Background

His contribution to Canadian literature was overshadowed by the revelation, after his death in April, 1938, that the supposed Indian lecturer was in fact Archie Belaney, born in Hastings, England. His writing, however, endures as an important vision of our northern wilderness and of he debate between preservation and use that continues to this day.

Grey Owl first arrived in Temagami as Archie Belaney in 1906. He had worked for several months in a large dry goods store - probably Eaton's. This was not the life in the Canadian wilderness that Archie had dreamed about during his childhood and when word got out about the discovery of silver in Cobalt three years earlier, he decided to make his way northward. He got off the train at Temiskaming, Quebec. There he met Bill Guppy, a well known local guide, who recalled Archie as a "decent young fellow, with such a friendly air, and so earnest about becoming a guide."

That winter, Guppy taught Archie how to trap, snowshoe, throw an axe and in the evenings Archie reciprocated by entertaining them on their old piano; "a wizard on the keys, rattling out tune after tune, picking up the songs we sang." Bill described the Lake Temagami district, set aside in 1901 as a vast provincial forest reserve, which was opening up to southern tourists as the railway had pushed through to Cobalt, north of Temagami. Dan O'Connor, a Sudbury entrepreneur had built the Temagami Inn in the centre of Lake Temagami in 1905. Once the ice was off Lake Temiskaming in May, Bill and his two brothers along with Archie paddled and portaged to Temagami.

It was on this voyage, while passing through woodland areas filled with bear, moose, beaver, and wolves, that Archie began his future career as packer and canoeman. At the centre of the lake was the Hudson Bay Company trading post on Bear Island, the home of the Teme-Augama Anishnabai, a band of Ojibwa Indians.

And the end of the summer of 1907, during which Archie worked as a choreboy at the Temagami Inn on Lake Temagami, Guppy got Archie the job of mail carrier between Temiskaming and Temagami. During the summer of 1908 Archie met Angele Egwuna and her Uncle John Egwuna and other family members with whom he trapped during the 1910 - 1911 season, at the Temagami Inn. The Egwuna family were of the Teme - Augama Anishnabai.

In the summer of 1910, Archie applied for a marriage license from Arthur Stevens, the Justice of the Peace and local store owner. In later years, after seeing Grey Owl's photo in a newspaper, Arthur Stevens would identify the author / conservationist as the Englishman, Archie Belaney (he ultimately kept the secret). The marriage license was issued, and on August 23, 1910, Archie married Angele. The marriage took place at the fire rangers hall on Bear Island. Another transplanted Englishman who had married an Indian woman and lived on Bear Island was Tommy Saville. Saville served as Archie's best man. Following the ceremony, a dance was held at Lakeview house - the social hub of Bear Island at that time.

Archie was able to learn the Ojibwa language, thanks to Angele and her family. It was through this language that Archie was able to gain greater knowledge of the Ojibwa's closeness to nature.

In the summer of 1910 and 1911, Archie worked as a guide at Camp Keewaydin, an American boy's camp on Lake Temagami. After the summer of 1911, Archie left Angele and his new daughter Agnes, then four months old, and traveled to the Abitibi in Northern Quebec to find more prosperous hunting grounds.

Archie returned to Temagami in the summer of 1925 to work as a guide for Camp Wabikon. He saw Angele and his daughter several times that summer and early in the spring of the following year Angele gave birth to a second daughter, Flora. In the meantime, at Wabikon, he met 19 year-old Gertrude Bernard who was later known as Anahareo. In the fall of 1925 Archie left Temagami for the final time.

Quotes from Grey Owl

The opening lines of Grey Owl's first published article, "The Passing of the Last Frontier," Country Life, March 2, 1929, p. 302.

The Ottawa Sun

BIRDS OF A FEATHER BROSNAN, ATTENBOROUGH DRAWN TO STORY OF GREY OWL

MONTREAL- Irish actor Pierce Brosnan wanted yesterday to talk about playing a fake Canadian Indian in Grey Owl, his new movie, but the spirit of James Bond was never far away.

No matter how much Brosnan and the film's director, Sir Richard Attenborough, tried to focus attention on Grey Owl as a writer, naturalist and personality, reporters kept coming back to 007.

