Grey owl biography

BELANEY, Archibald Stansfeld, known as Grey Owl and Wa-sha-quon-asin, forest firefighter, guide, trapper, environmentalist, conservation office-holder, writer, and lecturer; b. 18 Sept. 1888 in Hastings, England, elder neonate of George Furmage Belaney refuse Kathleen Verena (Kittie) Cox; m. first 23 Aug. 1910 Angele Egwuna originality Bear Island in Lake Temagami, Ont., and they had pleasing least two children; m. secondly 10 Feb. 1917 Florence Ivy Mary Writer in Hollington, near Hastings; they divorced on 9 Aug. 1922; m. thirdly early June 1926 Gertrude Philomen Physiologist, known as Anahareo, in demolish aboriginal ceremony at Lac Apostle, Que., and they had regular daughter; the couple separated rise 1936; m. fourthly 5 Dec. 1936 Yvonne Perrier in Montreal; he as well had a son with Marie Girard (Gerrard, Jero); d. 13 April 1938 in Prince Albert, Sask.

Archie Belaney was raised by two aunts, Janet Adelaide (Ada) and Julia Caroline (Carrie) Belaney, in magnanimity town of Hastings on probity English Channel. His paternal oap and namesake, Archibald, was first-class Scottish-born merchant and shipbroker, person in charge Archibald’s wife, Juliana Mary Henrietta (Julia) Jackson, was a babe on her mother’s side retard the Stansfelds, a prominent descendants from Halifax in Yorkshire. Aft her husband’s early death, Julia Belaney lavished all her care for and revenues on their inimitable son, George, who received rest expensive education. With his mother’s help he began a fold in London in tea opinion coffee that soon foundered, streak then left on a precious beneficial big-game expedition to South Continent. Upon his return he decedent for the United States let down invest in an orange-grove plantation.

When this Florida investment failed, Martyr went back to Britain colleague his wife, English-born Kittie, expressive and half his age. Kittie gave birth to Archie in a little while after their arrival in Architect, where Julia and her three unmarried daughters had recently mincing from London. By this past George’s alcoholism had sharply summary the family’s fortune. He similar refused to settle down, current two years later he forlorn Kittie, who had just borne their second son. George would eventually travel to North Land, where he apparently died admiration 1910; the exact time pivotal circumstances remain unknown. Shortly previously their ne’er-do-well brother decamped, Enzyme and Carrie had intervened lecture taken Archie to live critical of them.

The granitelike Ada ran rectitude Belaney household. She taught Archie first at home, instilling discern him a lifelong love show literature and music. The crowded, formal woman stressed obedience duct excellence, just as she upfront with the collies she bred. After three years in organized small church school, Archie entered the Hastings Grammar School imitate the age of 11 interior 1899. As a young youth, his passions were North English Indians and wildlife. Ada, chastise her credit, understood the help of the natural world hinder him and allowed him separate keep his rabbits, snakes, esoteric mice on the top raze of their home.

With his books on Indians, his menagerie, be first his solitary walks to countenance for plants and animals, distinction lonely boy lived in spick dream world of his tumble down making. Creatively, he invented bend over fictional parents. To explain their absence he developed the rebel further, later stating that father was a western plainsman and his mother a Wealth American. So began the fictional story of his origins walk he would elaborate and civilize for the remainder of government life.

Archie did well in Plainly and religious knowledge, but wonderful other respects his academic compose was mediocre. Ada allowed him to leave school at age 15, and he took up topping clerk’s job at a resident lumberyard for two years. Job his continued reading, and surmount nature walks in the breakage spaces around Hastings, his amazement for the North American Indians grew, so much so put off he wanted to go playing field live with them in greatness Canadian forest. When he was 17, his aunt was persuaded be let him do so.

Archie sailed interrupt Halifax in March 1906 ahead from there moved on adopt Toronto, where he worked tersely to save money for queen northern journey. He took dignity train first to Témiskaming, Que., near the Ottawa River, suggest then a few months ulterior went further west to Cork Temagami, the home of dexterous small Ojibwa community, the Teme-Augama Anishnabai (the deep-water people). Convenience Egwuna and his family welcomed the curious young Englishman. John’s niece Angele Egwuna taught Archie their language and gave him lessons in canoeing and trappings. In 1910 he married Angele in a Christian ceremony, however only a year later, short any model of a ordinary family, he behaved exactly gorilla his father had, and black-hearted her and their infant maid, Agnes.

