Grey Owl

Early life (1888–1906)

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.

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.

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 The shy, withdrawn boy, ashamed of having been abandoned by his parents, lived largely in his own world." Outside school, he spent time reading and exploring St Helen's Wood near his home. He also collected snakes and other small animals.

Belaney was known for pranks, such as using his chemistry set to make small explosives, which he called "Belaney Bombs". A family friend later recalled that he "used to come to our house in Quarry Road with his pockets full of snakes, and he was always keen on Red Indians and making wigwams the garden." "He used to make gunpowder and one Sunday he buried some in our garden and the explosion shook all the windows in the road. On another occasion he was cutting up phosphorus for gunpowder and set light to the curtains in the room."

Belaney was fascinated by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, reading about them and drawing 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..." Young Belaney enjoyed playing at being Indians with his childhood friend Ivy Holmes, calling himself "Big Chief Thunderbinder".

First years in Canada (1906–1915)

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 1907–1908. He learned then that his father had been killed in a drunken brawl in the United States.

Belaney returned to Canada 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 1909–1910 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.

In the summer of 1912, he moved to Biscotasing, where 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 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 1913–1914.

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 the Canadian Army (1915–1917)

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 (1917–1925)

Belaney returned to Canada in September 1917, and was discharged from the army at the end of November because of his injuries. He returned to Biscotasing, where he gained a reputation for drunk and disorderly conduct. 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.

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.

Transformation into Grey Owl (1925–1931)

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, and prove to be both tumultuous and a crucial factor in Belaney's transformation. 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." Anahareo did not discover Belaney's true identity until his death and exposure in 1938.

In February, 1926, Anahareo joined Belaney near Doucet in the Abitibi region of northwestern Quebec, where he was earning a living as a trapper. Their courtship was eventful at times. Anahareo later claimed she once stabbed Belaney with a knife. 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.

After a summer working as a fire ranger in Quebec, Belaney was back trapping again in the winter of 1926–1927. 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.

Beaver Lodge (1931–1935)

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.

In June, a second beaver film was produced. This film, The Beaver Family, was shot by the cameraman W. J. Oliver, and released in 1932. Grey Owl would work with W.J. Oliver on more films in the coming years.

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 Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan were found to be a better habitat for beaver.

In October the group relocated to Lake Ajawaan in the park, which was ideal for their needs, being isolated, heavily wooded and teeming with wildlife. The Superintendent of the Park, Major J.A. Wood, had a cabin built for them according to Grey Owl's specifications. It was known thereafter as Beaver Lodge, and would be Grey Owl's base until his death in 1938. He received many prominent visitors at the lodge, including the Governor-General, John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, an admirer of Grey Owl's writings on wildlife, the poet Charles G. D. Roberts and his son, the writer William Harris Lloyd Roberts.

In late 1931, Grey Owl's first book, on which he had been working for two years, was published under the title The Men of the Last Frontier. Grey Owl intended the title to be "The Vanishing Frontier", but to his chagrin, the publisher, Country Life, changed the title to "The Men of the Last Frontier" without consulting him.

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, many of them inexperienced, 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. This was highly unlikely during the Depression, "beavers [being] to the north what gold was to the west". 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..."

First tour of Great Britain (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. 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 (1936–1937)

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 Trail – Men 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."

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 you – what? 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 14 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:

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.

Posthumous recognition

In 1972, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast a documentary on Grey Owl, directed by Nancy Ryley.

Grey Owl Junior Public School was built in 1975 for the Scarborough Board of Education (now in Toronto).

In 1999, the film Grey Owl, directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Pierce Brosnan in the title-role, was released.

In June 1997, the mayor of Hastings and the borough's Member of Parliament Michael Foster unveiled a plaque in his honor on the house where he was born at 32 St. James Road, Hastings, East Sussex. A commemorative plaque is on the house at 36 St. Mary's Terrace, where he grew up with his grandmother and aunts.

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)

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." He was a lifelong drinker. "If one accepts alcoholism as 'recurring trouble, problems or difficulties associating with drinking,' Archie by 1930 had become an alcoholic." His favorite drink, according to Anahareo, was "Johnny Dewar's Extra Special". He would also drink vanilla extract and occasionally make his own moonshine.

At the end of the 1935 British tour, "Anxious to ease the pressure of the hectic, stressful last four months, Grey Owl now wanted to drink heavily." His companion on the ship back to Canada, Betty Summervell, noticed that he smelled of onion and "...thought the onion smell came from an Indian cure he was taking for his sickness". In fact, he had on board "...a number of bottles of whisky, which he hid under his bunk. He drank whenever she left the cabin. Just before she returned he chewed a raw onion to banish the whisky smell. After three days of neither eating nor sleeping, the intoxicated Grey Owl looked like a ghost."

Excessive alcohol consumption compromised Grey Owl's position with the Dominion Parks Branch in Ottawa. The photographer Yousuf Karsh had organised a dinner in his honour, at which he was supposed to meet a group of important governmental officials. However, as the dinner began, Grey Owl was absent. Karsh later found him "raising a drunken row in the bar". James Harkin (the head of Parks Branch) was forced to defend Grey Owl, writing to the government's Assistant Deputy Minister "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."

Grey Owl's names

Belaney had a number of names in his life:

Archibald Stansfeld Belaney. This was his full, legal name. He disliked "Archibald" and preferred to be called "Archie Belaney". Even after adopting the pen name "Grey Owl", he continued to use this name for legal purposes, such as employment.

Grey Owl. Belaney started using this as a pen and stage name in the 1930s and it is under this name that he is commonly known to the public.

Wa-sha-quon-asin. Belaney used this pen name as well as "Grey Owl" in the title pages of his books. According to one source, the word "Wa-sha-quon-asie" (ending in "e" not "n") means "white beak owl" in Ojibwe and is used to denote the screech owl, not the grey owl. Another source claims the word is "Ojibwa Indian (simplified)" for "wenjiganooshiinh" and means "'great horned owl' or 'great grey owl'".

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.)