heavily logged and unsuitable, they moved to the area of Lake Touladi, east of Lake Témiscouata, and built a cabin on Birch Lake, where they spent Christmas and the rest of winter. They found a family of beaver in the vicinity.^{[5]: 61, 62, 66} That winter Grey Owl wrote his first article, "The Passing of the Last Frontier", which was published in 1929 under the name A.S. Belaney in the English outdoors magazine Country Life.^[2]: 297

In March 1929, Belaney received a check from Country Life for the article and a request for the book that would be published in 1931 as The Men of the Last Frontier. An unfortunate incident occurred that put an end to their dream of founding a beaver colony on Birch Lake: A friend of theirs, Dave White Stone, had arrived at their cabin while they were away and, unaware of their plans, had trapped the beavers that were to be the start of the colony. Then yet another unfortunate incident occurred: The two beavers, McGinnis and McGinty, disappeared. The couple was devastated by the incidents. Dave White Stone found them two beaver kittens, one of which soon died. They adopted the surviving beaver, naming it Jelly Roll, and moved to a cabin on Hay Lake near Cabano.^{[5]: 66–69} At the end of summer the three relocated for some time to the nearby resort town of Metis, where Belaney gave his first public lecture.^{[11] [5]: 69} He moved back to Hay Lake with Jelly Roll, while Anahareo left to work in northern Quebec.

In 1930, Belaney published his first article for the periodical Canadian Forest and Outdoors, "The Vanishing Life of the Wild.”^[2]: 297 Under the name "Grey Owl," he wrote many articles for the periodical in the following years, becoming increasingly known in Canada and the United States. In June he inadvertently caught a beaver in a trap, which he nursed back to health and named Rawhide.^[5]: 76 His writing brought him into contact with Gordon Dallyn, the editor of Canadian Forest and Outdoors, who introduced him to James Harkin, the Commissioner of National Parks.^[2]: 89 In the spring, he received a visit from the Parks Branch publicity director, J.C. Campbell.^[5]: 71 The Parks Branch commissioned the first beaver film, The Beaver People,^[12] which featured the two beavers, as well as Anahareo and Belaney (identified as Grey Owl), and was shot in the summer of 1930.^{[13]: 54, 100  [2]: 299  [lower-alpha 4]} In correspondence with Country Life, Belaney signed himself "Grey Owl" for the first time in November.^[2]: 85

In January 1931, Belaney, in the persona of Grey Owl, gave a talk at the annual convention of the Canadian Forestry Association in Montreal, where the film was shown in public for the first time. “The event was a huge success. It set the pattern for numerous speeches Grey Owl was to give, dressed in his Indian regalia, with films of his tame beaver to illustrate his stories.”^[5]: 79

Beaver Lodge

In the spring of 1931, Grey Owl accepted an offer of employment from the Parks Branch as a conservationist at the Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba. He and Anahareo, with the beavers, left Quebec, bound for the new job in the west, where a cabin had been built for them on Beaver Lodge Lake. In June, a second beaver film was produced.^[5]: 82 This film, The Beaver Family,^[14] was shot by the cameraman W. J. Oliver, and released in 1932.^{[13]: 54, 100  [2]: 299} Grey Owl would work with W.J. Oliver on more films in the coming years.^{[lower-alpha 5]}

Beaver Lodge Lake proved to be unsuitable for the beavers, as a summer drought had resulted in the water becoming stagnant and the risk of the lake freezing to the bottom in winter could not be ignored. The bigger waterways of Lake Ajawaan in Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan were found to be a better habitat for beaver.^[2]: 108 In October the group relocated to the park, which was ideal for their needs, being isolated, heavily wooded and teeming with wildlife. Grey Owl also had a favourable impression of the Superintendent of the Park, Major J.A. Wood.^[1]: 223

A cabin, known thereafter as Beaver Lodge, was built according to Grey Owl's specifications, and this would be his base until his death in 1938. He received many prominent visitors at the lodge, including the Governor-General, Lord Tweedsmuir, an admirer of Grey Owl's writings on wildlife.^{[lower-alpha 6]}