"I've been an actor since I was 17. I'm 46 now," said Brosnan, protesting in vain against the recurrent stereotype.

"I was always type-cast as an actor. You're judged the minute you walk in the door or put your foot on the stage.

"It's just one of those things you get used to. You have to kind of make peace with it early on in your career."

Brosnan said that before he was offered the part, he'd never heard of Grey Owl, an Englishman whose real name was Archie Belaney (1888-1938) and who wrote books about Canada's wilds.

Garbed in buckskin and feathers, Grey Owl dazzled British audiences with tales of the unfettered backwoods and pleas for the protection of animals. His true name only became known after his death.

Brosnan spoke sympathetically about Grey Owl as a person who acquired another identity and suffered psychological tension and fears of being caught out, but who never actually harmed anyone.

"It just got out of control," he said. "He was an innocent, in some respects. He died from the limelight and the booze."

Brosnan said Grey Owl -- whose books included The Men of the Last Frontier (1931) and Tales of an Empty Cabin (1936) -- deserves credit for generally raising the level of environmental concerns.

When reporters' questions reverted to Brosnan's two Bond roles -- in Golden Eye and Tomorrow Never Dies -- Attenborough stepped in to back him as an accomplished stage and screen artist.

"He's an actor," the director said. "He's not only a great movie star and personality. He's a professional actor."

Attenborough, who as a 12-year-old met Grey Owl in England, said the man was ahead of his time with his care-for-the-ecology ideal. "It's a tragedy that the message died with the messenger."

Attenborough said the movie is meant as entertainment -- it's partly a romance between Grey Owl and a young Iroquois woman played by Quebec actor Annie Galipeau -- and deserves a wide public release.

"We don't want to make movies for two men and a dog in a barn," quipped the 74-year-old Attenborough, a veteran actor whose directing credits range from Oh! What a Lovely War! to Gandhi, Chaplin and Cry Freedom.

The $ 45-million movie, shot on locations in Quebec, including Wakefield, and in England, goes into general release across Canada Oct. 1.

Brosnan said he had to learn new skills for the part, such as how to paddle a canoe and do Native dances, but he grew up close to nature in Ireland and shared Grey Owl's feeling for the outdoors.

In a decidedly non-Bond moment, Brosnan added: "I was always the Indian when we played cowboys and Indians."

GRAPHIC: photo by Ryan Remiorz, CP PIERCE BROSNAN, Sir Richard Attenborough and Annie Galipeau enjoy themselves at a press conference yesterday where they were promoting their new film Grey Owl, a portion of which was shot in Wakefield last year.

The Ottawa Citizen

Behind Pierce Brosnan:

by Jay Stone

MONTREAL - After the serious questions were over -- the questions about playing an impostor, about making a movie about the environment, about the problems of playing Thomas Crown, James Bond and an Englishman named Archie Belaney in the same movie year -- it was up to a local radio reporter to get the key bit of information from Pierce Brosnan.

Was that a body double, or was that really his naked back we see in Grey Owl?

''Yes, that's my butt,'' Brosnan told a press conference yesterday, part of a cross-country promotional tour for the movie that opens across Canada Oct. 1 and that is bound to generate even more fascinating trivia before it is over. ''That's twice in one year you've seen my butt.''

The first time, for those keeping score at home, was in The Thomas Crown Affair, one of Brosnan's three 1999 films. In that one, he's a billionaire adventurer who steals art as a hobby. In the upcoming James Bond film The World is Not Enough, he plays 007 in a movie he describes as ''very good. I think I'm getting the hang of it.''

The Bond film signals a return to the ''character, character, character'' of the early Bond movies, Brosnan said. ''It's gone back to what the old ones had, but it's still got all the bells and whistles that the young folk like. '' It apparently does not include a view of the Brosnan behind.

In Grey Owl, he stars as Belaney, born in England but fascinated with North American Indians all of his life. Belaney came to Canada in the 1920s and reinvented himself as Grey Owl, a half-breed trapper and guide. Belaney passed himself off as a native and became an expert in wilderness lore and a leading environmentalist. It was not until his death in 1938 that his double life became known.

