Talk:Grey Owl

message: What is the logic behind including Grey Owl in this category? I am not all that familiar with him, but nothing in the article seems to motivate category inclusion.  Yeah, he seems to have claimed a voluntary identity that some people thought was inappropriate, but his reason for noteriety seems to be his writing, not any such identity claim per se.
Obviously, it's annoying for my edit of removing the category to be described as vandalism, in rather bad faith.  But that's just annoying, and doesn't affect whether the category fits per se. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 03:19, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Grey Owl may very well have been an "impostor" by definition, and I will accept that. He did indeed fool the world, even the King of England, whom he patted hardily on the back. However, it should be noted that Belaney was accpeted by the people of Bear Island as one of their own, and in this regard we can see that culture sometimes surpasses blood. That Grey Owl is, according to Vizjim, more remembered as an impostor than a visionary conservationist is purely the fault of society. In my earliest learnings of Grey Owl and in studies of his work while in school, the lessons focused on Grey Owl as an environmental legend, not as an impostor. That he was First Nation or not was/is of little consequence. Choosing the impostor role as the primary means of remembering Grey Owl is not only foolish, but it disregards some of the world's earliest and most influential conservationism. Furthermore, categorizing Grey Owl under "Literary hoaxes" is incorrect. There was nothing hoaxed about his writing. I've removed that categorization. --Bentonia School 15:21, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Imposter? 

message: The section "Grey Owl had been an invention" is misleading. The name was given to Belaney long before he was even in the public eye. He had lived with the people of Bear Island and throughout the Canadian Sheild for a long time before anyone had any idea of his work. He trapped beaver for years before he chose to stop. He stopped trapping beaver long before he became famous. He wished to conserve the Canadian wilderness long before he toured England. He wrote short magazine pieces long before he was convinced to write his famed books. The persona of Archie Grey Owl is as true as anything else about him. The fact that Grey Owl is remembered more for not being truthful about his personal history than for his immensely ahead-of-its-time work is evidence of societal fault. That this fault has seeped into Wikipedia is not overly surprising. I'm editing this section. --Bentonia School 15:33, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia is not there to correct societal faults, nor to correct reality.  Archie Belaney posed as Grey Owl for complex reasons, but that does not mean it was not a pose.  The section on his environmental work could certainly do with expanding, but that is not a reason to delete the correct information from this page.  Vizjim 18:10, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I see it as incorrect, and history does as well. Any current ideas about Grey Owl as an "invention" are purely in the minority. All of his posthumous accolades attest to that. Perhaps I was rash in deleting the section, but I find the original article to have been leaning more toward a negative representative of Grey Owl with very little neutrality in the writing. I see as well that the section has been brought back. I gladly debate that; the wording is simply misleading. Grey Owl lived fully the life of a First Nation and was completely accepted not only by the Ojibwe but by various other tribes as well. I move for the section to be removed or the language reworded. --Bentonia School 12:15, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Let's start with this statement: "Archie Belaney was a white Englishman who pretended to be Native".  Is there something you see as false in that statement? Vizjim 16:00, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: How about "Although Archie Belaney was an Englishman with no Native blood, he took on the persona of a First Nations Native and lived as one in the Ontario wilderness for nearly twenty years [I'll double check this; I'm certain it was 20 years though]. In doing so, Belaney led others to believe that he was of half-Native origin. It was in fact, however, the Ojibwe with whom Belaney lived for a time that gave him the name Grey Owl." --Bentonia School 14:10, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Just checked. Yes, Grey Owl lived in the Temagami and elsewhere in northern Ontario from 1907 to 1927. --Bentonia School 14:15, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Right, so we've agreed that he pretended to be Native.  Can you explain why that fact should be censored from the article? I'm all for expanding the section regarding his environmental activities, by the way.  Vizjim 16:54, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, however my problem was that the article read in a negative manner, as if the author was somehow offended by the fact that Belaney fooled everyone. I don't believe in any respect that the fact should be ignored, but it shouldn't have been the driving element of the article either, especially since Grey Owl has come to be an icon in spite of his misleading. So, what shall we do about the wording? Are we in agreement with my proposed edit? Anything you want to add or subtract? And regarding the environmentalism of Grey Owl, let us work on that. I'll try to have something put together within the next couple of days. --Bentonia School 17:42, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  An invention? 

message: I have done some research on Grey Owl's life in the years 1928-1931 and would like to make some improvements by rewriting parts of sections “Early conservation work and change in identity” and “Work with Dominion Parks Branch” with the following objectives:
1) To document the location in which the events of 1928-1931 took place (southeastern Quebec).
2) To correct the date of the first beaver film (1930, not 1928).
3) To clarify that the interaction between Grey Owl and James Harkin of the Parks Branch concerned the first beaver film (shot in 1930 by an uncredited cameraman), not the second film (shot in 1931 by W. J. Oliver).
4) To correct the title of the first article published in Country Life ("The Passing of the Last Frontier", not "The Falls of Silence").
5) To correct the page number of cite_note-39 (124, not 101).
6) To document additional events in the years 1928-1931 (e.g. his first public lecture in Metis, his first public appearance as Grey Owl in Montreal).
I have sources for all these changes. What is the right way to proceed? Just make the changes or wait for some consensus here? Dsiedler (talk) 08:47, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Improvements in the account of Grey Owl's life in the years 1928-1931 

message: The first statement of section "Early conservation work and change in identity" is made without reference. I have checked Smith's biography (From the Land of Shadows: the Making of Grey Owl), Billinghurst's biography (The Many Faces of Archie Belaney, Grey Owl) and Anahareo's autobiography (Devil in Deerskins,) and cannot find any justification for the statement that Belaney was using the name "Grey Owl" as early as 1925. According to these sources, he only started using the name in 1930, in particular in the articles for Canadian Forest and Outdoors and in correspondance with Country Life. Dsiedler (talk) 17:13, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  In 1925, 37-year-old Belaney (now calling himself "Grey Owl", at least in some situations...