No one paddles the Nahanni alone.
Most paddlers fortunate enough to see the spectacular canyons, rapids and valleys of Canada’s famed South Nahanni River in person experience it as part of a guided group canoe or raft trip. But even those few intrepid travellers who brave the river unguided or solo still have plenty of company along the route. That’s because every journey brings with it a vast collection of legendary characters, adventures, myths, tall-tales, controversies and finely-crafted romances born in this remote river valley. It is this storied past, as much as its physical beauty and uniqueness, that explains the Nahanni’s outsized reputation as the Holy Grail of Canada’s wild rivers. It is a distant and mysterious place. A land of lost riches and lost tribes. An obsession. A pristine wilderness that demands protection. A bucket-list goal. A national stage. A muse. And above all else, a dangerous river.
This aura appears to predate first contact between Indigenous and European peoples. According to the Smithsonian Institution’s authoritative Handbook of North American Indians, the word “Nahani” was originally used by native Athabaskan speakers in Canada’s western subarctic to refer to “relatively remote or distrusted Indian groups.” Never a descriptor for one’s own tribe, it was applied to others who lived far away and were considered “evil, untrustworthy or hostile.” Sometimes these people were said to be giants, or practitioners of “greater ‘medicine’ powers, both good and bad” than other tribes.
A Dene legend from the nearby Mackenzie River area describes how a war party once entered the Nahanni Valley to vanquish the murderous “Naha” who had been raiding Dene villages. After stealing into their territory and lying in wait until nightfall, however, they found their enemies’ encampment empty. Since no one had been seen leaving, it was said this mysterious tribe must have disappeared into the ground – perhaps to resurface far away in the American Southwest as the Navajo, whose language shares similarities with the local tongue. Modern academics suggest it is more likely this small, isolated group was conquered, scattered or amalgamated into the Dene First Nations that now occupy the land. Regardless, the myth of the lost tribe stands as the first of many intriguing tales to have sprung from the Nahanni valley.
The Headless Brothers
The Nahanni has always been difficult to reach. Its headwaters lie in the Mackenzie Mountain Range that marks the southern section of the Yukon/Northwest Territories border. From there it travels southeasterly to join the Liard River at the tiny community of Nahanni Butte, which then flows into the mighty Mackenzie River and ultimately the Arctic Ocean. Today, visitors to Nahanni National Park Reserve arrive by floatplane either at the midway point of Virginia Falls, or higher up the river. Previously, the only way to reach the Nahanni was to hike over the mountains from the Yukon side or to work one’s way upriver against the current starting at Nahanni Butte. Neither is easy. During the fur trade era, the remoteness of the valley meant its mysterious residents were largely overlooked by Hudson’s Bay Company posts on the Mackenzie River.
The Nahanni first came to the attention of the rest of Canada in the wake of the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 1890s, which led to an influx of adventurers determined to find treasure elsewhere in the north. In 1905 brothers Willie and Frank McLeod ventured from Edmonton to the Nahanni via Vancouver and Alaska – making their way over the Mackenzie Mountains – to search for gold. A third man might have joined them. When no one heard from this group for several years, Charlie McLeod went looking for his brothers. In 1908 he found their bones by a creek at the edge of the Nahanni’s Second Canyon. In doing so he set in motion the formidable Nahanni legend machine. That’s because Charlie only recovered his brothers’ bodies – their heads were reportedly nowhere to be found. Today this place is known as Headless Creek. In Deadmen’s Valley. Amid the Funeral Range.
There’s no escaping the shadow the headless McLeod boys cast over the river. “The names say it all,” observes Neil Hartling, referring to the gruesome map locations, in an interview. “The story of the McLeod brothers provides this captivating sense of intrigue and mystery about the Nahanni.” Hartling is the founder of Nahanni River Adventures, one of three outfitters licensed to guide trips in the national park, and author of several books about the river, including Nahanni: River of Gold…River of Dreams.
