Vulgar History - Canadian History (part 3)： Anahareo Married A Liar

00:00:00.000 hello and welcome to canadian heritage minutes by vulgar history which is a spinoff of the main

00:00:16.880 vulgar history podcast it's the feminist women's history comedy podcast and this is the

00:00:22.280 Canadian Feminist History comedy podcast slash where I, your host, Anne Foster, update listeners

00:00:30.660 who may not live in Canada with what's going on in Canada lately. And what's going on in Canada

00:00:35.640 lately is there's going to be a federal election, which the way that that works here, because people

00:00:43.400 are listening from various different countries where things work differently. Unlike in, for

00:00:51.380 campaigning what happens here is that the prime minister announces that there's going to be an

00:00:57.600 election and then for about the next i think it's like four to six weeks it's basically for the next

00:01:02.980 month there is campaigning and at the end of that month there is an election and once those results

00:01:08.420 are in then the people take over their jobs there's not like a ceremonial date where they have

00:01:14.020 to do elections there's like the prime minister can choose when to take election basically and

00:01:19.260 it's a blissfully short election season. And the way that it works is that everybody,

00:01:26.480 well, people in Canada, we all vote for who's going to be our member of parliament and our

00:01:29.600 writing and everybody belongs to one of the major political parties. And then whichever political

00:01:35.140 party has the most members of parliament elected, the leader of that party becomes the prime

00:01:40.580 minister. That's how it works. And so in Canada right now, there's in this particular election,

00:01:49.260 there's basically two front-running parties where it's like one or the other of them is

00:01:55.560 almost definitely going to win and so there's the liberal party whose leader used to be Justin

00:02:01.640 Trudeau and now it's Mark Carney who in terms of like Canada and the elbows up of it all Mark

00:02:06.700 Carney is a hockey player he like got a hockey scholarship to university he's like he was like

00:02:11.620 goalie which everyone is saying that's really notable because they're kind of like you have

00:02:15.720 to have a certain skill set to be a goalie anyway. He's a leader of that party, the liberal party

00:02:20.700 who might win. And then the other party who might win is the conservative party, literally called

00:02:25.060 the conservative party, who I do not support, who I am against, who I would suggest everybody

00:02:31.600 not vote for. And so in most parts of Canada, it makes sense to vote for your local liberal

00:02:38.180 candidate to try to get the liberals more seats. In writings like mine, I live in Saskatoon,

00:02:43.660 in Saskatchewan, where the hatred of the Liberal Party is decades long and runs very deep. And

00:02:51.080 there's basically no chance that a Liberal will ever be elected in Saskatoon, where I live. So

00:02:56.820 in this writing, it makes more sense to vote for the third party, which is the NDP. So anyway,

00:03:01.240 I'm going to put a link in the show notes too. There's a website if you're in Canada and you

00:03:04.660 want to know like in your writing, what's the best way to vote so the Conservatives don't win?

00:03:08.860 i will put that link there because i found that useful so we can all vote in a way to try and

00:03:14.560 make our country not descend into a fascist regime like is happening to other places in the

00:03:19.620 world speaking of the most recent um attack on canada is that we were called nasty which is like

00:03:28.560 bro you're reusing your insults and also it's like oh oh really we're nasty canadians is that

00:03:34.800 as a response after some female politicians made some like very strong appearances on television

00:03:41.120 it's like really really anyway I'm in Canada and I'm doing these episodes about women from

00:03:49.640 Canadian history and when I first was asking on social media for people like what are suggestions

00:03:54.360 like I have not I don't know a lot about women from Canadian history because it didn't come up

00:03:59.660 a lot in my schooling. And I don't know what it's like now for people going to school. But when I

00:04:04.840 was a youth, or even when I was in university, it was just a lot of like fur trade treaties,

00:04:10.260 which is just like a lot of men in rooms signing documents together, is what I recall. So I'm like

00:04:16.780 unearthing these Canadian history stories about women. And one of the responses, one of the first 0.85

00:04:23.240 responses I got actually, when I was asking about this on social media for suggestions, is somebody

00:04:26.680 said, like, please discuss Indigenous women from Canadian history. And I was like, yes, yes, yes.