In late 1931, Grey Owl's first book, on which he had been working for two years, finally appeared. To Grey Owl's chagrin, the publisher, Country Life, changed the title from The Vanishing Frontier to The Men of the Last Frontier without consulting him. He wrote to the publisher:

That you changed the title shows that you, at least, missed the entire point of the book. You still believe that man as such is pre-eminent, governs the powers of Nature. So he does, to a large extent, in civilization, but not on the Frontier, until that Frontier has been removed. ... I speak of Nature, not men; they are incidental, used to illustrate a point only.^[2]: 115

Among other topics the book describes the plight of the beaver in the face of extensive trapping and raises concerns about the future of the Canadian wilderness and wildlife. The demand for beaver pelts in the 1920s and 30s had increased so much that the beaver was on the verge of extinction in Canada. Trappers were being drawn to the forests in higher numbers than ever before. Grey Owl argued that the only way to save the animal was to stop the influx of trappers.^[16]: 151 This was highly unlikely during the Depression, "beavers [being] to the north what gold was to the west".^[16]: 144 Though the book focusses on the beaver, Grey Owl also used the animal as “...representative not only of all North American Wild Life but of the wilderness itself...”^[17] He believed that Canada's wilderness and vast open spaces, both of which were fast disappearing, were what made it unique in the world.^[9]: 207 Grey Owl also raised concerns about how the Canadian government and logging industry were working together to exploit the forests and attempt to replace them with "synthetic forests," all the while projecting a false image of forest preservation.^{[16]: 172, 173} He wrote:

So we have the highly-diverting spectacle of one man, standing in the midst of ten million acres of stumps and arid desolation, planting with a shovel a little tree ten inches high, to be the cornerstone of a new and synthetic forest, urged on to the deed by a deputation of smug and smiling profiteers, who do not really care if the tree matures or not unless their descendants are to be engaged in the lumbering business.^[16]: 173

The Men of the Last Frontier was Grey Owl's desperate wakeup call to the people of Canada to resist the destruction of their wilderness.

The winter of 1931-1932 saw Grey Owl at work on the early chapters of Tales of an Empty Cabin, his final book, which would only be published in 1936. Anahareo, pregnant and stuck in the cabin, was fed up, later writing “All I heard from Archie that winter was the scratch, scratch of his pen, and arguments against taking a bath. Like a kid, he loathed baths.” On August 23, 1932, their daughter Dawn was born.^[2]: 112

At Beaver Lodge the third beaver film, Strange Doings in Beaverland,^[18] was shot by W. J. Oliver in August 1932. The roof of the cabin was temporarily removed to facilitate the filming of some scenes. Oliver returned in 1933 to film the fourth beaver film Grey Owl’s Neighbours,^[19] which showed Grey Owl interacting with various animals in addition to the beavers. It also showed him welcoming visitors arriving by canoe.^{[13]: 54, 100  [2]: 299} Oliver took many photographs of Grey Owl looking "consciously Indian," which were used as publicity for his lecturing tours.^[2]: 124 The photographs were also used as illustrations in Grey Owl's works.

From 1932 to 1934, Grey Owl worked on the autobiographical Pilgrims of the Wild. In early 1935, he finished the manuscript of a children's story, The Adventures of Sajo and her Beaver People. Anahareo, unable to stand the writing activity, went on two extensive prospecting trips to the Churchill River in 1933 and 1934, leaving Dawn with a family in Prince Albert.^[2]: 113

In September 1935, the last collaboration between Grey Owl and W. J. Oliver was filmed, Pilgrims of the Wild.^[20] The film showed Grey Owl and Anahareo on a canoe trip in the bush.^{[13]: 54, 100  [2]: 299}

The first tour (1935-1936)

On October 17, 1935, Grey Owl arrived at Southampton, England on the Empress of Britain from Montreal for the start of his first lecture tour in Great Britain.^[2]: 2 His London publisher, Lovat Dickson, organized the tour and described its success in the following words:

