Jon met a stranger on his hike in Franklin hills yesterday and they had friendly dogs so they chatted for a while. The two men talked about the trail, and talked about nature, and eventually got to the subject of Alhambra Creeks. The man brought up the beavers, which he had never seen. He thought he had heard that they had some kind of ‘Champion’ that lived in town, but he didn’t know who? Someone Perryman?
Heh heh heh. Beaver champion! I like it. Sometimes I feel like a champion. But definitely not the first or the foremost. One of the most famous beaver champions of all times is Grey Owl, (or Archie Bellamy). Who in addition to standing up for beavers made all of Canada feel foolish by convincing them he was was Apache, which he clearly was not. They haven’t recovered from the injury quite yet, but if you ask me they have no one to blame but themselves.
One look at the long frame and roman nose should have been enough to dispel any myths!
Grey Owl’s Cabin
On Ajawaan Lake in Canada’s Prince Albert National Park, a conservationist who called himself Grey Owl lived in a cabin with beavers from 1931 to 1938. He faked a First Nations identity; the former trapper was actually an Englishman named Archie Belaney, though these details didn’t emerge until after his death.
After working as a fur trapper, wilderness guide, and forest ranger, he eventually dove into the world of conservation. His third wife (he’d already had two overlapping, failed marriages by the age of 37), a Mohawk Iroquois woman named Anahereo, helped convince him to make the switch from trapping beavers to advocating on their behalf.
Anahereo had accompanied him one day as he set up a trap to catch a mother beaver. The cries of the kits (baby beavers), which supposedly resembled the wails of a human child, caused her to beg him to release the mother. Though Grey Owl failed to heed to her requests because the pelt would earn them much-needed income, he did go back and locate the abandoned kits the next day. He and his wife raised them in their cabin.
Grey Owl went on to write several books about nature conservation, focused largely around a central theme of the negative effects of the commodification of the natural world. Grey Owl and Anahereo were featured in documentaries about their environmental work and became fairly well known among 20th-century conservationists within the United States and Canada. After Grey Owl died of pneumonia in 1938, the details of his fabricated First Nations identity came to light and tarnished his reputation.
Tarnished reputation! He was a polygamist too, don’t forget to mention that. Of course what he said was true and insightful regardless of his parentage. The truly funny part of this is that Grey Owl, who was arguably the most famous beaver advocate in history, and certainly the only one during the end of the fur trade, lived in Saskatchewan, which is now won of the MOST famous beaver-killing provinces in the world.
Here’s a video I made using his speech in the movie by Richard Attenborough. I’m actually quite proud of how the 90 seconds came together, even slipping a little Beethoven in the background.
But maybe you are more old school, and want to see the real thing (er reel thing). Here’s the original 1936 documentary produced with National Parks Canada. As beaver Champions go, he really set the standard. I am sorry every day my living room doesn’t have a beaver pond in it. I can’t speak for Jon, though.