00:04:30.380 I really want this series, Canadian Heritage Minutes, to include all kinds of people from

00:04:36.560 all kinds of cultural backgrounds, because part of what makes Canada Canada is the multiculturalism

00:04:43.540 of it all. And of course, like any country that was founded in colonialism, there were people

00:04:48.680 living here when the white people showed up. And I'm going to be talking today about a woman whose

00:04:54.760 name. She's known by several different names. And this is sort of like, let's discuss. So the 0.98

00:04:59.680 woman who I'm talking about today, her name when she was born was Gertrude Bernard. And then she

00:05:05.520 later became known as Anna Harayo, which we'll talk about how and why that happened. As far as

00:05:13.000 I can tell from the research that I did, which largely came from reading an article about Anna

00:05:19.680 her eye out by Alison Wick from the peopleandtext.ca as well as the Wikipedia, a very comprehensive

00:05:25.460 Wikipedia entry. You know, Wikipedia doesn't say who wrote it, but it's been edited many times by

00:05:31.240 somebody called Dee Seedler. And so as well as the women in Canadian or the Canadian

00:05:36.860 history encyclopedia.com. So people in her life called her Gertie. Her name is Gertrude.

00:05:44.860 Her father nicknamed her Pony because she always ran.

00:05:48.060 She never walked.

00:05:49.460 There's a movie about the situation where her character is just called Pony.

00:05:53.600 I'm going to go with the Anna Harao as her name because that was how she published some books and that was the name she chose. 0.82

00:06:00.160 But Gertie I might also use because that's what people called her.

00:06:03.300 We'll get into it.

00:06:04.080 Like so many people on this podcast, there's various names.

00:06:07.500 So Anna Harao, Gertrude Bernard, was born in Matawa in 1906 to Mary Nash Okaping, who

00:06:14.320 was an Algonquin woman, and Matthew Bernard, who was an Algonquin and Mohawk man.

00:06:19.540 She came from the Pikwagagan First Nation on Golden Lake in Ontario.

00:06:24.900 So her mother died when she was four years old.

00:06:28.400 And so, you know, I'll call her Gertie now because she's a kid.

00:06:31.600 She didn't change her name yet.

00:06:32.940 So she was a little Gertie, four years old.

00:06:36.060 After her mother died, she was raised by her paternal grandmother, Mary Catherine Papineau Bernard.

00:06:41.180 So Catherine, also known as Big Grandma, love it, spoke to her in the Mohawk language, taught her skills and crafts, and instilled in Gertie the value and pride of her heritage.

00:06:52.480 As a child, like Big Grandma's background, she had been taken from her family and sent to a convent where she learned to speak French.

00:07:00.540 She learned the Catholic religion. She later escaped as a teenager and returned to her family

00:07:06.040 in Oka. She, Big Grandma, amazing person. What a story. She married John Bernard Nelson, a Mohawk

00:07:13.620 man. His parents disapproved and they moved from Oka to Belleville and then to Matoa. So although

00:07:18.920 Big Grandma was not raised on her ancestral territory, she raised her descendants with

00:07:22.840 the teachings she learned from her grandmother, a testament to her strength and resiliency. 0.96

00:07:27.480 It's a little gertie, unable to sit still. 0.73

00:07:30.140 Like remember her dad called her pony because she always ran, she never walked, and she

00:07:33.680 could not sit still.

00:07:34.900 These days, people might be like, oh, ADHD perhaps.

00:07:38.680 But in those days, it was just kind of like, that's a kid with a lot of energy.

00:07:42.120 So she would often cut class to explore the woods and wilderness, even paid her friends

00:07:46.500 sometimes to complete and hand in assignments for her.

00:07:49.540 At age 11, big grandma, but it was just health reasons. 0.93

00:07:53.700 She was not able to care for her anymore.

00:07:55.640 And so one of her aunts, one of Gertie's aunts and family, so I guess her aunt and the aunt's

00:08:01.720 children, moved in. And so this is her new guardian. So this aunt was invested. The aunt

00:08:07.700 was very Catholic. She wanted to really uphold the values and social conventions of the Catholic

00:08:12.200 church and mainstream society, which were at odds with Gertie's unrestrained passion for life

00:08:17.820 and adventure and the wilderness and her heritage, her Algonquin and Mohawk heritage.

00:08:24.420 So this was, you know, a tense situation. In her mid to late teens, Gertie moved back in with her

00:08:30.980 father. Her father worked away from the home most of the time. So she had more freedom than with

00:08:35.420 her previous guardians to go outside and like do these things in nature that she loved to do.

00:08:40.220 When she was 19, so this is 1925. And I do want to say, if you look at pictures of her in 1925,

00:08:46.580 she has the most adorable, like bobbed haircut with bags. Like that haircut didn't look good

00:08:53.080 on everybody. It still doesn't. But in the 1920s, you know, people are getting this flapper haircut.

