Grey Owl: The Many Faces of Archie Belaney

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

Archie Belaney, the Englishman who posed as a Canadian Indian in order
to further his conservation message, is one of those mysterious figures,
like Frederick Philip Grove, whose bizarre double lives can create so
much popular interest that they threaten to take precedence over their
progenitor’s writings. Hence this book, one in a long line of “Grey
Owl”biographies.

Jane Billinghurst tells the basic story well. She is clear and
accurate, though she adds little or nothing to what is already known.
The most important feature of this “illustrated biography” may well
be the generous reproduction of more than 50 sepia photographs, most of
them from public archives in Ontario and Alberta, that have never been
brought together before. Indeed, many of them I had never seen
reproduced elsewhere.

Billinghurst concentrates on Belaney’s actions rather than his
writings. Inserted, however, are various lengthy extracts from his
books. Although appropriate, these can be disconcerting. One turns over
a page, in midsentence, and finds what at first seems a startling
hiatus. Eventually, one realizes that these interpolated pages are
signalled by background designs on the paper, but the pages are
initially puzzling—an oddity in what is otherwise an attractively
designed book.

Archie Belaney was not a particularly likable figure. He treated his
wives abominably, and his concentration on his main interests could
verge on irresponsibility so far as others were concerned. No one has
ever penetrated the mystery of the man, and this is why he remains
personally interesting. Jane Billinghurst does not resolve any of the
puzzlement, but she usefully relays the fascination of Grey Owl for
another generation of readers.