The crowds everywhere were immense and enthusiastic. In the four months he gave just over two hundred lectures and addressed nearly a quarter of a million people. He had arrived in England with a knapsack and a small piece of hand luggage; he departed at the end of the tour with a trunk and eight large pieces of luggage, six of them stuffed with gifts that had been given him for himself, and for Anahareo and their little daughter, Dawn.^[1]: 238

Grey Owl's biographer, Donald B. Smith, described his performance in Hastings, England in late 1935:

After his words of greeting from the Hastings stage, Grey Owl showed “Pilgrims of the Wild,” an eleven minute film about his life with his wife, Anahareo, at his home in distant Saskatchewan. The film had been shot at Beaver Lodge, in Prince Albert National Park in September 1935, a month before Grey Owl left Canada for Britain. It showed him and his beautiful Indian wife canoeing, portaging and calling the beaver...

The film took its title from Grey Owl's autobiography published the previous year. In this moving account the former trapper told the story of how he had decided to abandon the hunt and to work instead for the conservation of the beaver and all wildlife...

While the silent film ran, the lecturer moved to and fro across the front of the screen recounting tales of his beloved northern Canada. He told stories about wildlife--particularly about those intelligent, hard-working animals he lived with: the beaver, Canada's national animal. He talked directly to his audience, and used no notes. His animated dialogue and his second, third and fourth films magically transported his listeners from the narrow streets of Hastings to the vast, unbroken Canadian forests.”^[2]: 4

Back to Beaver Lodge

Grey Owl returned to Beaver Lodge after the wildly successful British tour in the late winter of 1936. He continued to work on Tales of an Empty Cabin, which would be published later that year.^[2]: 154

He also conceived of a new project: Having seen how much value the beaver films added to his lectures in promoting his ideas, he wanted to take a cameraman with him into the Canadian wilderness to show what it is like to travel in the bush in winter and summer. The films, along with the beaver films, would be shown during his lectures in the upcoming tour.^[1]: 243

In March he pitched the idea to the Parks Branch, which had underwritten the five beaver films, and to a number of influential people, including the Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, but his request for funding was turned down.^{[lower-alpha 7]} His publishers put up $2000 for the winter film. Grey Owl eventually paid for the summer film out of his own pocket, commenting "This picture is the dream of my life, & neither Parks nor financial considerations are to stop me."^{[2]: 155–158, 174} The summer film was supposed to be shot that year in 1936, but the complications of getting together the equipment, rivermen and a new cameraman (W. J. Oliver, with whom Grey Owl had collaborated on the previous films, not being available) led to it being postponed to the summer of 1937.^[1]: 243

The Trail - Winter (1937) was shot by Bert Bach in the Abitibi area, Quebec, where Grey Owl had spent many winters trapping in the 1920s.

The Trail - Summer (1937) was shot by Bert Bach in the Mississagi Forest Reserve, near Biscotasing, where Grey Owl had worked for many years as a fire ranger in the 1910s.

In early August 1936, Grey Owl travelled to Fort Carlton, Saskatchewan, where he attended a convention of the Great Plains Indians, commemorating the 60th anniversary of the signing of an important treaty. He participated in the "huge Indian dance" in "his own particular style" and addressed the assembly with the words: “If there is anything I can do to help your cause, please let me know, I know a number of their important people in Ottawa and I know they will listen to me, again I thank you all.”^{[2]: 160–161} About Grey Owl's reception at the event Donald Smith commented:

If John Tootoosis, and others present at the council, such as Stan Cuthand, suspected that Grey Owl was not exactly what he claimed to be, why did they not expose him? Stan feels that they stayed quiet because they knew that he was on their side. The Indians needed public figures in the dominant society to speak on their behalf. That is what mattered. They agreed with him that the white man was destroying the country and supported his mission to save the environment.^[2]: 161

On November 9, Grey Owl spoke at the Toronto Book Fair. The venue was filled to capacity with a crowd of 1,700 people, while 500 were turned away due to lack of space.

