Grey Owl

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. "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 The shy, withdrawn boy, ashamed of having been abandoned by his parents, lived largely in his own world." 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, who was "amazed at his knowledge of the detail... He was not interested in the romantic picture of the Indians but in their mastery over nature..." 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, with the understanding he would "learn to be a farmer while he was getting used to the country". On March 29, 1906, at the age of 18, 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). == First years in Canada (19061915) ==

Toronto held no appeal for Belaney, and he soon left, bound for Lake Temagami, one of the largest lakes in northern Ontario, and home of the Teme-Augama Anishnabai (deep water people) community. In 1907 he was working at the Temagami Inn as a "chore-boy". He returned home to Hastings for a short visit during the winter of 19071908, probably to ask for money from his aunts. He learned then that his father had been killed in a drunken brawl in the United States. Belaney returned to work at the Temagami Inn in 1908. He determined to lose the remaining traces of his English accent. At the Temagami Inn he met Angele Egwuna, who was working there as a kitchen-helper. She spoke little English and he little Ojibwe, 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 19091910 trapping with them in the bush to the east of the south arm of Lake Temagami, where he learned how the Temagami Ojibwe managed their hunting territories by killing only the animals that they needed and leaving the rest to reproduce. The time with the Egwunas improved both his proficiency with the Ojibwe 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 Ojibwe. The boy from Hastings was finally living the life he had dreamed of. 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. Little is known of Belaney's life in the winter of 19111912. He next surfaced, alone, in the summer of 1912 in Biscotasing. He worked in the surrounding area as a forest ranger during the summers of 19121914 and spent the winters in the bush on the trapline. In Bisco, Belaney began a relationship with Marie Girard, a Métis 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 19131914. There is no record of Belaney's life in the winter of 19141915. 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. In his first years in Canada, Belaney had established himself as a backcountry woodsman, with a keen appreciation of the wilderness. At some point he also began to develop the fiction of having been born in Mexico to a Scottish man and an Apache woman. His debut as husband and father had not been a success: "Archie kept falling deeper and deeper into personal problems of his own making, going from one crisis to another." == In the Canadian Army (19151917) ==

Belaney enlisted with the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force on May 6, 1915, during the First World War. 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." 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. 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. 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. == Back to Canada (19171925) ==

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 mobilityan 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. Belaney soon gained a reputation for drunkenness and disorderly conduct in Bisco. 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." 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. He did not approach Johnny and the boy did not learn who his father was till years later. 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". 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. 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. His command of the Ojibwe language benefited from this time with the Espaniels, and he also learned the "Indian way of doing things"which in Jim Espaniel's words "the white man calls conservation". In the summers of 1920 and 1921, he worked as the deputy forest ranger on the Mississagi Forest Reserve. 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". 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. 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. 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." In April, 1925, an arrest warrant was issued for Belaney after a particularly egregious piece of misbehaviour. 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. In the fall of 1925, she saw him off at the train stationand never saw him again. By then, Belaney had already begun his fourth relationship. == Transformation into Grey Owl (19251931) ==

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." In the late summer of 1925, 36-year-old Belaney began courting 19-year-old Gertrude Bernard. Their relationship would last till 1936, They met at Camp Wabikon, located on Temagami Island, where he was working as a guide. She was of Algonquin and Mohawk descent. Her father's nickname for her was "Pony", but she would come to be known by another name, "Anahareo". 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." 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. 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'." He moved back to Hay Lake with Jelly Roll, while Anahareo and David White Stone left to work his mining claim in northern Quebec. which featured the two beavers, as well as Anahareo and Belaney (identified as Grey Owl), and was shot in the summer of 1930. In correspondence with his London publisher Country Life, Belaney signed himself "Grey Owl" for the first time in November. 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." The Parks Branch offered Grey Owl a position as "caretaker of park animals" at the Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba. Years later James Harkin explained his reasons for the offer: "The providing of a position for Grey Owl was entirely to serve our purpose of securing publicity for the National Parks and for wild life conservation by using Grey Owl's beaver and Grey Owl's personality as a spear-head in that connection." == Beaver Lodge (19311935) ==

