The 1936 speaking tour of England by the famous nature writer Grey Owl brought MB Williams back into the orbit of Canada’s Parks Branch. Letters to her provide the first evidence ever seen that the Canadian park system knew Grey Owl’s secret— that he was not Indigenous, as he pretended, but an Englishman born Archie Belaney.

MB’s letters between her and her family reveal her everyday life in Ottawa in the 1910s and ‘20s and in prewar London, England. And those letters from major figures in Canadian and national park history— or from her only known sweetheart— reveal much, too, including what she thought worth hanging onto.