GREY OWL and the CHAPLEAU CONNECTION
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GREY OWL - THE BISCO IMPOSTER By William E. “Bill” McLeod Most of the world now knows the true story of Grey Owl, an Englishman who tried for many years to pass himself off as a man who was part Aboriginal. His real name was Archie Belaney, and he lived in and around Biscotasing, Ontario, from some time in 1912 until the outbreak of World War I. After the War he returned to "Bisco", as it is commonly known and remained there until around 1925. Bisco is about 143 kilometers west of Sudbury on the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Sometime after 1925, Belaney stopped being a trapper and became a conservationist. He wrote a number of bestsellers about animals, particularly the beaver. He went on multi-country lecture and book promotion tours, conning almost everyone he met. Some of his best known victims were the international media, Lovat Dickson (his publisher) and the British Royal Family. It is not the purpose of this column to describe in detail the life and exploits of Archie Belaney. Professor Donald Smith of the University of Calgary has written an excellent and exhaustive biography of the man. Titled “From the Land of Shadows: The Making of Grey Owl” it was published by Prairie Books in 1990. Early in his first period of living in the Bisco/Chapleau area, most people knew he was not an Aboriginal. Among others, well known Northern Ontario families like the Espaniels, the Cachagees, the McLeods and the Petroskys knew the story or at least part of it. Everyone in and around Bisco also knew who Belaney was or perhaps who he was not. The evidence was all there. He couldn't speak either Cree or Ojibway very well, he was a poor trapper, and, according to Donald Smith, he couldn't make paddles or ax handles. However, he learned the ways of the bush and became an expert canoeist under the tutelage of Jimmy Espaniel. Belaney was an accomplished pianist and loved to read poetry. This should have tipped off more folks than it did. But apparently it didn't. If it did, nobody around Bisco seemed to care. Nevertheless, nobody bothered to tell the world about Belaney, even after he became an international celebrity. It was widely known that he was a spendthrift, a bigamist, a philanderer, and a drunk. (Other than that, he was probably a pretty nice guy.) One of his illegitimate children was John Jero. The name Jero was a corruption of the name Girard. The boy's mother was Marie Girard of Bisco who died three years after little John was born. He was sent to the Indian School in Chapleau at the age of three, and with the exception of the summers, he stayed there for twelve years. During those summers he was cared for by Mrs. Edith Langevin of Bisco. Jero graduated from grade eight and spent a year in grade nine at Chapleau High School when, according to Donald Smith, he "set off to ride the rails of North America". That was 1933. Smith's book shows a photo of Jero taken at the station in Bisco some time around 1940. Late in November of 2003, my friend Floyd Laughren and I made a trip to Bisco to have a look around the little town. We spent a while poking around the store and chatting with the owner. The store doubles as the post office and near the postal wicket is a list of the men from Bisco who served in the two World Wars. John Jero's name is on the list. I have tried, without success to find out what ever happened to him after World War II. The October 9, 1935 edition of the Sudbury Star carried a short item that indicated the scam was beginning to unravel. The Star reported that the people of Bisco were beginning to refer to Grey Owl as "Archie". Some time in 1935, reporter Britt Jessup of the North Bay Nugget somehow learned the true identity of Grey Owl. Jessup and his employer sat on the story until after Grey Owl's death in 1938, at which time the story was blown wide open. But there is another twist to this fascinating tale, and it probably happened some time shortly after Grey Owl returned to the Bisco area after World War I. For whatever reason, Grey Owl often visited at least one and perhaps two of my grandfather's four stores, (in Chapleau, Missanabie, Elsas, and Bisco). At some time, probably while she was in high school, my aunt, Mary Edna McLeod, became quite interested in "the story". She was a neighbor and close friend of Anna Petrosky. They were both born in 1903. The Petrosky family lived in a large home on the southeast corner of Lansdowne and Cedar Streets in Chapleau. Anna Petrosky was described to me by her great niece Roberta O'Brien as a "person who was always writing stuff and sending it off to some newspaper". Unbeknownst to either of their families, Edna and Anna decided to write an exposé of Grey Owl. When they were finished, they sent it off to the Toronto Star. The Star was apparently mortified and refused to publish the piece. When William McLeod (my grandfather) found out what the girls had done, he was definitely not amused. I have no idea how Mr. and Mrs. Petrosky reacted but William made Edna destroy the article. In 1970, when Donald Smith was doing his research on Grey Owl, he came to visit with Sheryl and me. Over dinner in our apartment I told him about what Edna and Anna had done. I put him in touch with Edna, and despite my coaxing, she refused to be interviewed by Smith. That and the absence of confirmation from another source is most likely why this bit of Grey Owl trivia did not make it into Land of Shadows. It is interesting to speculate why Grey Owl was able to maintain his false identity for so many years. There could be a number of reasons. First, many of the Aboriginals with whom he associated were functionally illiterate -- at least in English. Even if they had been able to read and write, it is unlikely that they would have blown the whistle on him. When he was sober, Grey Owl was apparently well liked and in his later years devoted considerable energy advocating for Aboriginals. What purpose would be served by destroying the fantasy world he had built for himself? Another reason he was left alone was a general ethic at the time that seemed to allow for a degree of eccentricity. Northern Ontario had its fair share of folks who ran the gamut from character to crackpot. Everybody knew much of everybody else's business. So it was perceived by most folks that it was much better just to live, let live and go on about their business. To give the devil his due, Belaney’s books and speeches raised the international level of awareness of the plight of Canadian animals. And finally, in those days the media consisted mostly of newspapers and some magazines. Television was over a generation off, and radio was not a big deal. There was a sense that certain topics were "off limits", and even though some peccadilloes and scandals were well known to reporters, they didn't rush to share them with the world. Bill McLeod is the author of the book “The Chapleau Game Preserve: History, Murder and Other Tales”. You can purchase this book, or one of Bill’s other books at the website www.billmcleodbooks.com .