As for the McLeod brothers’ worrisome headlessness, Hartling points to post-mortem scavenging by bears or wolves as the likely cause. Whatever the reason, by the mid-1940s, the valley’s death toll had risen to an unlucky 13.
The fate of the McLeods quickly became a media goldmine, as newspapers seized on the notion they’d been murdered to cover up a gold theft, possibly by that mysterious third man whose body was never found. And if so, their gold mine must be still there for the taking. This prompted more trips to the area, and more deaths. But no gold.
The legend thus grew that the Nahanni was a place of lost riches and incalculable danger. In 1929 the Edmonton Journal interviewed Fort Simpson, NWT Indian Agent Flynn Harris on the plausibility of such tales. “There’s no denying there have been some sudden deaths on the Nahanni,” Harris told the paper. “The most romantic incidence…the death of the McLeod boys many years ago, after they were supposed to have located a fabulously wealthy gold mine – has never been accepted as a case of murder by men familiar with the river, though it has always been broadcast as such.”
These stories were often embellished with other outlandish details. The existence of several hot springs due to the area’s unique geology prompted claims the Nahanni valley was a lush northern Eden. “At one point, it was reported there were bananas growing in a tropical forest,” chuckles Hartling. At a time when it was impossible to fact-check such claims, the Nahanni earned a reputation as a remote and mysterious place. Few readers were likely to visit, but everyone enjoyed reading about its wonders.
As for the McLeod boys, Hartling points out the most probable explanation is that they suffered an accident or starved to death. Back then, the Nahanni’s remoteness meant anyone who got themselves into trouble had to get themselves out of it, or die trying. “I think misfortune is a pretty fair assumption,” Hartling says. “Even today, it is a river that demands respect.” As for their worrisome headlessness, he points to post-mortem scavenging by bears or wolves as the likely cause. Whatever the reason, by the mid-1940s, the valley’s death toll had risen to an unlucky 13. And then it once again became a media sensation.
“O credulous and gullible world”
In 1947, 26-year-old Pierre Berton was a cub reporter at the Vancouver Sun. Eager to boost circulation during the post-Second World War slump in newspaper sales, the imaginative Berton got wind of plans by an American mining group to send a prospecting party to the Nahanni, as well as another scheme to make a movie of the valley and its tall tales. This, he claimed, meant foreigners were about to usurp the Nahanni. As Berton later wrote in his book The Mysterious North, national pride demanded that a Canadian party get there first to confirm or deny “the myths of lost gold mines and tropical valleys and ghostly tribes of devouring Indians.” He called it the “Headless Valley Expedition.”
The start of something big: In 1947 Pierre Berton used his “Headless Valley Expedition” to the Nahanni to vault himself to national prominence. At top, left to right: Pierre Berton, pilot Russ Baker and photographer Art Jones; at bottom, Berton with his characteristic bowtie and sideburns on the set of CBC’s long-running game show Front Page Challenge. (Sources of photos: (top) Pressreader/Vancouver Sun; (bottom) CBC Still Photo Collection)Flying from Prince George, B.C. with a photographer, pilot and mechanic and posting dispatches at every stop, Berton turned the publicity stunt into a global news phenomenon. Because he left in January, a trip that should have taken no more than a few days required two weeks and faced numerous obstacles. The party’s German-made Junkers monoplane was repeatedly grounded due to the severe cold and the mechanic often had to use a blowtorch to warm the engine. Adding to the drama, they made several detours, including flying a pregnant woman to hospital. Berton’s reports back to civilization were syndicated around the world.
As is often the case, anticipation proved more exciting than resolution. When the ski-equipped plane finally touched down on the frozen Nahanni River, there was nothing to see but acres of snow and an ice-solid Virginia Falls – in summer, a spectacular sight with a drop twice the height of Niagara Falls. Berton’s party poked around a pair of old prospector’s cabins, found a faded photo of Hollywood vixen Rita Hayworth – and left. There were no tropical rainforests, deadly cannibals or golden treasures. As Time magazine reported, “Last week the accounts of…reporter Pierre Berton and photographer Art Jones had, to the surprise of no one, thoroughly shattered all the fantastic folklore of Headless Valley.”