00:08:59.300 And for her, I feel it's more like a tomboy haircut, like get the hair out of the way so

00:09:03.620 you can like climb trees better or whatever. It suits her. She looks cute as a button with

00:09:08.820 this haircut. And frankly, she looked cute as a button in general. And that's part of why what 1.00

00:09:13.280 happens next happens next. So when she was 19, she took a summer job as a waitress at the island

00:09:18.180 resort of Camp Wabacon on Lake Temagami. This is in Ontario, Northern Ontario, I believe.

00:09:25.440 So a woman named Kristen Gleason wrote a biography of Gertie and Kristen Gleason wrote,

00:09:31.780 at 19, she was now a beautiful and energetic young woman with bobbed hair who dressed in

00:09:36.260 riding breeches and shirt, though if the occasion demanded, she would apply makeup,

00:09:39.840 the very picture of a modern woman. So Gertie, which is still what she was called at this point,

00:09:46.120 she caught the eye of a guest at the resort, a wealthy New York man who offered to pay her school

00:09:51.820 fees. So she and her father decided that in the fall, she would attend a Roman Catholic boarding

00:09:56.780 school in Toronto. She's 19, remember? So maybe like a college finishing school. But these plans

00:10:02.580 did not come to pass because later in the summer, she met someone else, a guide working at the

00:10:08.980 resort, like an outdoor, like someone who would take the visitors on, you know, canoe trips into

00:10:13.640 the woods and whatever. And this man's name was Archie Bellany. And to quote, again, from

00:10:19.980 Kristen Gleason's biography, a handsome, mysterious man dressed in a buckskin vest,

00:10:25.300 a Hudson Bay belt and moccasins, Archie appeared to Gertie like the dashing daredevil hero she

00:10:30.060 idolized, Jesse James and Robin Hood. Compared to the bland, wealthy vacationers, Archie reeked

00:10:35.980 of adventure and excitement. Gertie found him so fascinating, she wasted no time in discovering his

00:10:40.660 name and that he was a guide so she's just like who's this guy he's got like two long braids

00:10:45.320 he's wearing this like deer skin coat with like fringe on it so he was 36 she was 19 so he's

00:10:53.720 almost twice her age and he introduced himself as the son of a Scottish man and an Apache woman

00:10:59.680 and he said he was from Mexico and they fell in love so she chose to join Archie where he was

00:11:08.880 going next to like, also he's like, you know, he's this wilderness guy and she like loves nature.

00:11:13.480 So he's like, I'm going to go to Northwestern Quebec to work as a trapper. And he's, she's

00:11:18.160 like, great, I will come with you. And so he gave her an indigenous name based on her memories of

00:11:24.880 her Mohawk great-grandfather, Jean-Baptiste Annan Harrison, chief who died in 1856.

00:11:30.680 so this is where Anna Harao comes from he gave the name to her so she accompanied him on the

00:11:40.160 trap line like going out trapping animals to sell like to skin them to sell them for fur etc

00:11:46.200 and she was like she's this outside outdoors person but she had not really been a hunter

00:11:51.520 and she's horrified by what she experienced on the trap line just seeing all these the frozen

00:11:56.380 corpses of animals who had died in agony while trying to escape from these leghold traps,

00:12:02.080 watching him killing all these animals. And she was just like, this is not cool, bro. Like this

00:12:05.820 is like, especially like beavers. She's really affected by seeing them being killed. So she

00:12:11.360 tried to make him see the torture that the animals suffered when they were caught in traps.

00:12:16.060 And so during their time together, Archie located a beaver lodge, which he knew to be occupied by a

00:12:22.100 beaver instead of trap for her. When the mother beaver was caught, he began to canoe away. And

00:12:27.980 did you know beaver babies are called kittens? They are. And when they cry, it sounds a lot like

00:12:33.560 human infants crying. And Anna Harao, which I'll call her that now because that is her name now,

00:12:39.860 she begged him to set the mother free. She felt so badly for the babies, but he needed the money

00:12:45.160 from selling the beaver's pelt. But the next day, he went back and rescued the baby beavers,

00:12:51.100 and they adopted the baby beavers and raised them as their sort of pets slash children. They

00:12:55.460 called them McGinnis and McGinty. So Archie wrote this about Anna Harao. And note, he

00:13:03.640 says that they're married, but they, at this point, were not married. But they were like

00:13:09.260 together all the time. So here's what he wrote. I speedily discovered that I was married to no

00:13:14.400 butterfly in spite of her modernistic ideas and found that my companion could swing an axe as

00:13:19.300 well as she could a lipstick and was able to put up a tent in good shape, make quick fire and could

00:13:23.800 rig a tump line and get a load across in good time, even if she did have to sit down and powder

00:13:28.360 her nose at the other end of the portage. She habitually wore breeches, a custom not at that