In the film, Brosnan stars opposite Annie Galipeau, the Maniwaki-born Metis actress who co-stars as Pony, Grey Owl's true love. For the record, Galipeau, who is 21, revealed in a later interview that Brosnan is ''a good kisser. Yes, he is, for sure.''

Galipeau, Brosnan and Richard Attenborough, the film's director, were in town for the press conference, some interviews, and the gala screening of Grey Owl for 350 people who had been invited to pay $350 each for a pre-film gala party at the McCord Museum, plus the movie tickets. The money raised from the gala goes to support the museum, the Grey Owl Nature Trust and the McGill University Avian Science and Conservation Centre.

After Montreal, the trio heads off to Toronto and then Vancouver for similarly star-studded days of information and environmental issues. It's a process that Attenborough says is common in his movies.

''We do 10 or 15 different countries every time,'' said the director of such movies as Gandhi and Cry Freedom. ''I don't make commercial movies, which are not always easy to sell, because they don't contain the supposed prerequisites: blood and thunder.''

In an interview after the press conference, Attenborough, 76, said that Grey Owl fits into a pattern of films that examine such issues as the treatment of minorities, anti- colonialism and personal stories. Grey Owl finds all of the character's passions and shortcomings in the interlude he had with Pony, a narrowing of vision that the director says he learned from his 1992 film, Chaplin, in which he says he made a fundamental mistake: ''I attempted to show too much, so you never settled down to any particular aspect.''

Attenborough, dressed smartly in dark pants and a green-and-black checked shirt, recalled the ''miracle'' of finding an ideal site in Chelsea, Que., to shoot scenes from Grey Owl last summer. The film required a small village that was beside the water and at the end of a railway line. The old Wakefield steam train was a gift from heaven.

To Annie Galipeau, that pretty much describes Attenborough as well. The actress almost wept several times during an interview at both the unbelievability of landing a role in a $45-million film opposite one of the world's top film stars and in gratitude to Lord Attenborough (he was knighted in 1967). ''He's my angel. He's the man who changed my life,'' she said.

She said she wanted to send a message out to young people everywhere about hope for the future: ''If Richard Attenborough found me in Maniwaki, anyone can find anyone anywhere.''

It was Brosnan, however, who was the centre of attention at the camera-heavy press conference. Neatly shorn and comfortably stylish in blue jeans, taupe shirt and grey sports jacket, Brosnan was eloquent about the movie, its message, and his role in it.

''The man is a human being first and foremost,'' he said of Belaney. ''Being one myself, I identified with his weaknesses and strengths. He's a man who dreamed of becoming an Indian and became one.

''He's a man who ultimately cared for the earth, this planet of ours, this beautiful pearl in the globe. And he saw what we're all seeing in today's age, the destruction of our forests and our waterways.''

Brosnan said he identified with the smaller story as well, the human side of Belaney. Brosnan, 46, said he too had reinvented himself when he left Ireland in 1964 to live in England.

''I've come to know something about love and falling in love and also about the wilderness and the protection of the wilderness.''

Later, Brosnan said that being Irish made him feel that he too was part of a tribe with its own troubles not dissimilar to that of native Canadians: When he and his friends played cowboys and Indians as children, he was always an Indian.

As for the diversity of his career, Brosnan said it is common to be typecast and that actors get used to it.

''You have to make peace with it early on in your career. You either swim with it or swim against it. I want both worlds. I want to swim with it and against it.''

GRAPHIC: Black & White Photo: Wayne Cuddington, The Ottawa Citizen / Pierce Brosnan was the centre of attention at the camera-heavy press conference. Neatly shorn and comfortably stylish, Brosnan was eloquent about the movie, its message and his role in it.;
Black & White Photo: Wayne Cuddington, The Ottawa Citizen / Annie Galipeau, the Maniwaki-born Metis actress who plays Grey Owl's true love, Pony, hopes her success at landing the role sends a message of hope to all young people.;
Black & White Photo: Wayne Cuddington, The Ottawa Citizen / Co-star Annie Galipeau calls Brosnan 'a good kisser.'; Black & White Photo: Wayne Cuddington, The Ottawa Citizen / Director Richard Attenborough praises the Chelsea shooting location.