Berton, of course, knew all along that the Nahanni legends were poppycock. He was a son of the north, having been born in Dawson City, Yukon. With a wink to this reality, Berton’s last dispatch concluded, “O credulous and gullible world, the vale that set your soul aflame with the fire of adventure exists only in your own imagination.” Nevertheless, the stunt proved its worth. The excitement generated by Berton’s trip “really launched his career,” Hartling observes. “He came out of the Nahanni famous and never really lost that for the rest of his life.” Berton went on to became one of Canada’s best-known authors as well as a TV game show celebrity.
A quick Internet scan reveals that Berton’s disingenuous credulity continues to shape much of what is written and said about the Nahanni. A cottage industry of podcasts, documentaries and articles with titles such as “Why the Nahanni Valley is Creepier Than Any Horror Film” and “The Headless Men of the Nahanni River Valley” (“A story not about the gold they found, but what found them!”) promote the idea that the Nahanni remains a place of grave, unhuman danger. And possibly giants. Such efforts are as casual with the facts as Berton was nearly 80 years ago.
But Berton was right about one thing. The Nahanni’s reputation as a “vale of adventure” exerted a powerful force on the Canadian imagination. It still does today. And despite the recent proliferation of silly horror tales, the Nahanni’s centre of gravity has more recently shifted away from wild fantasies to wild river adventures. The writer responsible for this significant rebranding exercise is the English-born, private-school-educated remittance man R.M. Patterson.
Danger Ahead
Raymond Murray Patterson grew up comfortably upper-middle class in northern England at the peak of the Victorian Empire. He attended boarding school, enrolled in the Royal Artillery during the First World War and was captured by the Germans in the conflict’s final year. After returning from prison camp, Patterson graduated from Oxford University and found a job at the Bank of England, where he was mentored by famed Canadian banker Sir Edward Peacock.
Beyond the fact it is a well-written and exciting book, the continued relevance of The Dangerous River lies in the nuanced and deliberate way Patterson presents himself and his adventures. When he set off for the remote and mysterious Nahanni in 1927, Patterson had never canoed before.
At 25, however, Patterson told his family he “could not face a future of regular hours, train schedules and concrete” and left what would have become a comfortable sinecure to homestead in the Peace River country of northwestern Alberta. But even this did not quell his taste for rugged adventure and he soon became fascinated with an empty space on a map of the Northwest Territories that read “Nahanni.” In 1927 and again in 1928 he travelled to this area to test himself, search for gold and live the sort of daring life that was once stereotyped as a Boys’ Own story.
Patterson’s account of his two trips to the Nahanni was published in 1954 as The Dangerous River. The travelogue was an instant hit and is still in print. It is, in fact, required reading for anyone contemplating a canoe or rafting trip on the river today. “If you are on the Nahanni, either you already know about the book, or someone is going to tell you about it,” says David Finch, author of the biography R.M. Patterson: A Life of Great Adventure. This is no biographer’s exaggeration. On my own recent canoe trip down the river, five of ten paddlers had already read it and another two were in the process. It is also a regular feature on lists of the best paddling books ever written; Men’s Journal recently pegged it at #3. If the Nahanni casts a spell over the country, The Dangerous River casts its own spell over the Nahanni.
Beyond the fact it is a well-written and exciting book, the continued relevance of The Dangerous River lies in the nuanced and deliberate way Patterson presents himself and his adventures. When he set off for remote and mysterious Nahanni in 1927 – well aware of the McLeod brothers and other fantastical tales – Patterson had never canoed before. As Finch notes, his only experience with watercraft was punting on the placid rivers around Oxford. But he brought with him an apparently inexhaustible supply of self-confidence and determination.