00:13:33.780 time so universal amongst women as it is now. So he wrote this like a decade or two later and one

00:13:39.320 that I did not in those days look on with any great approval. So for this podcast, like when

00:13:43.940 women wear trousers we're here for it like this is it's one of the catchphrases of vulgar history 0.97

00:13:49.840 it's just like to keep your pants on so like she's just there like this makes sense i'm gonna do me

00:13:54.080 i'm gonna wear lipstick powder my nose wear trousers go in a canoe raise the beaver babies

00:13:59.780 like she's just like she's doing her and i respect it so and harreo also handy um she probably

00:14:07.060 learned these sewing skills from big grandma so she made her own clothes she made archie's clothes

00:14:10.920 sort of buckskin canvas and cloth. And so this is, again, like she dressed in a distinctive way

00:14:16.700 that was not typical of, well, really of anyone, not typical of white women, which she was not,

00:14:23.280 but also not typical of indigenous women. Like she wore breeches, fringed buckskin jackets and 0.62

00:14:27.800 vests and lace up prospector boots with her cute little bobbed hair and bangs.

00:14:32.700 So here's an understatement. Their courtship was at times eventful. In her memoir, she claimed that

00:14:38.880 she stabbed Archie with a knife at one point. So it's like two people with big personalities.

00:14:44.180 Two years into cohabitating, he proposed to her, but he was already married because he had married

00:14:52.400 somebody called Angel Aguna. And because he'd never actually divorced from her officially,

00:14:58.160 they could not marry under Canadian law. But the chief of the Lac Simon Band of Indians gave them

00:15:03.400 a, quote, marriage blessing.

00:15:05.060 So they were like spiritually married.

00:15:07.740 And then one year later,

00:15:08.760 they, along with the adopted beaver children,

00:15:11.220 moved to the area of Cabano

00:15:12.560 in southeastern Quebec,

00:15:13.900 or maybe Cabano, knowing it's Quebec.

00:15:16.800 And they stayed there for three years

00:15:18.160 and they wanted,

00:15:19.200 their plan was to set up a beaver colony.

00:15:21.860 Beavers were there.

00:15:24.740 Conserving beavers is like a huge thing in their life,

00:15:27.640 which could not,

00:15:28.560 what could be more Canadian than that?

00:15:30.240 The beaver is the like national animal of Canada.

00:15:33.400 So they wanted to set up a beaver colony where the beavers would be protected and could be studied.

00:15:38.060 And it was here that Archie transformed himself.

00:15:41.660 He renamed himself and sort of redid his backstory.

00:15:44.120 And he's like, his name was now Gray Owl, which is how he is best known now, actually.

00:15:51.100 So he had fully entered this new persona as this kind of like nature conservator guy who he gave talks.

00:15:59.860 He wrote, you know, articles and lectures.

00:16:02.300 and meanwhile Anna Harao was asserting her independence and embarking on prospecting

00:16:10.280 expeditions on her own in remote areas of northwestern Quebec she was always interested

00:16:15.300 in prospecting which means like trying to find gold basically she was hoping to stake a claim

00:16:20.880 to find some gold but it did not pan out although she did improve her backcountry skills on these

00:16:26.220 solo trips during one of these trips she accepted a job that involved hauling over a thousand

00:16:31.220 kilograms of equipment to a distant lake in winter by dog sled. Like she just like gets

00:16:36.840 this thing done. This is where I just feel like the Canadian vibes are just like Canadian-ing

00:16:41.340 in this story. So in the spring of 1831, sorry, 1931, Gray Owl accepted an offer of employment

00:16:49.360 from the parks, like Parks Canada, basically, to be the caretaker of park animals at the Riding

00:16:55.520 Mountain National Park in Manitoba. And then also later at the Prince Albert National Park in

00:17:00.920 Saskatchewan, where I have been. It's in northern Saskatchewan. And now for a quick advertising

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00:20:32.260 And we're back. So he and Anna Jarreo with, I guess, I don't know, the two beaver babies grew

00:20:38.140 up. They spread their wings and went off to be adult beavers on their own, I guess. They have

00:20:45.260 two new baby beavers named Jelly Roll and Rawhide. So they left Quebec bound for a new life in the

00:20:50.800 West. And so he started writing partially because Anna Harao encouraged him to write because he's

00:20:59.240 like, if I can't kill beavers and sell their pelts, then how am I going to make money to survive?

