VisitFergusFalls.com
travelling on speaking tours. At the time of his
death from pneumonia in 1938 at age 49, Grey
Owl was one of Canada's most compelling and
popular personalities.
Grey Owl kept up his aboriginal disguise to
the end, but as Fedoruk had pointed out, "It was
part of the show." Without that mask, he would
not have drawn the crowds or captured atten-
tion. "The literary snobs just thought, 'This is
great! Here's an Indian, so eloquent and capable
of expressing himself.' "
Shortly after his passing, a tenacious news-
paper reporter revealed Belaney's fabricated
identity. Though cries of "hoax," "fake" and
"imposter" were cast about, people would come
to realize how he did it is less important than
what he did. Regardless of his origins, wrote
friend and publisher Lovat Dickson, Grey Owl
was "a man who gave up the greater part of his
life, and everything that he earned, to further
the humanitarian purpose he had so closely and
so genuinely at heart: to make the lives of ani-
mals less wretched by awakening compassion
among those who did them most injury, human
beings." www.pc.gc.ca/eng/pn-np/mb/riding/
activ/activ4.aspx GP