The Gazette (Montreal)

The Ottawa Citizen

Mr. Brosnan, who plays the Englishman who masquerades as the Indian named Grey Owl in the $45 million film that premiered in Montreal on Tuesday, wanted to talk with Mr. Ruffo, whose book Grey Owl: The Mystery of Archie Belaney was used as research for the character of Grey Owl by the Hollywood actor. Mr. Ruffo's grandmother, Jane Espaniel met the real- life Grey Owl, who died in 1938, when he lived in the Temagami region of Quebec.

''I spent a few hours with Pierce Brosnan in his trailer. We just chatted and he asked me to autograph one of the books because he was going to send it to his father,'' said Mr. Ruffo, 44, an associate director of the Centre for Aboriginal Education, Research and Culture at Carleton. His book was published in 1996.

''He was a nice guy, really down-to earth. He said he had chosen the role because he is also concerned about the environment. He said he was into the environmental movement even before this role came up.''

While other star-studded premieres of the $45 million Hollywood production are held this week in Toronto and Vancouver, a more low-key unveiling of the film takes place tomorrow in Waskesiu, Sask., (population 100), where Grey Owl spent the last few years of his life working as a beaver conservation officer for the federal government.

About 300 people, including Mr. Ruffo, Grey Owl's son-in-law Bob Richardson and Grey Owl's great-granddaughter, Tracy Lalonde, will be there. Maniwaki-born Annie Galipeau, who stars as Mr. Brosnan's love interest in the film, is also expected to attend.

Mr. Ruffo's grandmother, Jane Espaniel, knew Mr. Belaney before he adopted the guise of Grey Owl when the Englishman lived in Biscotasing, a small town in northern Ontario.

''She told me many stories about him, including one about dyeing his hair,'' said Mr. Ruffo.

He said his grandmother, who is 87 years old, is alive and lives in Calgary.

GRAPHIC: P Black & White Photo: Seen at the Grey Owl charity gala Tuesday in Montreal: Maniwaki-born Annie Galipeau, left, who plays Grey Owl's true love, smiles for the camera with Jean Charest's press secretary Sylvie Bachand;
Black & White Photo: Seen at the Grey Owl charity gala Tuesday in Montreal: Pierce Brosnan signs a buckskin jacket for Karalina Gallo;
Black & White Photo: Seen at the Grey Owl charity gala Tuesday in Montreal: Director Sir Richard Attenborough, left, converses with actor Vlasta Vrana and his wife Susan Valyi.

The Gazette (Montreal)

Grey Owl gives back: Big-budget film already paying dividends for museum and wildlife centre

Social scoop! Actor Pierce Brosnan and director Lord Richard Attenborough will be the guests of honour next month at the North American premiere of the movie Grey Owl, which will double as a benefit evening supporting three organizations: the McCord Museum of Canadian History, the Grey Owl Nature Trust, and the McGill University Avian Science and Conservation Centre.

The star-studded event will start with a light supper at the McCord Museum and then the approximately 350 guests will be taken to the screening elsewhere. Because of the strike at Place des Arts, the location has not yet been set.

Brosnan, of course, is best known for his role as James Bond. Other luminaries who will be there include Annie Galipeau, the Quebec actress who plays Brosnan's lover in the movie, and Jake Eberts, a former Montrealer who now lives in Paris. Eberts, one of the producers of Grey Owl, has been associated with other quality productions, including Chariots of Fire, Gandhi, Driving Miss Daisy and Dances With Wolves. The party committee includes Judith Webster, chairman of McCord's development, and Linda Leus, Judy O'Brien, Sylvie Chagnon and Penny Baudinet.

One of the evening's beneficiaries, the Grey Owl Nature Trust, is a year-old national foundation dedicated to environmental conservation projects.

The organization, which manages an endowment fund, is particularly keen on supporting community projects like watershed-restoration efforts or environmental education. Donors of $10,000 and up can have their own environmental fund, with their own name, within the Grey Owl Trust.

Some of the local people involved in the Grey Owl Nature Trust are its president, Stephen Gates, Eberts, the interim chairman of the board, and Pierre Grenier of Byers Casgrain, who is its treasurer. The McCord is home to 700,000 photographs and thousands of other artifacts and costumes that tell of every facet of Canadian history, including First Nations life. Its current exhibits are Across Borders: Beadwork in Iroquois Life (until January), Simply Montreal: Glimpses of a Unique City, a permanent installation, and Quebec Silver from the Birks' family collection at the National Gallery in Ottawa (until November).