00:21:04.680 And she's like, well, you could write books. So he did. She found that it made him like a zombie

00:21:09.260 when he was working on writing. She was also at this time pregnant. She had a daughter named

00:21:14.340 Shirley Dawn, who's born in 1932. But she just got tired of him sitting. They were living in these

00:21:20.820 log cabins with two beavers. And she wrote that she just got fed up. She later wrote,

00:21:25.860 all I heard from Archie that winter was the scratch scratch of his pen and arguments against

00:21:29.940 taking a bath. Like a kid, he loathed baths. And she's still interested in prospecting,

00:21:35.800 trying to find gold. And so she began to study mineralogy. And she continued going on these

00:21:40.060 solo prospecting trips to the remote Churchill River area. One of her trips, and she took the

00:21:44.880 daughter with her because that guy wasn't going to care for a child. I don't know if she took

00:21:49.360 the beavers with her. Probably not. So she took a trip. One trip took an entire year from the

00:21:54.860 summer of 1934 to the summer of 1935. She also traveled by canoe to Wollaston Lake, 550 kilometers

00:22:00.820 north of Prince Albert in Saskatchewan, and continued further north to the edge of the

00:22:04.820 barren lands. And they exchanged letters during these trips, and Grey Owl's letters to her

00:22:10.600 betrayed a mixed bag of emotions. So he admired her independent spirit and courage in taking these

00:22:16.860 trips on her own. He was also concerned for her safety. He was jealous that she could go on this

00:22:22.740 trip that he wasn't able to go because he was having some health problems. And also he had

00:22:27.360 the pressure of like writing to make money for them. Anyway, at his request, she returned from

00:22:33.460 the prospecting trip in the summer of 1935 to help him prepare. He was going on a lecture tour in

00:22:37.980 Great Britain. So he, like Gray Owl had become sort of an international celebrity of this sort

00:22:44.300 of like seemingly indigenous person not to spoil a twist that's coming up with his like long braids

00:22:52.860 and his fringed coat talking about saving the beavers and like environmentalism and stuff so

00:22:58.100 he's kind of a celebrity and he's going to go to Great Britain and when he was going there the plan

00:23:02.260 was that she would look after the two beavers and presumably their daughter while he was away

00:23:08.040 which she did and then he it was a hugely successful lecture tour in Great Britain

00:23:12.060 And when he came back, they had a huge fight and they decided to separate for some time.

00:23:18.600 And they parted for good at that point, April 1936.

00:23:22.500 They've been together now for 10 years.

00:23:23.920 So she's like 29 years old.

00:23:25.880 Oh, actually, to clarify.

00:23:27.720 So when she's going on her year-long prospecting trip, their daughter Dawn was not with her.

00:23:34.500 Her daughter Dawn was in the care of a family in Prince Albert, which is the nearby city.

00:23:38.140 So she was truly by herself.

00:23:40.240 and then she was like what am i gonna do so gray owl slash archie had made some like short films

00:23:46.300 and this is part of his sort of like fame and celebrity and she appeared in some of them and

00:23:49.740 so she was like well maybe i can go pursue a film career in hollywood which didn't really pan out

00:23:54.260 um one year later she gave birth to another daughter whose name was ann uh the father's

00:23:59.820 name is not on birth certificate and she never publicly stated who the father was

00:24:03.780 but she's now in this precarious position financially but also socially because she 0.98

00:24:09.400 was like an indigenous woman a single mother she was so skilled with like going off in the woods

00:24:15.080 in the backcountry as a guide but she was able to find work doing that and she lacked the means to

00:24:21.420 support herself and this new baby and then because of the cultural stereotypes which are still facing

00:24:27.320 people today here just sort of like how a single indigenous woman like an unmarried mother is sort

00:24:36.040 of looked down upon. So there was a real concern that her daughter, Anne, would be taken from her

00:24:42.500 by force, that she would maybe be institutionalized. Like this was just sort of like what's

00:24:48.200 going to happen to her. It was a scary time. And she was broke. So she went to a Salvation

00:24:54.340 Army residence for unwed mothers in Saskatoon, the city in which I live now. And eventually she

00:25:00.260 had to give Anne up for adoption. She was adopted by an Anglo-Canadian couple who took her to live

00:25:07.660 with them in Calgary. Meanwhile, like, although she and Grey Owl were no longer together,

00:25:12.620 like, they still were amicable with each other. He had gone back for another lecture tour in

00:25:16.400 Great Britain, but came back and he was, like, very ill. She was alerted that he was dying in

00:25:23.000 a hospital in Prince Albert, and so she rushed there, but he died before she could see him,

00:25:27.060 April 13th, 1938. After he died, shortly afterwards, the sensational news broke.

