Archibald Belaney

Published on Saturday 16 September 2006 01:12

ARCHIBALD Belaney [called Grey Owl] (1888-1938), impostor and conservationist, was born in Hastings, Sussex, on 18 September 1888, the son of George Belaney.

Belaney's aunts wanted him to take up a profession after leaving grammar school, but he resisted. Finally, with their consent, he left in 1906 for northern Canada, where, apart from three years in the Canadian army, he spent the remainder of his life, as a trapper and later as a conservationist. Through his first wife, Angel Aquena, an Ojibwa, whom he had married in August 1910, he learned about the wilderness. Several other relationships followed after he abandoned Aquena and their child in 1912, the most important being that with Gertrude Bernard, or Anahareo, whom he was to marry in an Indian ceremony. Before he met the beautiful young Iroquois woman in 1925, he had married Ivy Holmes while on a visit to England.

In the late 1920s Anahareo convinced Belaney - who was now known as Grey Owl - to abandon trapping and to work instead for conservation, encouraging him to write about the necessity of protecting Canada's wildlife and forests. Impressed by his early articles, the Canadian government invited him to join the Canadian parks branch as a "caretaker of park animals". He published his first book, a collection of wilderness tales, as Grey Owl in 1931. In his second and perhaps best book, Pilgrims of the Wild (1934), he told of his life with Anahareo, and of his conversion from trapper to conservationist. He completed it and two further books at Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan, where he looked after beaver conservation. Grey Owl lived at Beaver Lodge, a small cabin at best 6 by 7 metres in extent. The beaver had built their lodge outside, and partially inside, his home, appropriating a quarter of his living space.

By the late 1930s Grey Owl's books on the Canadian north had won him a devoted readership. At the request of Lovat Dickson, his publisher in England, he made two highly successful lecture tours of the British Isles, the first in 1935. The Canadian Who's Who of 1936-7 summarised Grey Owl's story as follows: "Born encampment, State of Sonora, Mexico, son of George, a native of Scotland, and Kathrine (Cochise) Belaney; a half-breed Apache Indian ... adopted as blood-brother by Ojibway tribe, 1920 ... speaks Ojibway but has forgotten Apache."

On 10 December 1937, on his second British lecture tour, Grey Owl gave a command performance at Buckingham Palace. The tall, hawk-faced man, dressed in buckskins, spoke to the royal family about the Canadian north, about its forests and animals, and about the North American Indians. His royal audience loved the lecture and films, and spoke to Grey Owl for nearly half an hour after his performance.

Grey Owl returned to Beaver Lodge in early April 1938. He was then in a state of total exhaustion and died of pneumonia on 13 April. Then came the bombshell. Swift detective work allowed reporters on both sides of the Atlantic to discover Grey Owl's real identity. Almost overnight Canada's most popular Indian was exposed as English-born Archie Belaney. Disappointment followed, but opinion in Canada turned in the 1970s when a new generation of readers discovered his books. Despite his misrepresentation of himself as an Indian, many recognised the English-born Archie Belaney's attainments as a writer and conservationist. A feature film based on his life starring Pierce Brosnan and directed by Richard Attenborough was released in 1999.