No one equalled Grey Owl for crowd appeal at Canada's first book fair, not C. W. Gordon (Ralph Connor), the best-selling Canadian novelist; not E. J. Pratt, the Canadian poet; not the famous American journalist John Gunther; not Carl Van Doren, the well-known American literary critic. The tall, lean man in buckskins and full headdress stole the show with his stirring talk on the “Unknown Canada."^[2]: 167

On November 11, he addressed members and guests of the Empire Club, including many Toronto dignitaries, telling them:

I want you gentlemen to remember this one thing. I have often been asked what my work consists of... I want to arouse in the Canadian people a sense of responsibility they have for that north country and its inhabitants, human and animal.^[2]: 168

Grey Owl's tumultuous eleven-year relationship with Anahareo ended sometime in 1936.^{[lower-alpha 8]} According to Lovat Dickson:

The date was November 15, 1936, and ice was already forming along the shore. They said their solemn goodbyes then, and each promised to come to the help of the other if the need ever arose. Then, after breakfast, when the canoes were loaded and Pony was in the stern of one with the paddle, she turned the canoe swiftly, looked back once over her shoulder, saw him standing there, and lifted her paddle in salute. Then she turned to face the other shore. She never saw him again.^[1]: 170

Anahareo's own account of the parting is less romantic:

Before leaving, I told Archie, as I always had, that if ever he needed me, to send for me. To this he answered, 'Thanks, kid, I appreciate that very much. And remember this - I won't forget you in my will.' 'Oh, quit talking like that!' I said sharply. 'Why? I'm not going to live forever...' I left Beaver Lodge, for the last time, on November 15, 1936.

On December 7, 1936, Grey Owl married Yvonne Perrier, a French Canadian woman he had met in Ottawa in March. They returned to Beaver Lodge on New Year's Day, 1937.^{[2]: 170–171}

In mid-March, the couple went to Abitibi for the shooting of the winter film. "Yvonne proved the perfect helper for Grey Owl. Quickly she learned to snowshoe and although new to winter travelling, loved it, even the camping out in Abitibi in sub-zero temperatures." Grey Owl was not in such good shape: "[I]n one or two shots he looks as though the work entailed was rather too much for him... By all accounts, Grey Owl was all in at the end of the day.”^{[2]: 173–174}

In early June, the couple went to Biscotasing, the start of the two-week canoe trip. Donald B. Smith writes "During the arduous filming that followed on the Mississagi River, one thought sustained Archie. Life on the trail in summer would be immortalized." And he quotes Grey Owl at length:

You see canoes driven at high speed over great lakes whose shores are black with pines; you see dark cavernous forests of huge trees untouched by the hand of man. Men trot over portages under mountainous loads; canoes, inverted on men’s shoulders, pass through the wood for all the world like huge running beetles on two legs. You watch while camp is made, discover how we cook and eat in primitive ways. You are made to realize the consummate skill and the unconquerable daring of trained canoemen as they drive their light, frail craft down miles of rapids, each a seething vortex of thundering white water in which canoes reel and plunge and stagger and careen, leaping to the rhythmic throbbing of the drum-fire of the rapids.^{[2]: 177–178}

Despite being exhausted by the end of the trip, Grey Owl put on his own form of war dance in Bisco:

Proudly Grey Owl came to the blazing fire wearing, in the words of the Sudbury Star, “a beautiful long, red and fancy beaded Indian costume. On his head he wore long white and brown feathers trimmed with a band of beads... The Indians present in the large crowd of onlookers were silently amused. Archie’s war song contained no surprises. It still lacked rhythm and had no Indian words in it.^[2]: 178

In July the Indian Defense League of America invited Grey Owl to participate in the annual border crossing between Niagara Falls, Ontario, and Niagara Falls, New York, as “a naturalist and champion to the beauty of wild life, notably his beloved beaver.” For the first time in his life, Grey Owl, supposedly raised in Arizona, stepped onto his native soil.^[2]: 179

