Anahareo
(Gertrude Barnard)
(1906-1986)
Anahareo is credited with leading Grey Owl to his remarkable career. She was his supporter and partner for 11 years through his evolution from a trapper and a drifter to a conservationist and author who influenced millions in the 1930's and beyond. She was also a conservationist in her own right, and following Grey Owl's death, she continued on with her own conservation work, garnering national and international recognition.
Anahareo came by her love of nature in her early years. She was a direct descendant of Iroquois chiefs and she learned to love the woods from her father. When her mother died her grandmother took care of her, taught her many traditional skills, and mentored her in her Mohawk heritage.
Anahareo met Grey Owl in 1925 when he was still an anonymous trapper, like thousands of others in Northern Ontario and Quebec. She helped Grey Owl open up to the imagination and sensitivity to nature he had expressed as a child, which had been buried, under his tough frontier lifestyle. His creative, caring side blossomed when they, at Anahareo's urging, adopted two baby beavers orphaned by one of Grey Owl's traps. She saw leg-hold traps as cruel and she was eventually successful in convincing him that trapping was not an appropriate way of life. In his book, Pilgrims of the Wild, describing his change from being a trapper to a conservationist, Grey Owl states that Anahareo's ethical concerns about trapping were the driving influence behind his own transformation.
After this turning point Anahareo encouraged Grey Owl to use his innate story-telling ability and writing skills to tell the world about the threatened wilderness. This laid the foundation for their ultimate fame as described in the profile on Grey Owl.
In 1972, she wrote Devil in Deerskins, describing Grey Owl and their life together. Her daughter by Grey Owl, Shirley Dawn, also devoted herself to conservation and she wrote a book on that theme. Recognition for Anahareo's influence on Grey Owl only came later in life with a change in attitudes to women and native peoples.
Anahareo was an independent, feisty and resourceful woman - prospector, mother, foster parent to beavers, author, artist, and international activist. In her later years she became an outspoken champion of the rights of wild animals through the Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals. She pointed out the irony that though the beaver was held to be one of Canada's symbols, it continued to be subject to 'torture' in leg-hold traps.
In 1979, a Paris-based Animal Rights organization awarded her the Order of Nature. In 1983, Anahareo was awarded the Order of Canada. Former lieutenant-governor of Alberta, Grant MacEwan who nominated her for the Order of Nature, described her as "…one of the pioneers in wildlife preservation …decades ahead of most in speaking out against trapping cruelties." Her citation for the Order of Canada described her as "a passionate, tireless, major force for wildlife conservation."
For more information visit http://www.pastforward.ca/perspectives/june162000.htm