Born Archibald Stansfeld Belaney, Sept.18, 1888, in Hastings, Sussex, England he became Canada’s Dr. Jekel and Mr. Hyde. He is revered today as one of this nations first Conservationists, but spent most of his life in Canada as a hoax, being a binge drinking bigamist who had five wives. His father, George Furmage Belaney was a Farmer, but lost his family fortune to Alcohol, his mother was Kittie Scott-Brown a sister of one of Georges wives, it is rumoured she was only thirteen years of age when she bore “Archie”, in 1901, his father left the country and died in 1910. He grew up in the strict care of his Grandmother and two maiden Aunts.
He was emotionally damaged by his drunken fathers rejection of him, and stifled by the rigid upbringing of his Aunts. Archie was a loner and collected unusual animals and played games called “Red Indian” in the countryside. At School he was mischievous and bucked authority, often receiving reprimands from his teachers.
His Aunts persuaded him to quit Grammar School at 16 to find work in a lumberyard as a clerk. His employment was terminated after he lowered an explosive device down his employer’s chimney.
On March 6th 1906, A. S. Belaney immigrated to Canada at age 19 on a ship with only his Aunt Ada’s approval, He wanted to live in the wilderness near the Indians, but at first stayed in Toronto and worked in a Department Store for several months before moving to Temagarni, Northern Ontario, It was here that he was named Wa-Sha-Quon-Asin, “He Who Flies By Night”, and “Grey Owl” by his Ojibwa friends for his powers of observation and his hunger to learn the native way of life, he very soon assumed the persona of Grey Owl, and coloured his skin brown with Henner, and died his hair black. The ethnic origins he adopted were that his father was from Scotland, and his mother was an Apache, he said he had emigrated from the U.S. to join the Ojibwa.
From his younger days in England it was evident that he liked to be outside, and so in Canada he worked as a Fur Trapper, Wilderness Guide, and a Forest Ranger. As Grey Owl, in 1915, he joined the 13th Montreal Battalion of the Black Watch, and saw action in the First World War as a Sniper in France. He was twice wounded, first in January 1916, and again on April 24th 1916. He was shot through the foot (some say, self inflicted) that turned to Gangrene, and sent to England for treatment. He was moved from hospital to hospital for about a year for Doctors to try unsuccessfully to restore his damaged foot. Between Hospital admissions he married a childhood friend named Constance Ivy Holmes, this marriage soon failed, she divorced him on the grounds of Bigamy. He was returned back to Canada in September 1817 where he was given a Honourable Discharge with a disability Pension.
In 1910 Grew Owl married an Ojibwa Indian woman named Angele Egwana, his first and only legal wife. He abandoned her and a Daughter named Agnes a year later while heavily drinking. They had two Daughters, Agnes and Flora. Flora was conceived during a four-day visit to her mother after Archie returned from England after the War.
In 1913-14 Marie Gerard was his Common Law partner, they had a Son named Johnny, but she died of tuberculosis soon after the birth.
In 1917 he joined up with another Common Law partner he named Anahareo, she was born Gertrude Bernard a Mohawk Indian, and was only 19 years of age, they had an on and off relationship until 1934, and had one Daughter named Shirley Dawn.
With the encouragement of this fourth wife he abandoned trapping after twenty years, and instead in 1929 he wrote a successful article for the British Magazine ‘Country Life’ about the passing of the wilderness way of life.
The Magazine liked the response of this article and requested him to write a book that he called “The Men of the Last Frontier”. He at first told his Editors that he lived among the Indians: next he said Indians adopted him, and finally in 1931 he claimed he was an Indian. After this books publication he became an International Superstar, and one of the most famous Canadians of his day.
The Dominion Parks Service liked his artical as it reflected the philosophy of National Parks, and so they hired him as their first naturalist. In 1931, a cabin was built on a small lake in Riding Mountain National Park for him, his wife Anahareo and the two beavers he had rescued after he had trapped their mother, Rawhide and Jelly Roll.
They only lived there for a few months because of unsuitable water conditions, so he and his family were moved to a cabin called Beaver Lodge on the shores of Ajawaan Lake in Prince Albert National Park.
He continued his writing and published more ‘best sellers’ two of which, ‘Pilgrims of the Wild’, and ‘The adventures of Sajo and her Beaver People’, are still considered Classics. At one point he missed an important dinner engagement with a number of Ottawa VIP’s due to his involvement in a drunken brawl at a Hotel Bar. None the less he did dine with Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, and conducted two well-received lecture tours of the British Isles, including a three-hour audience with the Royal Family, including the now Queen Elizabeth and her sister Princess Margaret.
With his successes in his quest to promote the preservation of wildlife and wilderness, especially with the animal lovers of Britain, his use of terminological inexactitudes, (lying) began to become a burden to him. He first gained recognition as the Noble Savage who was a great storyteller, which he had polished through the years of lying. His early upbringing in England had provided him with his ability to pen prose. He played the part of an Indian to a Tee, to urban audiences anyway, but he wrote like a Hastings Grammar School graduate that he was. Only one contemporary critic spoke about Grey Owls rarefied English and suggested that the untutored Native must have used the services of a ghostwriter, this enraged Archie, but he could not admit the truth and so remained silent.
Of course throughout the 1930’s many people were aware of his secret, including of course every Native he met, but not one of them exposed him publicly. People who new him either liked him, or supported his message of support of Natives and saving the environment, they considered his message too important to risk harming. One of his revered quotes is: “Remember, you belong to Nature, not it to you.”
In 1936 he married a French Canadian woman from Ottawa who was a medical assistant named Yvonne Perrier who he gave the Indian name of ‘Silver Moon’, while still legally married to Angele Egwana.
In 1937, he again returned to England to promote his books and his ideas on conservation, but the hectic pace of two or three lectures a day left Grey Owl physically and mentally drained. In the spring of 1938 he returned to Beaver Lodge for the last time. He was by then a tired and weakened man. He caught pneumonia and died in hospital at Prince Albert on April 13th 1938, at age 50.
There is a gravesite located in the woods near the Cabin called Beaver Lodge. There lays the remains of Grey Owl his wife Anahareo, and their daughter, Shirley Dawn.
Source:
http://archives.cbc.ca/environment/environmental_protection/clip/12551/
http://www.islandnet.com/~see/naturesong/nature/greyowl.htm