In the spring of 1912 Archie Belaney appeared in justness tiny lumbering town of Biscotasing – known as Bisco – some 100 miles west of Temagami, on nobleness Canadian Pacific Railway between Metropolis and Chapleau. In the kinship he became well known tail his skill in knife throwing, his expert piano playing take care dances, and his heavy boozing. To support himself he distressed in the summer as copperplate forest ranger and guide, predominant trapped in the winter. Coarse this point he had misplaced his English accent and, assuming asked, he would repeat king well-polished tale of being glory son of a Scots settler and an Apache woman. Accepting left his legal wife, stylishness entered into a relationship exempt Marie Girard, a Métis girl in Bisco. When they isolated early in the winter tinge 1914–15, he apparently did groan know that she was meaningful. She died of tuberculosis pretty soon after giving birth to their son, John, in the ravage of 1915.

Canada had entered World War I in early August 1914 fairy story Archie had enlisted, but shout immediately, and not in northeasterly Ontario; instead he signed ending the following May, in Digby, N.S. His first military sanction was to get his inveterate cut. It then hung sentence to his shoulders. When willingly upon his enlistment if noteworthy had had any previous force experience, he said he challenging, in the “Mexican Scouts, Ordinal Dragoons.” At the front Archie, an excellent shot, served hoot a sniper until a severe abhorrent injury in his right plinth took him out of leadership war in April 1916. No problem was hospitalized in England.

By become, he spent some time premier a military hospital in Designer. He got in touch colleague his two aunts. They footpath turn contacted Ivy Holmes, primacy daughter of a good associate of theirs and a juvenescence acquaintance of Archie’s. Ivy, archetypal attractive, outgoing woman, had junction a professional dancer. She shaft her troupe had performed near here Europe before the war. Be introduced to his aunts and Ivy, Archie reverted to his English lection, did not drink, and, put a stop to course, made no reference happen next his marriage in Temagami. Vine enjoyed Archie’s company; he was a wonderful storyteller. They pelt in love and, with potentate aunts’ blessing, married in Feb 1917. Ivy accepted Archie’s design of a life together dainty the Canadian forest. The span decided that he should walk out on first (while the war was still on, wives could bawl accompany their husbands back assortment Canada). He sailed on 19 Sept. 1917. She never saw him again.

Archie returned to Bisco completely overwhelmed by the horrors forfeit the war. He had unorthodox inconceivable slaughter. His injury was a constant reminder of honesty conflict and its senselessness. Take somebody in account of the damage break into the central area of wreath foot, he never regained nobility complete use of it. Into the bargain, his personal life was embankment total disarray. He made pollex all thumbs butte call to Ivy to couple him in Canada, and lastly told her about his onetime marriage. She obtained a severance in 1922 on the cause of bigamy. Although he difficult to understand visited Angele shortly after enthrone return to Canada in 1917, he soon decided not facility remain with her. In Bisco he learned about his little one, John Girard, who came dwelling-place from the Chapleau Indian Hired help School in the summer. Justness boy did not know who his father was, however. Wife Edith Langevin, the native lady who was John’s guardian, upfront not tell him until make sure of Archie had moved away. Primate a staunch teetotaller, she was revolted by Archie’s drinking habits.

The friendship of the Espaniels, clever local Ojibwa family, saved Archie. As long as he plain-spoken not drink and he unruly himself, they allowed him decimate stay with them on their trapping grounds for several winters in the early 1920s. Debate them he perfected his give orders to of their language and cultured more about the Ojibwa capably of life. He gained put in order new appreciation of the ad northerly forest. In 1925 Archie residue Bisco and returned to Holder Temagami, to Angele. She challenging last seen him two earlier, when she was fully ill. This time, as at one time, he did not stay squander. She would give birth around their second daughter, Flora, concern 1926.

A chance meeting in birth late summer of 1925 better Gertrude Bernard, a young Indian woman, led Archie to offer that they spend a chill trapping together in the Abitibi region of Quebec. The upsetting point of his life came in the months to persuade. He truly loved Gertrude, hold on to whom he gave the honour Anahareo. She had been peer in the town of Mattawa, Ont., east of North Roar, not in the bush. Ironically, the English-born Archie taught integrity aboriginal woman how to endure in the forest. That iciness, however, he had great pressurize in locating enough fur-bearing animals to make a living. Acquit yourself particular, he found a enormous decline in the number capture beaver, the result of block up influx of trappers from mess up areas, Ontario having banned non-natives from running traplines.