The McGill Avian Science and Conservation Centre, part of the faculty of agriculture and environmental sciences at Macdonald campus, conducts field research on wild birds in the areas of nutrition, ecology, behaviour, parasitology and toxicology.

The movie Grey Owl is the biography of Englishman Archibald Belaney, who turned a passion for North American native people into a new life. He left Britain for northern Canada and spent years during the 1920s and '30s masquerading as an Ojibway Indian. Eventually, he traveled the world lecturing about environmental topics. Grey Owl was shot in 1998, mostly in Quebec, with a few scenes n London, and it should be a fine film.

Attenborough's credits include Gandhi and A Bridge Too Far. He's also one of the producers along with Eberts and Claude Leger (Highlander III).

With an approximately $45-million budget, Grey Owl is one of the most expensive Canadian movies ever made. As it opens here in Montreal, it's already giving back. Naturally.

Sun Media Corporation/The Ottawa Sun

OWL FLIES THE COOP STARS OF GRAY OWL NO-SHOWS FOR PREMIERE

WASKESIU LAKE, Sask. The only place Pierce Brosnan will be seen at the world premiere of the movie Grey Owl will be on the screen in the local theatre.

The world premiere, which is scheduled to take place in the resort town of Waskesiu in Prince Albert National Park this September, has been downsized to a smaller, local affair.

The movie's cast, including Brosnan of James Bond fame and director and Hollywood legend Sir Richard Attenborough, no longer plan to attend the premiere.

The movie's cast members will attend other premieres planned for Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary in late September.

The premiere in Waskesiu is set for Sept. 24, the same date as Vancouver's premiere.

SCHEDULE PROBLEMS

"There wasn't really any choice in the matter," said Stephen Gates, president of the Grey Owl Nature Trust Fund, when asked why cast members won't be at the Waskesiu premiere.

"At the end of the day, the timing of everybody's schedule didn't permit it, " he said. "The location was remote and it's hard to get everyone in and out of Waskesiu."

Grey Owl was born in England as Archibald Belaney but moved to Canada in 1906. Appalled by the destruction of forests, he masqueraded as an aboriginal, became a celebrated speaker in North America and Europe and fought to preserve wilderness areas.

CANCELLED CONTRACT His real identity was revealed after his death in 1936. Part of the $ 30-million feature was filmed in Wakefield but Waskesiu was chosen for thepremiere because Grey Owl lived much of his life in Prince Albert National Park in northern Saskatchewan.

Clio Communications, the Prince Albert-based multimedia company contracted to stage the original premiere, decided to pull out of the contract in July.

Spokesman Eric Anderson said the company's $ 2-million sponsorship effort did not go as well as expected.

Waskesiu has picked up where Clio left off, rallying to organize a toned- down version of the previously announced star-studded event.

"We've taken that and turned it into a community event," said Merv Weinrauch, manager of the Twin Pine Theatre in Waskesiu and a member of the commitee that is organizing the premiere.

"It's much more a community celebration rather than a Hollywood premiere," he said of the $125-a-head evening.

"I think it's a great opportunity to celebrate the achievements of Grey Owl. "

GRAPHIC: photo PIERCE BROSNAN and Sir Richard Attenborough say scheduling conflicts prevent them from attending the world premiere of their movie Grey Owl.

It's hard to recognize Chelsea in Grey Owl movie

The Owl has landed.

Grey Owl, Richard Attenborough's $45-million film biography of the famous Canadian conservationist, opens in theatres across Canada on Oct. 1. The film, starring Pierce Brosnan, was screened for critics yesterday.

Grey Owl was shot in Canada, mostly around Montreal but also near Chelsea for a week last summer. The movie, which is exceptionally earnest about its conservationist message, is two hours long and is told languidly, partly because its themes of growing love and dawning environmentalism are only marginally photogenic.

However, it is beautiful looking, showcasing the Canadian wilderness of forests, lakes and snowbound fields.

The Chelsea set, which was constructed by the movie crew based on photographs from Ottawa archives, includes a general store and a train station. It is meant to be Elk River, a Hudson Bay outpost where Grey Owl buys his supplies.