00:25:35.700 Who could have seen this coming? He was not actually half Apache, half Scottish from Mexico,

00:25:41.920 but he was in fact from England. He was an Englishman born in Hastings without a trace

00:25:47.760 of indigenous blood. And this is why there is a movie that was made about this story starring

00:25:52.740 Pierce Brosnan, which is not whitewashing casting, but accurate casting of a white man playing

00:26:00.600 a white man in this story. Anna Harao later wrote, quote, when finally I was convinced that Archie

00:26:08.940 was English, I had the awful feeling for all those years I had been married to a ghost.

00:26:12.660 The man who now lay buried was someone I had never known and that Archie had never really existed.

00:26:18.120 so because his books um and his speaking tours had been so popular like this meant that the

00:26:25.400 news that he wasn't really apache and so the scandal was reported widely in the canada britain

00:26:32.420 and the u.s so she was sort of embroiled on this as well and so she was invited by his london

00:26:39.060 publisher to go to england where she met archie bellini's white mother kitty scott brown and then

00:26:47.200 And the publisher asked her, like, could you write a new book to try and, I don't know, like, sort all this out to make people feel less weird about it?

00:26:57.560 And so she did, because she needed money.

00:26:59.200 So she wrote a book called My Life with Grey Owl, which was published in 1940.

00:27:03.620 She was not happy with the book.

00:27:05.980 She didn't really have control over the content.

00:27:08.160 She kind of had to write the story that they wanted her to write, which didn't, which wasn't really truthful.

00:27:13.040 she wrote quote the usual portrayal of myself has been that of a sweet gentle indian maiden

00:27:18.660 whispering to the leaves swaying with the breeze tra la no no i'm a rebel really like that's not

00:27:24.640 what she was like but this is the book that she kind of had to write to make money in 1939 she

00:27:30.660 met eric moltke who is a swedish count um who had immigrated to canada from sweden to start a new

00:27:38.500 life. And they got married in Winnipeg where they hoped to find good job opportunities. But in fact,

00:27:44.200 they did not. And both of them ended up doing just like menial labor type work.

00:27:50.660 So this one source says that Eric, this Swedish count, had some similarities to Grey Owl. So she

00:28:01.420 kind of, she had a type. So he was charming. He was funny. And like Ray Owl, like he liked to

00:28:10.580 drink and like party and have a good time. And so with both men, Anna Ray Owl was like happy to

00:28:16.020 drink with them and have fun. But she was just sort of like, you know, she's never happier than

00:28:20.100 when she was like off by herself in the bush. And she's like living in Winnipeg. She's living in 0.71

00:28:24.360 the city. She had been through it, like living in Saskatoon and like the unmarried women's shelter, 1.00

00:28:29.760 like in calgary like her confidence had diminished you know she had so many skills but she was not 0.74

00:28:34.320 living a life where she's able to use those the chips like that she wasn't able to go into the

00:28:38.540 bush anymore that would like that would help her reinforce her sense of like capability and

00:28:43.700 strength um she knew like this is where like she's talented and good but without that she just kind of

00:28:49.520 she was unhappy the jobs that she got didn't challenge her inquiring mind and so she started

00:28:55.760 drinking more. Eric was also a heavy drinker. Then World War II started. Eric enlisted in the

00:29:02.320 army and served as a tank driver. Anna Harreo, I don't know if she's still going by that at this

00:29:07.500 point. Maybe she's going by Gertie. I don't know. She's pregnant again. So this will be her third

00:29:11.540 daughter named Catherine. So she moved back to Saskatoon. She rented a small house and lived on

00:29:17.400 the pension of being the wife of an army guy, which finally, she at least had income. And so

00:29:25.000 she's able to bring back her daughter, Dawn, um, from Prince Albert to live with her and Catherine.

00:29:29.380 And she tried to just concentrate on like raising her girls, hopefully with, you know, the love and

00:29:34.420 tradition that big grandma had raised her with. At this point, Catherine, so Eric returned from

00:29:40.880 the war. Catherine was four years old. Dawn was 13 years old and Eric had trouble adjusting to

00:29:47.260 civilian life. So he started drinking even more and he was unable to find a job. Um, 1947. So

00:29:54.500 Dawn, the

00:29:56.320 teenage oldest daughter, returned to Prince

00:29:58.520 Albert. Anna Jarreo left

00:30:00.580 Eric and took a job as a cook and housekeeper 0.80

00:30:02.680 at a farm. One year later,

00:30:04.700 Eric found a job in Canmore, Alberta

00:30:06.420 and hoping for a new start, Anna Jarreo

00:30:08.620 brought their daughter Catherine to join him there 0.62

00:30:10.680 hoping that this time it'll work out.

00:30:12.860 But the relationship continued to be troubled.