In the spring of 1931, Grey Owl and Anahareo, with the beavers, left Quebec, bound for a new life in the west, where a cabin had been built for them on Beaver Lodge Lake. was shot by the cameraman W. J. Oliver, and released in 1932. This was highly unlikely during the Depression, "beavers [being] to the north what gold was to the west". He believed that Canada's wilderness and vast open spaces, both of which were fast disappearing, were what made it unique in the world. 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'', which showed Grey Owl interacting with various animals in addition to the beavers. It also showed him welcoming visitors arriving by canoe. which showed Grey Owl and Anahareo together on a canoe trip in the bush. At Grey Owl's request, Anahareo returned from the prospecting trip in the summer of 1935 to help him prepare for the upcoming lecture tour in Great Britain and to look after the beavers in his absence. She sewed his costume for the tour and later wrote: == First tour of Great Britain (19351936) ==

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. The tour was organized by his London publisher, Lovat Dickson, who later reported "The crowds everywhere were immense and enthusiastic." So popular were the lectures that the tour, originally planned to end in 1935, was extended for two months into 1936. All told, Grey Owl gave over two hundred lectures and addressed nearly 250,000 people. His lecture in Hastings was typical of those on the tour, beginning with words of greeting followed by a showing of Pilgrims of the Wild, a film about his life with Anahareo at Beaver Lodge. While the film ran, Grey Owl moved about the stage, telling stories about the wildlife in Canada, particularly about the beaver. "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." On February 14, 1936, Grey Owl embarked at Greenock on the Duchess of Bedford, arriving in Halifax on the 21st. In May 1936 Grey Owl wrote to the Manager at White Rock Pavilion, Hastings, asking him to find the address for his aunts. His aunts later said that they had received only about three letters from him after he left for Canada. == Back to Beaver Lodge (19361937) ==

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. 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. 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. His publishers agreed to put up $2000 for the winter film, while Grey Owl paid the remaining costs of that film and the entire costs of 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." 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. The TrailMen Against the Snow (1937) was shot by B.J. (Bert) Bach in the Abitibi area, Quebec, where Grey Owl spent many winters trapping in the 1920s. The Trail - Men Against the River (1937) was shot by B. J. (Bert) Bach in the Mississagi Forest Reserve, near Biscotasing, where Grey Owl 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 Treaty 6. 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." Grey Owl's tumultuous ten-year relationship with Anahareo suffered a serious rupture in April 1936, and they parted for good later that year, probably in September. 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. Donald B. Smith described his reception as follows: On November 12, he addressed members and guests of the Empire Club, including many Toronto dignitaries, telling them he wants to "arouse in the Canadian people a sense of responsibility they have for [the] north country and its inhabitants, human and animal". 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. 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." 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." Despite being exhausted by the end of the trip, Grey Owl put on his own form of war dance in Bisco, which "still lacked rhythm and had no Indian words in it". 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". == Second tour of Great Britain (1937) ==

Grey Owl arrived in England in late September, 1937, accompanied by his third wife, Yvonne, who proved to be a stabilizing influence. The tour kicked off with several weeks of lectures in London and then went on the road throughout Great Britain from the end of October to mid-December. Donald B. Smith described the second tour as his "Greatest Triumph". Grey Owl gave a Royal Command Performance at Buckingham Palace on December 10, 1937, attended by King George VI and the young princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. He began with the words "You are tired with years of civilization. I come to offer youwhat? A green leaf." Grey Owl was impressed by the King, who struck him as a "keen woodsman". It is reported that, in parting, Grey Owl put out his hand to the King and said "Well, good-bye, Brother, and good luck to you." Grey Owl visited his aunts in Hastings after his second performance there on 14th December. The tour finished, Grey Owl embarked for New York on December 21. == North American tour, death and exposure (1938) ==

Grey Owl arrived in New York from Great Britain 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. 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." The frantic pace of the North American tour in early 1938 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. He was immediately whisked off for a radio interview. 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. Exhausted and run-down, Grey Owl retreated, alone, to Beaver Lodge on April 7. (Yvonne had to stay in Regina for an operation.) 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. The park superintendent and friend, Major J.A. Wood, reported "At 8.25 in the morning, he died very quietly, and pictures taken show that the congestion in his lungs [pneumonia] was very slight, which all goes to prove that he had absolutely no resistance whatever." He was buried on the ridge behind Beaver Lodge. 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. Donald B. Smith described the resulting controversy: Lovat Dickson spent months after his death trying to disprove the claim that Grey Owl was in fact an Englishman, 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". In the end she was forced to accept the truth: "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." 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, continued to fascinate and arouse controversy well after his death. == Posthumous recognition ==