Extras who worked on the movie will have to look fast to recognizethemselves as they walk by in period costume --the movie is set in the1920s and 1930s -- and anyone who did not visit the set will not recognize it as Chelsea.

There is also a scene set in the general store where Grey Owl confronts a couple of racist white trappers who have been killing beaver indiscriminately. That building will be familiar to anyone who saw the Brosnan-Attenborough press conference at the end of shooting; it was on the porch where Ottawa comedian Tom Green interrupted the press conference to sing a song of love to Brosnan and then kiss him on the cheek. Grey Owl was actually an Englishman named Archie Belaney whose fascination with Hiawatha and all things native sent him to Canada at the age of 17. He impersonated an Indian, claiming to have been born in Mexico of an Apache mother and a Scottish father, and he became a famous trapper and guide. In the movie, he tells his story in flashback to a reporter from the North Bay Nugget newspaper, which held back its expose until after Belaney died in 1938.

By then he had become a spokesman for preserving the wilderness. In the film, his conversion comes by way of his wife Pony (Canadian actor Annie Galipeau) and a couple of adorable beaver kittens who pretty well steal the middle section of the film, even crawling into bed with Grey Owl and Pony while they make love. Beaver kittens look like guinea pigs with ping-pong-paddle tails.

Grey Owl went on to foreswear trapping and become an advocate of protecting beaver, which were becoming extinct at the time, and of keeping the forests pristine. "We're not the lords of the Earth, we're its children," the character says in the film. Grey Owl's book about his life,Pilgrims of the Wild, caused a sensation at the time, especially in England, which was mad for the idea of a "red Indian" who could write a book. Grey Owl toured England giving lectures about conservation, and also met the king at Buckingham Palace.

Brosnan is ideally cast as Grey Owl both in stolid sincerity and physically.

The Irish-born actor worked himself into rugged shape for the role -- he doffs his shirt several times and, for trend-spotters, this is the second film in a row, after The Thomas Crown Affair, in which the Brosnan bottomis featured -- and he doesn't embarrass himself with his wilderness skills.

Brosnan is a dynamic snowshoer and appears to be an expert paddler.

He was trained by a wilderness guide named Hap Wilson, who in the magazine Outdoor Canada told how he took Brosnan to Malibu Lake near Los Angeles to teach him canoeing. Brosnan has built a whale observation lookout nearby and donated it to the people of Malibu as a memorial to his late wife, Cassandra Harris, who died of ovarian cancer in 1991. Wilson also taught Brosnan how to throw knives, another skillhe demonstrates in the movie.

In return, Wilson writes, he learned the perils of celebrity from the actor.

He writes that in Ottawa, "the paparazzi relentlessly stalked Brosnan, Attenborough and Annie Galipeau." He said that one evening, afterdinner at an Ottawa restaurant, they stepped outside and were actually chased by three journalists.

Brosnan is himself an environmentalist, and he and Attenborough plan a late August tour of Canada, including Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, to promote the film. There will then be a series of special preview screenings. There is no decision yet on whether there will be an Ottawa preview.

No American distributor has yet purchased the film, which means it will not be seen in U.S. theatres at least until after the Canadian openings.

The Toronto Star

THE SUNDAY TIMES

GARTH PEARCE on the strange tale behind Pierce Brosnan's latest film Brosnan as Grey Owl: 'There were so many things I wanted to do with my life and this story parallels some of those dreams and ambitions'

The return of the native Pierce Brosnan may have temporarily hung up hisWalther PPK as James Bond, but he has been locked in a secret battle to prove that he can match the masterspy for sheer nerve. The result is that he is currently to be found wearing shoulder-length hair extensions and a buckskin tunic, making a film for which no studio wanted him. It is the latest twist in the real-life story of Grey Owl, an Englishman who fooled even King George VI and the Queen Mother into believing he was a North American Indian.

For Brosnan in particular, it has led to blows that would have flattened the fragile ego of many an actor. The worst came three years ago, in the wake of his highly successful Bond debut in GoldenEye, when even the giant American company MGM/UA, which had made vast profits from 007 films, flatly refused to back him in the role.

