Trapping
Belaney's passion for nature and all living things facilitated his trapping career. Belaney decided to go to Toronto to earn money in the retail industry with aims of travelling farther north. Before heading to Northern Ontario to stay with the Guppy Family in Lake Timiskaming, Belaney was keen to become a guide and continued to educate himself in nature. Before becoming a trapper, Belaney sought first hand experience to learn the basic skills of a woodsman and apprenticed himself to Bill Guppy. Bill taught Belaney how to use snow-shoes and the basics of trapping, including how to place several types of trap. Following the Guppy family, he moved to Lake Temagami (Tema-Augama), Northern Ontario, where he worked as a chore boy at the Temagami Inn. For two years, Belaney worked as a chore boy and also made a trip back to England.
Upon his return to Lake Temagami, Belaney’s fascination with the Anishinaabe Ojibwe was only greater. Belaney set about learning their language and lore while conducting a relationship with co-worker Angele Egwuna. Angele furthered Archie’s knowledge of trapping and fish nets, and also provided access to a network of Ojibwa elders who bestowed invaluable advice concerning Ojibwa environmental values. Belaney passionately embraced the cause of the Objibwa Indians, and in turn the Ojibwa treated Belaney as one of their own. In 1909, Belaney spent a winter with the Ojibwa trappers, and later proudly remembered his formal adoption as an Ojibwa trapper. In Donald B. Smith's From the Land of Shadows, it is said that Belaney's greatest lesson was the fragility of the environmental ecosystem, which was influential in forming his conservationist views. On August 23, 1910, he married Angele Egwuna, an Ojjibwa woman from whom he had learned much about the native peoples.
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