The second tour (1937-1938)

Grey Owl's second tour would take in, not only Great Britain, but also the United States and Canada. He arrived in England in October 1937, accompanied by his third wife, Yvonne, who proved to be a stabilizing influence. Donald B. Smith described the second tour as his "Greatest Triumph."^[2]: 181

After perfecting his Indian story-teller role during a thirty-year period, he performed superbly. The achievement is all the more remarkable when one considers that he made up his performance as he went along. And yet, in Ken Conibear’s words, “each was so different from its predecessor that night after night I abandoned what I had planned to do while he talked and simply sat in the wings and listened, rapt.” Each talk had the same elements, “the dry humour, the self-belittlement, the exaggerations necessary to give present impact to distant reality, the glorification of Indians and the Canadian North, and the final plea for understanding and compassion.”^[2]: 186

Grey Owl gave a Royal Command Performance at Buckingham Palace on December 10, 1937, attended by King George VI and the young Princess Elizabeth. Grey Owl was impressed by the King, who struck him as a “keen woodsman.” In parting, it is reported that Grey Owl put out his hand to the King and said “Well, good-bye, Brother, and good luck to you.”^{[2]: 188–189}

After giving 140 lectures in the British stage of the tour, Grey Owl embarked on December 19, arriving in New York on New Year's Day, 1938. In the next three months he gave 28 lectures in the United States and visited nine cities in Canada.^[2]: 194

On March 26, 1938, Grey Owl appeared at a packed Massey Hall in Toronto. “On that evening nearly three thousand Canadians gave him the greatest ovation of his life.”^[2]: 209

Death and exposure

The frantic pace of the North American tour had taken a heavy toll on Grey Owl's health. To reach the Massey Hall lecture on March 26 in time, he and Yvonne had been on the train for seventeen hours, arriving in Toronto with two hours to spare. Despite this, he took the stage in the largest concert hall in Canada and gave the performance of his life: “[F]or two hours [he] enchanted everybody. He really was superb.” After the lecture they immediately boarded the Canadian Pacific transcontinental train to Regina, where on March 29 he gave the last lecture of his life.^[2]: 209

Exhausted and run-down, Grey Owl retreated, alone, to Beaver Lodge on April 7. (Yvonne was hospitalized with exhaustion in Prince Albert.) Very ill now, he called for help three days later on April 10. He was transported to hospital in Prince Albert, where he died on April 13 at the age of 49. He was buried on the ridge behind Beaver Lodge.^{[2]: 209–210}

Upon receiving notice of his death on April 13, the North Bay Nugget, which had sat on the story for three years, ran an exposé, contending that Grey Owl was the Englishman Archie Belaney, and did not have a drop of Indian blood in him.

After he died on April 13, 1938, a battle waged on both sides of the Atlantic about his origins. Archie Belaney had been so convincing as Grey Owl. After the initial disclosures about his Canadian and English past, neither Major Wood, nor Betty Somervell, nor Lovat Dickson believed the allegations. Lovat Dickson led the fight in Britain, and Major Wood in Canada, to gain acceptance of Grey Owl’s own story about his past and to put his valuable work in perspective.^[2]: 213

Lovat Dickson spent months after his death trying to disprove the identity of Grey Owl and the Englishman Archie Belaney, going so far as to ask Anahareo to England "expressly to meet Mrs. Scott-Brown, Archie's mother, hoping that [Anahareo] would, or could, detect in her a drop of Indian blood. Of course, there wasn't a trace."^[7]: 187 In the end she was forced to accept the truth:

When, finally, I was convinced that Archie was English, I had the awful feeling for all those years I had been married to a ghost, that the man who now lay buried at Ajawaan was someone I had never known, and that Archie had never really existed.^[7]: 187

But Anahareo never wavered in her regard for Grey Owl, saying:

I am an Indian and have spent all my adult life in the woods, yet never have I met one who so sincerely loved and appreciated the wilderness as [Grey Owl] did.^[6]: 62

After the first British tour, Grey Owl had explained to a friend "what he considered the purpose of his life."