Casting a spell over the river since 1954: R.M. Patterson’s classic travelogue The Dangerous River is a must-read for anyone considering a trip on the Nahanni and it remains in print to this day.
Patterson made his way up the Nahanni by pulling his canoe with a rope against the current, often slogging waist deep in the frigid water. Other times he adapted the poling technique he learned at university. On his first trip he met Albert Faille, an American woodsman also searching for gold, who taught Patterson more conventional whitewater techniques. The next year Patterson returned with his friend Gordon Matthews, another British First World War vet. This time they stayed throughout the winter. The pair built a cabin, learned how to trap, raised sled dogs, prospected for gold (unsuccessfully, as everyone does in the Nahanni) and battled the elements. When they got hungry, they’d shoot a moose.
No one who has canoed the Nahanni in modern times can overlook the impressive nature of Patterson’s accomplishments. Fare-paying customers today fly to the river and paddle down it safely ensconced in watertight paddling suits, lifejackets and helmets on virtually indestructible canoes or rafts while following the official Parks Canada touring guide. Patterson worked his way up the river into unknown territory with a cedar and canvas canoe and the latest safety gear of the 1920s: cotton “drill” pants, a wool sweater and moccasins. “Most Canadian canoeists today couldn’t do what he did,” says an admiring Hartling. “It is almost incomprehensible to imagine doing the Nahanni before the advent of nylon and other waterproof materials. It is never lost on me how [earlier generations] were a lot hardier and tougher than we are.”
Rebranding the Nahanni
Despite his many feats of strength and will, however, Patterson created a literary character for himself that differed substantially from his lived experiences. He was a well-born elitist who didn’t actually support himself by subsistence farming or trapping. Rather he relied on dividends earned by a generous stock portfolio and occasional remittances – that is, a grown-up’s allowance – sent from his mother back in England, with whom he was very close. And he had the good sense to marry an heiress. Then again, he was also a war veteran and successful homesteader, which was no easy task in itself. Despite containing multitudes, Patterson didn’t write as if he was either a rich snob or battle-hardened sodbuster. Rather, he reimagines himself as a naïf in the woods making his way, through trial and error, to a wonderous and mysterious place. He often pokes fun at himself and his apparent ignorance. In one delightful passage among many, Patterson describes cleaning his rifle in his cabin. When it comes time to test it out,
“The cabin was light and there was a knot in the log wall behind the stove that made a beautiful target – why waste time going outside? Sitting on my bed I raised the rifle to my shoulder.
Take a tip, gentle reader, and never loose off a .375 Mannlicher carbine in a small room when your ears are tuned for silence. A shattering explosion rent the air: the four steel lids of the stove leapt up and settled again with a tinny clatter, while down from between the roof poles and up from the powdery floor there drifted a grey mist of dry silt. I shambled out into the quiet autumn afternoon and sat down on the sawhorse, my head singing, the rifle across my knees: the local squirrels, I noticed, were all high in the tree tops, swearing with fright.”
In constructing this amusing and attractive literary persona for himself, Patterson is also remaking the image of the Nahanni into something that’s notably different from the earlier work of Berton and others. He presents it as a place full of great adventure and beauty while underplaying the physical feats necessary to get there and the danger to be encountered. He learns as he goes, mocking himself at every turn. Hidden between these lines is the message that if an untutored Patterson can get there in one piece, anyone can. In this way, the once-deadly Nahanni no longer seems so remote or forbidding. It has been reshaped into an attainable adventure – suitably thrilling and dangerous by reputation – but still within reach. The perfect bucket-list quest.
A famous photo of Patterson taken by Faille in 1927 shows him standing in front of his canoe on the Nahanni’s banks with a holster on his belt and his head cocked at an insouciant angle, ready to take on any challenge. Glasses and a cravat set off the ensemble. He is both jaunty and rugged at the same time. It is a vision that holds tremendous appeal for the middle-aged men who today make up the bulk of the clientele of guided Nahanni canoe trips. “He certainly projects the image of a man’s man,” admits Finch, who notes the power of Patterson’s imagery has a somewhat lesser effect on women, who tend to find him old-fashioned. “He’s playing to the male hormones, that’s for sure,” agrees Hartling, “I’m still jealous of his adventures.”