00:30:15.500 It was on-off

00:30:16.580 like they would separate and get back together again

00:30:18.640 repeatedly. But

00:30:20.600 then in 1953, she received a visit

00:30:22.540 from her second daughter. Remember Anne?

00:30:24.500 So who had originally been called Anne the same way I spell my name, A-N-N, but Anne had now started spelling her name with an E. Couldn't be me, but I respect the choice. So at this point, Anne was 16 and had discovered this was who her biological mother was. And so it was so exciting to get to meet her daughter for really the first time.

00:30:42.840 and then eventually Anna Harao and Catherine left Eric for good. She moved back to her childhood

00:30:50.600 home in Ontario in Matoa where she met her she lived with her family for the first time in nearly

00:30:55.660 30 years like where she had come from. Eric suffered a severe workplace accident and she

00:31:02.740 got back together with him again where he was in Calgary where he was receiving treatment.

00:31:08.120 He was now permanently disabled, unable to work, depressed, drinking even more heavily.

00:31:13.880 And she was also just depressed and tired.

00:31:16.180 So her daughter, their daughter, Catherine, left for beauty school and she decided to go live with her older daughter, Dawn.

00:31:23.780 And so she and Eric, I know I said before they separated for good, but now they actually separated for good.

00:31:28.980 They permanently separated on good terms in 1959.

00:31:32.440 So after she moved in with her daughter, Dawn, Anna Hureo was diagnosed with a malfunctioning

00:31:37.120 thyroid, which was probably one of the things causing her depression and some of the health

00:31:42.480 problems she'd been having for years. Once this was diagnosed, she's able to get treatment.

00:31:48.500 And then she had the energy and the ambition to pursue two projects, a film and a book about

00:31:53.980 Grey Owl that she wanted to portray herself in Grey Owl authentically. So she traveled to Toronto,

00:31:59.780 of vancouver and los angeles promoting this film project but no there's no takers really there was

00:32:04.280 little appetite in the film industry for an authentic portrayal of indigenous canadians

00:32:08.460 in the 1960s and like gray owl had been so famous in like 1935 but like that was decades ago

00:32:13.460 so she focused on writing a book about gray owl like she had that other one before but she never

00:32:19.400 really cared for it and actually this coincided with some interest in his life starting to increase

00:32:24.700 Because in the late 1960s, the public started to care more about the negative impact of pollution, the importance of the wilderness to the health of the planet.

00:32:34.860 And so Grey Owl, his legacy, which is like, yeah, he was an Englishman pretending to be an Apache man, but he did important conservation work and that work was starting to be seen as important.

00:32:48.260 And so where he used to live in Prince Albert National Park, in that sort of log cabin, it's called Beaver Lodge.

00:32:58.020 And it was restored by Parks Canada.

00:33:01.100 You can still go up there.

00:33:02.180 It's a day's hike.

00:33:04.540 If you go to Prince Albert National Park, you can go, you can see the cabin still there.

00:33:09.400 You can see the part in the corner where the beaver is with it.

00:33:12.080 So some more writings about gray owl started to appear in 1972.

00:33:16.860 the CBC, the national broadcaster, produced a Grey Owl documentary. And then in 1972,

00:33:23.720 that same year, Anna Harreo's book, Devil in Deer Skins, My Life with Grey Owl, was published.

00:33:28.880 This was a popular success. I reached number four on the Toronto Star bestseller list.

00:33:33.620 And the title, Devil in Deer Skins, was inspired by a conversation she'd had with Grey Owl years

00:33:38.000 before, where he had told her that he was going to write a book called Devil in Deer Skins,

00:33:42.160 which would be his last book. And she assumed that he was going to reveal his real identity.

00:33:46.860 in that book. So she, she took that title for her own book. The idea of a film of a gray owl.

00:33:53.140 So this started to gain more attraction. His London, Archie's London publisher,

00:34:00.180 published a new collection of gray owls memoirs called Wilderness Man, The Strange Story of Gray

00:34:06.440 Owl. And then that book was, the rights for that were bought by a film production company,

00:34:11.820 which sucks that they didn't buy the rights to Ana Harao's book, but to this other book.

00:34:14.900 the film was supposed to feature marlon brando as gray owl but it never actually

00:34:18.880 got off the ground meanwhile a toronto theater company um put out a play called life and times

00:34:24.460 of gray owl anna haraya went on opening night and she hated it she wrote it was totally unrealistic

00:34:30.340 and the actress bore no resemblance in appearance or mannerisms and definitely not in spirit to me

00:34:35.020 she said it turned out to be a parody archie must have flipped in his crib

00:34:39.500 So in 1980 and 1981, Ana Hoya was profiled in the Vancouver Weekend Sun and in BC Outdoors.