He had been talking with her about how his campaign to help save the beaver had grown to embrace all animals, as well as the Indians and finally all humanity. “Down the avenue of trees,” he said, “I see a spot of sunlight. And I am trying so hard to get there.”^[2]: 215

The story of how a lonely boy playing Indian in the woods behind his house in Hastings transformed himself, first into an accomplished backcountry woodsman and trapper in the Canadian wilderness, and then into the renowned author and lecturer Grey Owl continues to fascinate and arouse controversy. “You are tired with years of civilization. I come to offer you— what? A green leaf.” (Grey Owl's words to the Royal family.)^[2]: 188

Posthumous recognition

In 1972 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) produced a documentary special on Grey Owl, directed by Nancy Ryley. In 1999, the film Grey Owl was released. It was directed by Richard Attenborough and starred Pierce Brosnan. The film received mixed reviews and received no theatrical release in the United States.

In June 1997, the mayor of Hastings and the borough's Member of Parliament (MP) (Michael Foster) unveiled a plaque in his honor on the house at 32 St. James Road, Hastings, East Sussex, where he was born.^[21][22]

The ranger station at Hastings Country Park, four miles to the east of Hastings, also has a commemorative plaque to Grey Owl. A full-size replica of his Canadian lakeside cabin is in Hastings Museum at Summerfields. An exhibition of memorabilia and a commemorative plaque are at the house at 36 St. Mary's Terrace where he lived with his grandmother and aunts.^[21]

The cabin in Riding Mountain National Park where he resided for six months in 1931 has been designated as a Federal Heritage Building and was restored in June 2019.^[23]

The cabin he had built in the 1930s still stands in Prince Albert National Park and can be reached by foot (20 kilometer hike) or by canoe (a 16 km paddle).^[24]

Alcohol use

Belaney started drinking when he arrived in Canada as a young man and was a lifelong drinker. "If one accepts alcoholism as 'recurring trouble, problems or difficulties associating with drinking,' Archie by 1930 had become an alcoholic."^{[2]: 85, 86} His favorite drink, according to Anahareo, was "Johnny Dewar's Extra Special."^[7]: 133 He would also drink vanilla extract and occasionally make his own moonshine.^[2]: 86

Following his return from service in the First World War, Belaney's use of alcohol increased, and it was not unusual for him to appear drunk in public.^[25] On the ship back to Canada from his 1935 British tour, it was noted that he "drank heavily, ate only onions and was noticeably ill."^{[26][lower-alpha 9]}

Excessive alcohol consumption compromised Grey Owl's position with the Dominion Parks Branch in Ottawa. He was supposed to meet a group of important governmental officials at the studio of Yousuf Karsh, who had organised a dinner in his honour. However, as the dinner began, Grey Owl was absent. Karsh later found him "raising a drunken row in the bar."^[2]: 156 This public display of a Parks Branch employee drunk in public caused James Harkin to have to defend Grey Owl's position within Parks Branch, writing to the Assistant Deputy Minister Roy A. Gibson "I am sorry to hear that Grey Owl has been indulging too freely in liquor. As a matter of fact, with so much Indian blood in his veins I suppose that it is inevitable that from time to time he will break out in this connection."^[2]: 157 His consumption of alcohol at Prince Albert National Park created more friction between himself and Parks Branch as he was seen to "indulge too freely in liquor."^[25]

Grey Owl's names

Belaney had a number of names in his life:

• Archibald Stansfeld Belaney. This was his full, legal name at birth and it was used in the shortened form "Archibald Belaney" throughout his life: Under this name, he enlisted in the army, received disability payments, was employed by Dominion Parks Branch, etc.^{[lower-alpha 10]} He hated the name "Archibald" and preferred to be called "Archie". Even after adopting the name "Grey Owl" for certain purposes, he remained "Archie" to friends and acquaintances. Between themselves, he and Anahareo were always "Archie" and "Gertie."

