Two controversial men who cared passionately about the environment, so passionately they were willing to bend the truth a little, or even a lot, for the greater good. They are the author Farley Mowat and the conservationist known as Grey Owl.
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Farley Mowat (CBC Still Photo Collection/Fred Phipps)
Grey Owl (Archibald Stansfeld Belaney). (National Archives of Canada)
Two portraits of two controversial environmental pioneers- both different, both passionate about their causes. So passionate that the the truth became secondary to the cause at times. First up is the author and environmentalist Farley Mowat, whose writings are known around the world. In fact, his work has been translated into 52 languages. He was passionate about the North and, among other things, changed what many people thought of the wolf. In the 1930's when Farley was a teenager studying Zoology at the University of Toronto, Grey Owl captivated people on both sides of the Atlantic with stories of his life in a cabin in the woods. There he communed with a pair of beavers he called Jellyroll and Rawhide.
David Suzuki and Farley Mowat in 1988, pushing for a federal debate on environmental issues. (Bill Becker/Canadian Press)
The very first listing for Farley Mowat in the CBC Radio archives is from 1949, when the young writer and his wife Frances had just returned from a trip to the north. He was working as a government biologist in the Northwest Territories, learning about the people who lived there and the caribou they relied on for sustenance. The stories he told were significant and controversial: of starvation and the loss of traditional ways. But when CBC Radio women's reporter Kate Aitken talked to Farley and Frances, she was more interested in the down to earth issues of how they lived during their six month stay near the Arctic Circle. The Mowats talked about flies and mosquitos, relentless winter snow, summer heat and flooding, and hundreds of caribou that walked right past their doorstep. They also had memories of the supplies they needed for survival: both the ones they wished they'd brought, along with those they managed to remember - like the pressure cooker they carried with them every step of their journey, but never actually used. Farley and Frances Mowat separated in 1959, ten years after that interview first aired.
Farley Mowat wrote about the people he'd met in the North, first in a series of talks on CBC Radio and then in his first book "People of the Deer," published in 1952. He was a fierce advocate for the environment, and all his life he was both praised and criticized for, as he put it, never letting the facts get in the way of the truth.
"I tell it as I see it, and I tell what I think to be the truth. Facts don't have the flexibility of reality." - Farley Mowat
Youngsters in Saskatoon view a statue of author Farley Mowat on the grounds of the University of Saskatchewan. (CBC)By 1970, Mowat was a best selling author. He'd written 16 books, all very popular.
In June of that year, he appeared on the CBC Radio program Something to Say. The day before the interview aired, Mowat learned he'd won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour for his book "The Boat Who Wouldn't Float." But the book he really wanted to talk about was his latest: "The Siberians." At that time the Soviet Union was still alive and well and because it was a closed, albeit vast country, people were fascinated to learn anything and everything they could about it. Interviewer Pat Patterson started by asking what took Mowat to Siberia. He went on to discuss a wide range of topics: his love/hate relationship with the sea, his feelings about fear, theories about life in the city and how it affects our minds and psyches, even his thoughts about birth control. And of course, he spoke about the environment.
Archie Belaney at the age of thirteen. He later became known as Grey Owl. (CP PHOTO) (National Archives of Canada)
Some decades before Farley Mowat became a household name, the public was entranced with a man who called himself Grey Owl. He also was passionate and outspoken about the environment. In the 1910s and 20s, he claimed to be the son of an Apache woman and a Scotsman. He lived in a cabin in the woods, knew the ways of aboriginal people, and supported himself by trapping animals.
Grey Owl, 1937 (The Canadian Press)
In 1925, after he killed an adult female beaver, he discovered there were now two newly orphaned kits left behind. He and his companion Anahareo decided to adopt and name the beavers: Jelly Roll and Rawhide. The beavers learned to follow them everywhere and even had an entrance to their den inside the cabin.
Moved by the experience, Grey Owl vowed to stop the slaughter of beavers, which were endangered. He wrote about the wonders of the Canadian wilderness in magazines and books, and before long, the national parks service took note and invited him to become its first ever naturalist. By 1930 he was on the lecture circuit, not only in Canada, but in England, where he became a sensation. He gave two lectures a day, six days a week. People crowded into halls to see the tall handsome man dressed in buckskin and speaking of beavers and aboriginal people, and the Canadian wild. He even had an audience with the king and queen. But it turns out that Grey Owl had a big secret, one that even his closest friends didn't know. Not 24 hours after his death in 1938, the renowned conservationist was accused of being a fraud. Canadians were stunned to learn that the man they thought was native by birth was in fact a transplanted Englishman named Archie Belaney. Grey Owl had coloured his skin brown and dyed his hair black.
"I was quite aghast when he said he was going to go as an Indian Chief to lecture in England. I said why not go as the woodsman that he was. He said: they expect me to be an Indian. I'd stand on my head if I knew that people would listen." - Grey owl's spouse Anahareo
Lovat Dickson, Grey Owl's publisher and friend, continued to believe in his cause even after it was discovered he wasn't who he claimed to be.
As the stress of the lecture circuit and the scrutiny of the public eye took its toll, Dickson firmly believed that Grey Owl had started to feel the strain of an actor playing a part. Although he had found out the truth about Grey Owl's real identity at the same time as the rest of the world, he always believed that Grey Owl hadn't perpetuated the myth out of greed. Instead it was out of a passionate devotion to his cause.
"Grey Owl could hold an audience in the palm of his hand. The whole country got into a fever about him. That's all that you can say." Lovat Dickson
There are numerous books and films about Grey Owl. His writing, as well as his cabin on the shores of Ajawaan Lake in northern Saskatchewan, continue to attract interest. A plaque beside Grey Owl's grave in Prince Albert National Park reads:
"Say a silent thank you for the preservation of wilderness areas, for the lives of the creatures who live there and for the people with the foresight to realize this heritage, no matter how."