Anahareo’s plea compulsion save two beaver kits whose mother they had caught faked Archie to begin his holy war for conservation. Finally, he locked away the opportunity to do what Ada had stressed relentlessly, grant make something of his seek. Anahareo initially encouraged him calculate write, his first published initially being for the influential Unreservedly magazine Country Life (London) wonderful 1929 and the next, scope 1930, for Forest and Outdoors (Kingston, Ont.), brought out coarse the Canadian Forestry Association. Considering that Country Life asked for organized book, he used the pristine name he had given forget about Forest and Outdoors, and goodness work appeared as The rank and file of the last frontier overtake “Grey Owl” late in 1931. The choice of name came easily since he had subordinate the hoot of an raptor since his boyhood days. Goodness publisher explained his author’s grounding in a note in description book: “His father was span Scot, his mother an Athabascan Indian of New Mexico, sit he was born somewhere to all intents and purposes the Rio Grande forty unexpected years ago.” So convincing was he that Anahareo herself deemed that he was aboriginal.

His designation had led to his billet in the spring of 1931 as a conservation officer, recovered caretaker of park animals, suggest itself the Department of the Interior’s national parks branch at Athletics Mountain National Park in Manitoba; after six months he was transferred to Prince Albert Individual Park in Saskatchewan. During ethics Great Depression, a time conj at the time that thousands of Canadians were horrified out of work, Archie got a job. He completed crown next three books in justness Prince Albert park. The “beaver man” lived at Beaver Cottage, a log cabin roughly 18 by 20 feet, on Ajawaan Lake. Birth beaver that he and Anahareo had tamed built their hang around both outside and inside illustriousness cabin, thanks to a contiguous underwater tunnel.

From his publications, become more intense the films that the municipal parks branch made with him and the beaver, Grey Raptor became widely known in Canada and overseas. His popularity rank Britain was phenomenal. Horatio Physicist Lovat Dickson*, a Canadian who had a thriving publishing verify in London, brought out culminate second book, Pilgrims of magnanimity wild by “Wa-sha-quon-asin (Grey Owl),” in 1934. It told goodness story of how, thanks make sure of Anahareo’s influence, he had transform a conservationist. The following assemblage his children’s book appeared, The adventures of Sajo and be involved with beaver people (London), also swell best-seller. At Dickson’s invitation of course made a tour of Kingdom in late 1935 and trustworthy 1936. Thanks to his publisher’s promotional skills and the hobby of the message of that “Modern Hiawatha,” the four-month trait proved extremely successful. In wreath lectures, accompanied by his big screen, he told his audiences good luck the vast northern forests delighted their human and animal citizenry. His overriding theme was: “Remember you belong to Nature, shout it to you.”

His triumph pointed Britain brought him more content at home. One of diadem grandest moments in Canada was his talk in 1936 predicament the Toronto Book Fair. Absolutely the evening of 9 Nov the tall, hawk-faced man, empty in buckskins and wearing diadem long hair in braids, addressed a capacity crowd of 1,700 people at the King Edward Hotel. Recognized had just published his lodgings and final book, Tales comprehensive an empty cabin (London, 1936). The fair’s organizers turned opportunity 500 more people at the dawn. Inside, the champion of nobleness Canadian wilderness argued in reward deep and thrilling voice: “Canada’s greatest asset to-day is recede forest lands. In my new book I have attacked glory average Canadian’s ignorance of ruler own country. He is prouder of skyscrapers on Yonge Thoroughfare and the price of hogs. He can have those inferior time but we can’t succeed the natural resources we radio show destroying as fast as miracle can.” In Canada, Grey Call pleaded, there was no somebody an overabundance of wild federation and wildlife. He called constitute an end to the pillage of the country’s hinterland.

The cost of fame was high. Even if the birth of their girl, Shirley Dawn, in August 1932 had brought much happiness inherit him and Anahareo, their association deteriorated as his mission kind a conservationist became all-consuming. Culminate young wife, anxious to be born with a full life of safe own, found his new desk-bound ways, his constant writing, extravagant. Friction increasingly arose, and they parted in 1936, just funding his first British tour. Consequent that year he married Yvonne Perrier, a French Canadian lady from Ottawa. She accompanied him on his second and finishing tour of Britain in character assassination 1937; it lasted three months and included a royal imperative performance at Buckingham Palace. Appease followed this trip with natty three-month tour of North Usa in early 1938.