• Grey Owl. Belaney started using this name in the 1930s in his publications and lectures and it is under this name that he is commonly known to the public. He also used the name in correspondence.^[2]: 85

• Archie Grey Owl. Belaney made some abortive attempts to avoid his legal surname by enlisting "Grey Owl" in that role. He used this name in his Record of Employment at Prince Albert National Park. "The civil service, however, continued unimaginatively to address him in all correspondence as “A. Bellaney.” At least they spelt his name incorrectly."^[2]: 118

• Wa-sha-quon-asin. The authorship of his books is attributed to this name as well as to "Grey Owl." It actually means "white beak owl” in Ojibwa, but for dramatic effect Belaney would translate it as “He Who Walks By Night.”^{[2]: 91–92}

• Ko-hom-see. This name ("Little Owl") was an affectionate nickname given to Belaney by the Egwuna family, since they regarded him as “the young owl who sits taking everything in." The name was a precursor of “Grey Owl.”^[2]: 41

• Anaquoness. This is a nickname that Belaney got in Bisco due to the unusual Mexican sombrero he wore there. He translated the Ojibwa word as “Little Hat.”^[2]: 65

• Archie McNeil. Belaney married his third wife, Yvonne Perrier, under this name, fearing a charge of bigamy due to his undissolved marriage with his first wife. In an elaborate fiction about his past, Belaney told Yvonne his father was a George McNeil, who was third generation Scottish in the United States.^{[2]: 170–171}

Relationships with women

Belaney had known relationships with five women and fathered four known children:^{[5]: 19, 28, 32, 36, 45, 47, 111, 118}

• Angele Egwuna, married in 1910 in Canada. Daughters Agnes Belaney, born in 1911, Flora Belaney, born in 1926.
• Marie Girard, relationship from 1912-15 in Canada. Son Johnny Jero, born in 1915.
• Ivy Holmes, married in 1917 in England. Divorced 1922.
• Gertrude Bernard (Anahareo), relationship from 1925-36 in Canada. Daughter Dawn, born in 1932.
• Yvonne Perrier, married in 1936 in Canada. (Belaney was married under the name “McNeil”, due to his undissolved marriage with Angele Egwuna.)

Grey Owl's writings

See also

• Anahareo
• Bill Guppy
• Lovat Dickson
• Passing as Indigenous Americans
• Pretendian

Notes

References

Further reading

Numerous books about Belaney have been published, including:

• Anahareo. Devil in Deerskins: My Life with Grey Owl. Toronto: New Press, 1972.
• Attenborough, Richard, dir. Grey Owl. Screenplay by William Nicholson. Largo Entertainment, 1999.
• Atwood, Margaret. "The Grey Owl Syndrome", Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995. 35–61.
• Billinghurst, Jane. Grey Owl: The Many Faces of Archie Belaney. Vancouver: Greystone Books, 1999.
• Dickson, Lovat. Wilderness Man: The Strange Story of Grey Owl. 1974.
• Dickson, Lovat. The Green Leaf: A Memorial to Grey Owl, London, 1938.
• Dickson, Lovat. Half-Breed; The Story of Grey Owl, London, 1939.
• Smith, Donald B. From the Land of Shadows: the Making of Grey Owl. 1990.
• Ruffo, Armand Garnet, Grey Owl: The Mystery of Archie Belaney. 1996.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Grey Owl (naturalist).

• "Grey Owl". Dictionary of Canadian Biography (online ed.). University of Toronto Press. 1979–2016.
• Works by Archibald Stansfeld Belaney at Faded Page (Canada)
• When a Pilgrim of the Wild met a Cameraman of the Wild: The collaboration between Grey Owl and W.J. Oliver
• Grey Owl, Prince Albert National Park
• Canadian Heroes in Fact and Fiction: Grey Owl, Library and Archives Canada
• Historica Minutes TV Commercial, Canadian Heritage