A Face Beside The Fire

About the Book

No one kept the name of Grey Owl alive in the 1960's and 1970's more than his daughter Dawn. All her adult life she defended her father as did her mother, Anahareo, from those who underscored his contribution to the cause of conservation. She knew how timely his central message was: "You belong to Nature, not it to you".

In his book her husband Bob Richardson sensitively recounts the years of their relationship: their first meeting, marriage, and life together. In many ways it reads like a modern version of "Pilgrims of the Wild", Grey Owl's own account of his life with Anahareo, the story of a growing relationship.

Bob describes Dawn's tremendous personal strength in the face of poor health. At the age of nine she became seriously diabetic. For the first time it tells of Dawn's discovery in 1976 of Leonard Scott-Brown, her father's half-brother, then living in Vancouver, who became a second father to her. It recounts interesting stories of Dawn's and Bob's search of the meaning of Grey Owl and Anahareo, through trips to places where they lived in northern Canada in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Dawn helped me enormously over a fifteen year period with the preparation of my biography of her father, "From the Land of Shadows" (1990). Unfortunately she did not live to see it in print, as she died six years before it appeared. I loved reading Bob's account as it brought her back to life for me, this warm, intelligent, fun-loving woman, who recognized the enormous contribution of both her father and mother to conservation, and wanted the world to know it as well.

Donald Smith, Ph.D
Professor of History, University of Calgary

About the Author

I was born on March 23, 1928, in the city of Port Arthur, Ontario.

The name has since been changed to Thunder Bay, but it will always remain Port Arthur to me because I arrived on the second floor bedroom of our big Victorian home, situated on top of the hill on Van Norman Street, overlooking the bay and Lake Superior, the largest fresh-water lake in the world, with the view of many Great Lakes ships steaming to and from the Port and harbour

The North American stock market crashed a year later and placed the continent into a severe economic depression. My father lost his job with the City of Port Arthur in 1933, so we sold the big Victorian home and moved to the country. Mother and father purchased a 100 acre plot of land, and the family went full speed ahead in the market gardening business. There was always plenty of food, but very few spare dollars, and it was during this period of my life, I learned to snare rabbits, shoot grouse and deer, trap weasels, and do my share of the country life chores. We lived only 400 miles from the original Grey Owl country. There was no class difference living out in the country, everyone was poor, and I attended a country one-room school where the teacher taught all grades from 1 to V111.

It was a happy period of my life, because my father taught me to be a man. I learned much from him and understood that being self- sufficient by improvising and working steady, ultimately would lead to a successful standard of life.

At age 14, I graduated from Grade V111 of the one-room school, and as there were no such things as school buses, most fathers told their sons you must get yourself a trade and become a brick layer, carpenter, plumber, or whatever you wanted to be. I was just 14 when I left home to experience the trial and error period of life of self sufficiency.

The whole country was my oyster for the taking of which any part I wanted.

The second World War was flaming in Europe, and there were many jobs to be found for the under 18 year-old boys. I went to work in the shipyards for 40 cents per hour helping to build the minesweepers and corvettes . I was a man at that young age, and even went into the beverage rooms without any problem, to drink up some of the ten-cent draught of good old Canadian beer.

With all the crooner singers like Bing Crosby and Vera Lynn flooding the radio waves with patriotic melodies, and the huge posters plastered on all public buildings saying the military needs you, I immediately felt that I wanted to become a wireless operator in the Canadian Navy. I took a night course in International Morse, but when I completed it, because of my age, the only job I could sign up for on a ship was that as a deckhand on a Great Lakes freighter. I sailed these freighters for the next two summers, steaming back and forth from Port Arthur to Buffalo New York, to Duluth Minnesota and numerous other ports. I was 17 years of age when the war ended.

Now having to face a change in my future plans of activity, I took another course in the Continental Code and hired as a Morse Telegrapher for the Canadian National Railways. At age 21, I became a Train Dispatcher (Rail Traffic Controller) and handled the train traffic on some of the busiest rails throughout western Canada, and much of it through the use of the Continental Morse Code. From the feeling of being a grown up gentleman at the age of 14, by the time I was 19 I became infatuated with a young lady my own age. We married and had three children. It was really not long before we realized we had come from two different worlds, and two different needs for living. We split up and divorced and I took custody of the three children, our two daughters and son.

There were three more marital episodes in my life which followed, and the bringing up of four more children. I plan to describe in my next book "Son of an Orphan", the details of the happiness, the good times, the adventures, the fantasy, the infatuation, as well as the tears and sorrow and stress of blended relationships.

During these years I studied through the Ontario Department of Education by correspondence, all grades to acquire a Grade X11 standing. I then sat in a regular classroom with the Grade 13 children to obtain my senior matriculation and entrance to university, still working night shifts as a Train Dispatcher at the same time.

I entered Lakehead College with the plan to major in English and resign from CN to enter a teaching career. Shortly after the first year I changed my mind to major in Industrial Psychology, and transfer to Labour Relations with CN. Another year later I had health problems that prevented me from further university work. I stayed with CN Railways as a Train Dispatcher until I had 35 years service, then took an early retirement in 1980, at age 52. At this time in my life I was married to the daughter of world-famous Grey Owl and Anahareo.

Over the years as an adult, and even from the time I was a little boy, I was always interested in art. I studied in numerous work shops with the Federation of Canadian Artists, and took lecture tours in the big galleries of the United Kingdom and Spain. Now, nearing the age of 75, I am still painting seriously and have annual exhibitions around the country.

I have painted well over a thousand works and have sold over 800. I am still trying to create a masterpiece, but have not yet succeeded....

BUT I WILL!

The author may be contacted at bobrichardson@sasktel.net