In 1972, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast a documentary on Grey Owl, directed by Nancy Ryley. The Hastings Museum contains an exhibition of memorabilia and a replica of part of his Canadian lakeside cabin. The ranger station at Hastings Country Park has a commemorative plaque to Grey Owl. In Riding Mountain National Park, the cabin, where he resided for six months in 1931, is a Federal Heritage Building. In Prince Albert National Park, the cabin built in the 1930s according to his specifications still stands and is open to visitors. == Appendices ==

Grey Owl's works Books • The Men of the Last Frontier (1931) • Private Interest vs. The People (1934) • Pilgrims of the Wild (1934) • The Adventures of Sajo and Her Beaver People (1935) • Tales of an Empty Cabin (1936) • The Tree (1937) Articles and short pieces • "The Passing of the Last Frontier" (1929) • "The Vanishing Life of the Wild" (1930) • "Little Brethren of the Wilderness" (1930) • "The Fine Art of the Still Hunt" (1930) • "King of the Beaver People" (1930) • "Who Will Repay?" (1931) • "A Day in a ... Hidden Town" (1931) • "More about "Game Leaks." The Indian’s Side of the Question" (1931) • "A Mess of Pottage" (1931) • "Comments on Mr. Godsell’s Article by Grey Owl" (1931) • "White Water!" (1931) • "Little Indians" (1931) • "The Perils of Woods Travel" (1931) • "Indian Legends and Lore" (1931) • "And a Little Child Shall Lead Them" (1931) • "A Philosophy of the Wild" (1931) • "Unto ... the Least of These" (1932) • "Secrets of the Beaver Family" (1932) • "Re-builder of the Wilderness" (1932) • "The Beaver Family Migrates" (1933) • "The Beaver Babies" (1934) • "A Description of the Fall Activities of Beaver" (1935) • "Getting Lost in the Woods" (1935) • "The Indian’s Code of the Wild" (1935) • "Author’s Special Preface to his English Readers" (1935) • "The Fine Art of the Still Hunt" (1935) • "Introduction to The Great Trek" (1936) • "Grey Owl Speaks his Mind" (1936) • "A Plea for the Canadian Northland" (1936) • "Preface to Special Tour Edition" (1937) • "Grey Owl’s Farewell to the Children of The British Isles" (1937) • "Grey Owl Pleads for Wild Life" (1938) • "My Mission to My Country" (1938) • "A Message from Grey Owl" (1938) Alcohol use Belaney started drinking when he arrived in Canada as a young man. "At some point during his first years in Temagami, he also discovered alcohol. Years later he said that 'he wished all liquor tasted like ginger ale so he could enjoy the taste as well as the effect.' He drank for the effect." • Archie Grey Owl. Belaney made some abortive attempts to avoid his legal surname by enlisting "Grey Owl" in that role. He tried to use this name in his Record of Employment at Prince Albert National Park. According to Smith, "The civil service, however, continued unimaginatively to address him in all correspondence as 'A. Bellaney'. At least they spelt his name incorrectly." • 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. His will was also drawn up in the name of "Archie McNeil, familiarly known as Grey Owl". • Ko-hom-see. This name was a nickname given to Belaney by his first wife's family and means, according to one source, "Little Owl". The family regarded him as "the young owl who sits taking everything in". • Anaquoness. This is a nickname that Belaney got during his time in Biscotasing due to the unusual Mexican sombrero he wore there. He translated the Ojibwe word as "Little Hat". Relationships with women Belaney had known relationships with five women and fathered four known children: • Angele Egwuna, married 1910 in Canada. Daughters Agnes Belaney, born 1911, Flora Belaney, born 1926. • Marie Girard, relationship from 1912 to 1915 in Canada. Son Johnny Jero, born 1915. • Ivy Holmes, married 1917 in England. Divorced 1922. • Gertrude Bernard (Anahareo), relationship from 1925 to 1936 in Canada. Daughter Shirley Dawn, born 1932. • Yvonne Perrier, married 1936 in Canada. (Belaney was married under the name "McNeil", due to his undissolved marriage with Angele Egwuna.) == See also ==