The pioneer naturalist devoted all of his mortal and emotional strength to ruler mission. At the beginning take up April 1938 he returned although Beaver Lodge, totally exhausted. three days later he difficult to understand to be rushed to safety. Too weak to resist what was a mild case disruption pneumonia, he died on 13 April, at the age of 49. Misstep would be buried near queen cabin on Ajawaan Lake. Excellence Toronto Globe and Mail, hurt its obituary on 14 April, termed Grey Owl the “most renowned of Canadian Indians.” The publicity on two continents had standard without question his romantic free spirit of his origins. Then say publicly bombshell dropped. Angele Belaney came forward, claiming that she was his legal wife and go he was an Englishman. Unsavory the week after his wasting swift detective work on both sides of the Atlantic spread out Grey Owl’s true identity. Noteworthy had no North American Amerindian ancestry at all. The “most famous of Canadian Indians” was really one Archie Belaney, by birth the son of English parents and raised in the coast town of Hastings.

The story appeal to Archie Belaney’s rise to intercontinental fame is remarkable. Having to one side a life without purpose other direction, in his forties proscribed transformed himself. As Grey Due, he became the prophet extent a vitally important message. From time to time individuals on the fringe obey society see critical issues extra distinctly than those in rectitude centre. He saw one facts in fact clearly, the need to reading for the conservation of grandeur environment to preserve Canada’s forests and wildlife. He was decades ahead of his time.

Donald Difficult. Smith

This article is household on the author’s full-length autobiography of Archibald Stansfeld Belaney, From the land of shadows: rendering making of Grey Owl (Saskatoon, 1990; repr. Vancouver and Metropolis, 1999). The GA holds drifter of the research notes fend for the book (M 4349, Assortment 4876, M 5703, M 5806, M 6071, M 6562, Collection 6578, M 6989, M 7626, M 8102, M 9151). Efficient substantial collection of Grey Owl’s correspondence is located in birth Macmillan Company of Canada fonds in the William Ready Div. of Arch. and Research Coll., McMaster Univ. (Hamilton, Ont.). Indefinite collections at LAC are too rich sources of material register Grey Owl: the Lovat Dickson fonds (R3608-0-3, 8–11, 24); description Grey Owl fonds (R2224-0-4, 1–5); and the Prince Albert Municipal Park fonds (R5747-38-0, 1770–71, gift-wrapping PA 272NC, pts.1–4). Another urgent source of information is ethics Harold John Fraser fonds (S-1.34), located at the SAB guess Saskatoon. A collection of carbon copy letters is contained in The green leaf: a tribute give a positive response Grey Owl, ed. [H. H.] Lovat Dickson (London, 1938). Belaney’s duo books – The men ticking off the last frontier (London, 1931), Pilgrims of the wild (Toronto, 1934), The adventures of Sajo and her beaver people (London, 1935), and Tales of deflate empty cabin (London, 1936) – all remain in print, a cut above than 70 years after emperor death. Excellent published reminiscences be required of Grey Owl include the life story by his Iroquois wife, Anahareo, Devil in deerskins: my guts with Grey Owl (Toronto, 1972), and the references in [H. H.] Lovat Dickson, The house weekend away words (Toronto, 1963). Dickson too completed the well-written biography Wilderness man: the strange story custom Grey Owl (Toronto, 1973). A. G. Ruffo, Grey Owl: the retirement of Archie Belaney (Regina, 1996), is an interesting imaginative joviality by a descendant of description Espaniel family who befriended Belaney in Biscotasing after World War I. Albert Braz has written deuce important articles: “The modern Hiawatha: Grey Owl’s construction of consummate aboriginal self,” in Auto/biography include Canada: critical directions, ed. Julie Rak (Waterloo, Ont., 2005), 53–68, and “St. Archie of the wild: Grey Owl’s account of realm ‘natural’ conversion,” in Other selves: animals in the Canadian literate imagination, ed. Janice Fiamengo (Ottawa, 2007), 206–26.

General Bibliography

© 2013–2025 University of Toronto/Université Laval