Anahareo
| Gertrude Bernard Anahareo |
|
|---|---|
| Born |
June 18, 1906 Mattawa, Ontario, Canada |
| Died | June 17, 1986 (aged 79) Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada 
|
| Resting place | Ajawaan Lake, Prince Albert National Park, Saskatchewan |
| Citizenship | Canadian |
| Home town | Mattawa, Ontario |
| Spouse(s) | Grey Owl, Count Eric Moltke Huitfeldt |
| Children | 3 daughters Shirley Dawn (1932-1984) |
| Awards | Order of Canada |
Gertrude Moltke Bernard, CM, also known as Anahareo, (June 18, 1906 – June 17, 1986) was a Mohawk Canadian writer, animal rights activist and conservationist. She is perhaps best known for influencing writer Grey Owl (born Archibald Belaney) to become one of Canada's first public conservationist campaigners.
Gertrude Bernard was born in Mattawa, Ontario to a Mohawk Iroquois family on June 18, 1906. She grew up a strongly independent woman and something of a tomboy. Her friends nicknamed her "Pony".
When Gertrude was 19, she met Grey Owl, then age 37, an English fur trapper who claimed to be a half-blood Apache from America. He invited her to accompany him to his traplines. They married shortly afterward in an Anishinaabeg ceremony, although he was still legally married to his first wife Angele Eguwan, an Ojibwe. (See Marriage 'à la façon du pays'.)
Anahareo encouraged Grey Owl to stop trapping and publish his writings about wilderness life. In Pilgrims of the Wild (1934), Grey Owl recounts how his young Iroquois wife, by saving the lives of two beaver kits and raising them, led him to change his way of life and to work for the protection of wildlife. They had a daughter together, Shirley Dawn (August 23, 1932 - June 3, 1984).
The couple split up in 1936. Grey Owl died in 1938, a best-selling author. After his death, it was revealed that he was not part-Apache as he had claimed, but an Englishman named Archibald Stansfeld Belaney.
In 1940 Gertrude, using the name Anahareo that Grey Owl had given her, wrote a book called My Life With Grey Owl. In 1972 she wrote the best-seller, Devil in Deerskins: My Life With Grey Owl, in which she denied having known Grey Owl's true origins. She said she had been hurt to discover his deception.
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