Belaney was born in the English Channel port of Hastings in
1888, the son of a teenage bride and a reprobate father who soon
left his family. Raised by two strict maiden aunts, Archie early
on began to develop elaborate fantasies about his absent father,
entwining the elder Belaney with his own love of animals and
fascination with North American natives. Those fantasies became
the basis of Grey Owl's imaginary ancestry as the Mexican-born
son of a Scots frontiersman and an Apache woman - Belaney's
standard account of himself within two years of his arrival
alone at age 17 in Northern Ontario in 1906. In 1910, Belaney
married an Ojibwa woman, Angele Egwuna, his first and only legal
wife. The next year, already drinking heavily, he abandoned her
and their daughter, Alice. During the next four poorly
documented years of his life, Belaney strove to eradicate his
English accent. He also had a son with a Métis woman, who died
of tuberculosis soon after giving birth. Belaney next emerged in
Digby, N.S., in May, 1915