51 Facts About Grey Owl

Grey Owl has been called one of the first pretendians.

Grey Owl was particularly concerned about the plight of the beaver, which by the 1920s had been hunted almost to extinction.

Grey Owl's father was George Belaney and his mother Katherine "Kittie" Cox.

Grey Owl agreed to return permanently to the United States in exchange for a small allowance.

Grey Owl prepared maps showing the linguistic divisions in Canada and the locations of the tribes.

Grey Owl was not interested in the romantic picture of the Indians but in their mastery over nature.

Grey Owl hated the job and ensured a sudden end to it by lowering a bag of fireworks down the chimney of the company's office.

Grey Owl learned then that his father had been killed in a drunken brawl in the United States.

Grey Owl determined to lose the remaining traces of his English accent and began to develop his story of an Indian boyhood in Mexico and the American Southwest.

Grey Owl spoke little English and he little Ojibwe, but a friendship developed.

Grey Owl's uncle gave him the nickname "ko-hom-see", a name that would be transformed years later into "Grey Owl".

Grey Owl later joined the 13th Battalion, known as the Black Watch, and was shipped to the front line in France, where he served as a sniper.

Grey Owl had all the actions and features of an Indian.

Grey Owl was shipped back to England, where it was found necessary to amputate a toe.

Grey Owl found that his stories about canoeing in Canada made the "backwoods sound terribly attractive".

Grey Owl wrote to her for a year until he finally admitted that he was already married.

Grey Owl did not approach Johnny and the boy did not learn who his father was till years later.

Grey Owl finally admitted to Ivy that he was already married, which ended their relationship.

Grey Owl joined them for two winters trapping at Indian Lake on the east branch of the Spanish River.

Grey Owl insisted that [the men under his supervision] carefully check all camping sites for fire and work on the trails, keeping up the portages to the different lakes in their district, allowing access in case of a fire.

The transformation of Archie Belaney from a backcountry woodsman into the popular writer and public speaker Grey Owl began in 1925.

Grey Owl's 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.

Grey Owl attempted to make him see the torture that animals suffered when they were caught in traps.

Grey Owl moved back to Hay Lake with Jelly Roll, while Anahareo and David White Stone left to work his mining claim in northern Quebec.

Under the name "Grey Owl" he wrote many articles for the periodical in the following years, becoming increasingly known in Canada and the United States.

In January, 1931, Belaney, in the persona of Grey Owl, gave a talk at the annual convention of the Canadian Forestry Association in Montreal, where the film was shown in public for the first time.

Grey Owl 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.

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.

Grey Owl argued that the only way to save the animal was to stop the influx of trappers.

Grey Owl believed that Canada's wilderness and vast open spaces, both of which were fast disappearing, were what made it unique in the world.

Grey Owl raised concerns about how the Canadian government and logging industry were working together to exploit the forests and attempt to replace them with "synthetic forests", all the while projecting a false image of forest preservation.

Oliver took many photographs of Grey Owl looking "consciously Indian", which were used as publicity for his lecture tours.

From 1932 to 1934, Grey Owl worked on the autobiographical novel Pilgrims of the Wild, which was published in early 1935.

Grey Owl sewed his costume for the tour and later wrote:.

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.

All told, Grey Owl gave over two hundred lectures and addressed nearly 250,000 people.

On February 14,1936, Grey Owl embarked at Greenock on the Duchess of Bedford, arriving in Halifax on the 21st.

Grey Owl returned to Beaver Lodge after the wildly successful British tour in the late winter of 1936.

Grey Owl continued to work on Tales of an Empty Cabin, which would be published later that year.

Grey Owl 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.

Bach in the Abitibi area, Quebec, where Grey Owl spent many winters trapping in the 1920s.

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.

On December 7,1936, Grey Owl married Yvonne Perrier, a French Canadian woman he had met in Ottawa in March.

Grey Owl arrived in England in October 1937, accompanied by his third wife, Yvonne, who proved to be a stabilizing influence.

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.

On March 26,1938, Grey Owl appeared at a packed Massey Hall in Toronto.

The story of how a lonely boy playing Indian in the woods behind his house in Hastings transformed himself, first into an accomplished backcountry woodsman and trapper in the Canadian wilderness, and then into the renowned author and lecturer Grey Owl, continued to fascinate and arouse controversy well after his death.

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

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

Grey Owl would drink vanilla extract and occasionally make his own moonshine.