Those in Hollywood who made decisions about money and how it was spent could not see the handsome Brosnan cutting it as one of the century's most successful and endearing fantasists. The fact that he spent yesterday putting the finishing touches to a $30m (£18.75m) film directed by the Oscar-winning director Richard Attenborough says much about his own tenacity and the potential of Grey Owl to inspire the imagination exactly 60 years after his death at the age of 49.

It is a remarkable story. Grey Owl, 6ft and resplendent in a headdress of eagle feathers, filled huge theatres and concert halls during two lecture tours of England in 1936 and 1937. But he was really plain Archie Belaney from Hastings, Sussex. He had left his home, aged 17, in 1906 and reinvented himself as a North American Indian, living in a log cabin in Canada, hunting for his food and living by his wits. He became a leader for conservation long before it became fashionable, campaigning for the preservation of forests and wildlife; the Canadian beaver, in particular, would have been hunted to extinction had it not been for his efforts. Yet, throughout, he fooled governments and people in Canada and Britain into believing that he was the real thing: an Indian with a Scottish father and an Apache mother.

He was never exposed during his lifetime. The only man to discover his secret was a Canadian journalist called Britt Jessup, working on the splendidly titled North Bay Nugget, who sat on the story for more than three years on the orders of his editor until after Grey Owl's sudden early death from pneumonia. It was considered that he was doing too much good work to ruin his reputation: a judgment that would never have applied during these harsher times of public examination. Grey Owl was no saintly campaigner. He liked women and drink in plenty, finally marrying a beautiful Indian girl called Anahareo, 25 years his junior. And he took risks, even having the effrontery to return to Hastings and speak to a packed theatre in the halting tongue of a native Indian.

"Archie was the consummate actor," Brosnan says, admiringly. "There is a great line in this script, from an Indian chief, when he tells Grey Owl, 'Men become what they dream. You have dreamt well.' That line stood out to me, probably more than any other. I have dreamt about movies, making them and being in them. I started off as an actor and wanted to be a movie star. There were so many things I wanted to do with my life and this story parallels some of those dreams and ambitions. This is why, when I was being turned down, I kept on thinking, 'You don't get rid of me that easily.' "

Several important factors have come together to help this unusual project finally get made. Attenborough, 74, who waited 18 years to see his Oscar triumph Gandhi reach the screen, approached Brosnan four years ago, insisting against all doubters that he should be the star. The writer William Nicholson, who delivered Shadowlands to screen success, crafted a moving script based on the love story between Grey Owl and his young wife. And Jake Eberts, 57, who started in the film business only at the age of 35 when he formed Goldcrest, risked millions of his own money to bypass Hollywood and cover much of the budget.

Brosnan, 45, who has had a considerable number of potential blockbuster scripts sent to him since his second Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies, became a bigger box-office hit than all 17 previous 007 movies in 35 years, held out to play Grey Owl. "I always knew that things were against us," he reasons. "There's no violence, no sex and no action. It is just a simple, beautifully told story. I also knew that studio financial backing was not forthcoming. It is not the first time there has been doubt about me; I have had to treat it as another battle."

The parallels between the actor and the character he's playing are clear. Archie Belaney was deserted by his father, George, when still a baby; Brosnan's father, Tom, walked out when he was two. Belaney was brought up by two maiden aunts, Ada and Carrie. Brosnan was also cared for, in his home town of Navan, Co Meath, by aunts Rosie and Eileen when mother May had to work. Belaney was a dreamer: while others wanted to be cowboys, he always begged to play the Indian. When he was 13, he had those dreams fired by witnessing Buffalo Bill's Wild West show in Buckshot Fields, Hastings. For Brosnan, brought to England as an 11-year-old in 1964, it was his first visit to the cinema at the Putney Odeon in London to see, ironically, Goldfinger that stirred his own imagination. And when the actor finally left Britain in 1980, it was with his late wife Cassie and adopted young children, Charlotte and Christopher - with a borrowed £2,000 on a cut-price Freddie Laker fare - to try to seek fame in Hollywood.

