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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. [ a ] With books, articles and public appearances ...
- Early Life
- Grey Owl: Writer and Conservationist
- Death and Exposure
- The Continuing Allure of Archibald Belaney
- Books
Raised by two aunts and his grandmother, Archibald Belaney had an unhappy childhood. As a boy, he was fascinated with North American Indigenous peoples. At 17, he left England for Northern Canada where, apart from his war service, he spent the remainder of his life. Through his association with the Ojibweof Northern Ontario, he learned about the lo...
Shortly after his arrival, Archibald Belaney presented himself as the son of a Scottish man and an Apache woman and began to use the name Grey Owl. As Grey Owl, he published his first book, The Men of the Last Frontier (1931). Anahareo, his Algonquin and Kanyen’kehà:ka (Mohawk) wife, convinced him of the need for conservation, and that became the c...
Shortly after his death, the North Bay Nugget published an article on 13 April 1938 in which it revealed that Archibald Belaney had falsely identified himself as Grey Owl and was not Indigenous. Other newspapers picked up the story. His work as a conservationist was largely forgotten. New editions of his book came out in the early 1970s, and CBCair...
Archibald Belaney’s work and life have continued to fascinate historians and biographers, readers and viewers. Several biographies were published in the 1990s, including Donald B. Smith’s From the Land of Shadows: The Making of Grey Owl, Armand Garnet Ruffo’s Grey Owl: The Mystery of Archie Belaney (1996), and Jane Billinghurst’s Grey Owl: The Many...
The Men of the Last Frontier (1931) Pilgrims of the Wild (1934) The Adventures of Sajo and her Beaver People (1935) Tales of an Empty Cabin(1936)
Ruffo, Grey Owl: the mystery of Archie Belaney (Regina, 1996), is an interesting imaginative recreation by a descendant of the Espaniel family who befriended Belaney in Biscotasing after World War I. Albert Braz has written two important articles: “The modern Hiawatha: Grey Owl’s construction of his aboriginal self,” in Auto/biography in ...
- Donald B. Smith
- Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 16
Grey Owl (Archibald Stansfield Belaney) Born in England on September 18, 1888, Archie Belaney became interested as a child in stories about North American Indigenous Peoples. At 17, he came to Canada and lived with a group of Ojibwas in northern Ontario and learned their way of life; he claimed that he was the child of a Scotsman and an Apache woman, and began to use the name Grey Owl.
Prince Albert National Park. The English author and conservationist Archibald Belaney (who called himself Grey Owl) and his Mohawk wife Gertrude Bernard (also known as Anahareo) lived and worked in Riding Mountain and Prince Albert National Parks in the 1930s. While working for these parks, Belaney passed himself off as Indigenous.
Mar 17, 2003 · Grey Owl. Almost as soon as the man known as GREY OWL died in a Prince Albert, Sask., hospital on April 13, 1938, his many secrets began to emerge into the open air. That same day, The North Bay Nugget ran a story it had sat on for three years, revealing that the famous Indian naturalist was actually an Englishman named Archie Belaney.
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This section of the website contains more in-depth information about Grey Owl, or Archie Belaney. Grey Owl's tragedy is that, for a long time after his death, controversy over his identity -- that he was English, and not an Indian as he allowed people to believe -- distracted from the important work he did to advance conservationism.