00:34:45.680 And these succeeded in portraying her not as a stereotype and not as a victim, but as a living, breathing First Nations woman who could not be sodded into the old stereotypes.

00:34:57.520 Like she was, this is a quote about the articles.

00:35:00.440 She was a determined woman with miles of experience who was committed to her views.

00:35:04.060 And so in the 1980s, she continued to be active in the fields of conservation, environmentalism, and animal rights.

00:35:12.780 She joined the Society for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals and campaigned for various issues regarding animal protection, such as banning leghold traps and promoting the use of humane traps.

00:35:23.300 She became a member of the Order of Nature of the International League for Animal Rights.

00:35:27.400 And in 1983, she was presented with the Order of Canada, which is like the highest honor you can get as a Canadian person.

00:35:34.060 she died one day before her 80th birthday on june 17th 1986 where she was living at that time in

00:35:41.120 kamloops british columbia her body was buried at prince albert national park where the cabin is

00:35:48.020 so she's buried next to her daughter dawn who had died of issues related to diabetes before her

00:35:54.500 and gray owl is also buried there and that is the story of anna harayo aka gertrude bernard

00:36:03.340 and i wanted to share this story not just like because i want to share the story of more

00:36:09.780 indigenous people from canada and also because the last canadian heritage minute that i did

00:36:15.540 about mona parsons i mentioned how frustrating i find it when a woman in death is defined or even

00:36:24.240 in life but especially in life and in death is just defined by like oh she was married to this

00:36:29.640 guy. So like Ana Harao so much is just known as kind of like, oh, Gray Owl's wife, Gray Owl's

00:36:36.440 girlfriend, where it's like, no, she was a whole person by herself. And she lived so much life

00:36:39.580 not with him, actually. And in the movie, the Pierce Brosnan movie, which I think is just called

00:36:45.040 Gray Owl, her character, I was like, I wonder who played her. And at first I was scrolling through

00:36:48.840 the cast and I'm like, did no one play her? Is she not in this movie? But she is, but they just

00:36:52.520 call her Pony in the movie, which is like, okay, that's what her father called her. Anyway, I think

00:36:59.160 that she should be the main character in her own movie. And that's, that's this week's Canadian

00:37:04.080 Heritage Minute. I'm Anne Foster. It's really interesting for me to be looking at Canadian

00:37:12.280 women in history, which is again, like I've always been someone interested in history,

00:37:16.120 but just like the stories of women were not presented to me. And it takes some digging

00:37:23.120 around to find these stories. And if you are a person who knows about another interesting woman

00:37:28.380 from Canadian history, please let me know because I'm very motivated to continue on

00:37:33.620 with these bonus episodes because I'm learning about stuff and I'm teaching you stuff. And I

00:37:38.940 think it's important in the wake of people who are saying things like Canada is not a real country 1.00

00:37:44.280 to be like, fuck you, it is. We have a history and these are the things that have happened here. 0.99

00:37:51.740 and it's not just a history like I experienced being taught in school of like men in doing the

00:37:59.180 fur trade and then signing documents there's so many interesting women in our history as well

00:38:03.740 as well as interesting people of other genders and we're going to get to that maybe next week

00:38:08.680 maybe the week after but anyway elbows up Canada vote for the liberals unless you're in Saskatchewan

00:38:15.760 than for the NDP. We're going to get through this. I find Anna Harao to be a really inspiring person.

00:38:23.680 I think there's so much, a lot of, you know, like society let her down in a lot of ways,

00:38:29.560 just like when she wasn't able to use her skills, when she was being looked down upon as like this

00:38:34.040 indigenous single woman, but her tenacity and her commitment and her love of nature and stuff,

00:38:39.240 I find really admirable. And I appreciate the way that she was true to herself her whole life.

00:38:47.040 She dealt with this kind of shocking twist, this betrayal that she learned after Archie had died

00:38:52.240 about his real identity, but she continued on. And I think a lot of that's probably because of

00:38:57.180 her grandmother, big grandma who raised her to be so proud of her roots and in touch with nature 1.00

00:39:02.900 and stuff anyway canada elbows up everybody keep your pants on keep your tits out and talk to you 0.99

00:39:10.340 next time vulgar history is researched written and hosted by ann foster that's me the editor 0.99

00:39:18.220 is christina lumagi theme music is by the severin duo the vulgar history show image is by deborah

00:39:25.060 wong transcripts are written by avilene malik find transcripts of recent episodes at vulgarhistory.com

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Vulgar History - March 28, 2025

Canadian History (part 3)： Anahareo Married A Liar

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