He and his girlfriend Keely Shaye Smith, 33, with whom he has a 17-month-old son, Dylan Thomas, have been together four years, having met through their mutual interest in the environment: they both attended a meeting to Save the Whales. "When I read the script for Grey Owl, I said to her, 'This is like our story,' " he reflects. "I don't think Archie meant his deceit and storytelling to take on such huge importance. He took risks and campaigned for what he believed in and it probably all just ran away with him. You can never tell where such ambitions are going to end - or whether it is all going to fall flat. This is why I wanted this part and was prepared to hang on for it. Years ago, I needed to stretch myself and face new challenges. Things have moved on in a remarkable way."

Although the words are upbeat, Brosnan's voice is restrained and cautious. It is as though, amid wealth, good fortune and a steadily rising profile, part of him constantly warns against undue optimism. His natural wariness is founded on fact. His wife died of cancer, aged 39, in 1991, and this has put the self-obsession and insecurity of an actor into bitter perspective. So when he relates that the spectacular $6m home they shared in Malibu, California, was wrecked in April by a flood and landslip, he seems philosophical. It still stands, beyond repair, with violently cracked walls, to be sold for land value only. "I should have left the house years ago," he says. "The only reason I stayed were the memories." He bought a house for Keely and was planning to use it as an office; that will become his temporary base.

We meet on the film set next to the gin-clear water of Massawippi Lake, more than 100 miles from Montreal, Canada, where he wears a red shirt and braces and has a face made up in something called Jan Tan to give an appearance of having spent the past year camping out-of-doors. He knows this is an esoteric choice of film that could have left him open to ridicule. Which Bond fan wants their hero next to appear on screen in braids and feathers, in favour of eating berries instead of caviare and carry nothing more dangerous than a hunting knife? As a test of himself, he had his long hair extensions glued in a 10-hour process back in Los Angeles and walked into a bar in Santa Monica.

"It was full of Saturday-night revellers and there was a bunch of guys drinking at the bar who had a lot to say," he reports. "You just have to stay calm. Archie would have had the p*** taken out of him, too."

Although the Grey Owl script focuses on love - Annie Galipeau, a 20-year-old Algonquin Indian with a beauty to match any Bond girl, plays his wife - Belaney's life was certainly not without action. He volunteered for the Canadian army during the first world war, operating from behind enemy lines in France as a sniper. He was gassed and he suffered a foot wound, even returning to Hastings in 1917 to convalesce and marry his childhood sweetheart, Ivy Holmes, who in later years decided against giving his secret away. But he soon returned, alone, to Canada to resume life as an Indian hunter, learning new languages and explaining away his distinctive blue eyes on his father. If his Indian friends were aware of the deception, they did not let on.

It was only when he started giving lectures on the importance of conservation, however, that he captured the public's imagination. He wrote books for an English publisher, Lovat Dickson, who had no idea that the words and descriptions came from an education in Sussex rather than a reservation in the wilds of Canada. "He was a great speaker and people were overawed," Brosnan says. "He found that he had a gift for talking and writing and huge audiences listened because they believed he was an Indian. If he'd said his name was Archie and he came from Hastings, then they wouldn't."

For Attenborough, who, despite his peerage, prefers to be known as Richard, this all has special poignancy. As boys in Leicester, in 1937, he and his brother David, the presenter of wildlife programmes, queued for five hours to witness Grey Owl in action. "He was a magnificent, noble Indian," Attenborough recalls. "This was in the days before television and constant newsreels. If you wanted to see and hear someone special, you had to go and witness it with your own eyes and ears. We came away, transfixed."

On the same tour, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother), plus Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, requested a private audience and lecture. Grey Owl went to Buckingham Palace to deliver. Less than a year later, he was dead. Attenborough remembers the shock of hearing about his deception. "I could not and would not believe it," he says.

Many who had attended the lectures reacted with bitterness. Books, so cherished, were either burnt or thrown away. The message on conservation, which had been so eagerly listened to, was considered flawed. In the end, the Canadian beaver was saved but large-scale ruination of the nation's forests, for profit, was resumed.

Betty Taylor, who with husband Colin is joint secretary of the Grey Owl Society in Hastings, confirmed: "I still receive letters from older people who had worshipped him, saying how shattered they were that they had been deceived. It is only now, with experience, that they have come to accept the reasons for his story. He was Indian in spirit and wanted to make a difference."

The Ottawa Sun