Grey Owl (1999)

Stewart Bick: Cyrus Finney

Quotes 

• [last lines] 

  Cyrus Finney : He never spoke in public again. That night, when we watched Archie strip away all pretense of being an Indian; I knew that what he was saying was far more important than who he really was. Afterwards, he slipped silently into the night and went back to his remote cabin on Lake Ajawaan. He died there, suddenly, of pneumonia, two years later, in April, 1938. In recognition of what Archie was trying to achieve, the North Bay Nugget agreed to hold my story while he lived. They ran it the day after he died, and it made front page all over the world. Pony never stopped campaigning against trapping and, slowly, because of what she and Archie did, there were laws passed to protect the beaver, and they returned to the lakes and streams of Canada. But once his true identity was revealed, Archie's early warning about the natural world, about keeping it safe for future generations was quickly dismissed and then... conveniently forgotten. Only many years later, when the truth could no longer be ignored, did he come to be seen... as a man ahead of his time.