Hartling first canoed the Nahanni in 1984, just a few years after the creation of its national park. The next year he launched his guiding company to make the river accessible to other adventurous baby boomers eager to experience the north for themselves. Today this aspirational, if aging, group still comprises the bulk of the business. (Hartling sold his company in 2019.) “The majority of people on the river are on a pilgrimage,” says Hartling. “It is a very special trip for them.” And Patterson’s book continues to play a big part in imagining that journey. A copy of The Dangerous River is in the floating library of every Nahanni River Adventures trip. There was also a copy on my recent travels with competitor Black Feather Outfitters.
The Nahanni has claimed five lives since the park opened in 1976 ... ‘There are many ways to disappear on the Nahanni,’ says Finch. ‘What is always surprising to me is that more people haven’t died.’
Patterson’s impact on the river extends beyond the river’s brand to its physical descriptions as well. Finch points to numerous features on the map today that bear the names Patterson chose for them when he first passed through in the 1920s. These include iconic landmarks such as the Gate and Pulpit Rock, where Part I of this story begins, as well as Lafferty’s Creek and Sheaf Creek (named for Patterson’s favourite pub in London), among others. And, of course, the Nahanni remains a Dangerous River today, in both image and reality.
According to Parks Canada, the Nahanni has claimed five lives since the park opened in 1976; most recently in 2006 when 50-year-old Mike Boucher died on a guided canoe trip, and 1999 when 19-year-old kayaker William Sommer disappeared while travelling solo – his kayak was found a month later, but his body never was. “There are many ways to disappear on the Nahanni. I have personally witnessed situations in which people nearly died on the river,” says Finch, who has seven trips under his belt, including one alone. “What is always surprising to me is that more people haven’t died.” That might be considered a testament to the skill of the guides who ply their trade on the river.
Ironically, the northern idyll Patterson describes so eloquently and which remains such a lure today proved short-lived in practice. As river guide Dick Turner explains in his 1975 book Nahanni, by the time he arrived in the area in the 1930s, federal game laws prohibited shooting moose without a permit and it was illegal for anyone other than natives to trap beaver. The notion of unlimited freedom and robust individualism that marked Patterson’s time in the Nahanni was long gone by the time he got around to writing about it.
The great success of The Dangerous River led Patterson to write a series of books describing his other wilderness adventures throughout western and northern Canada, including his time operating Buffalo Head Ranch near Longview in Alberta’s foothills. He died in 1984. In 2000, a mountain in Alberta’s Highwood Range was named Patterson’s Peak in his honour.
The Well-Publicized River
While Patterson’s writing has had an outsized impact on the Nahanni’s reputation as a destination river capable of feeding modern (mostly masculine) desires for a taste of northern independence and adventure, he has not worked alone. More than any other wild river in Canada, the Nahanni appears blessed by it own “good medicine” – an unseen publicity department working to keep it in the news at regular intervals. “Across Canada the Nahanni pops up again and again,” observes Finch. “It just has this uncanny ability to stay in the public’s consciousness.”
In 1980 singer Gordon Lightfoot had a well-publicized wreck on the Nahanni when a canoe he was ‘lining’ down a set of rapids slipped its rope and folded around a boulder. The result was a display at the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ontario and the song ‘My Canary Yellow Canoe.’
In 1962 Canada’s National Film Board released a widely-seen documentary about Patterson’s old mentor Faille, titled Nahanni, that presented the 73-year old prospector as a gold-obsessed hermit forgotten by time. Over a histrionic musical score more in keeping with Alfred Hitchcock than pristine Canadian wilderness, the narrator intones, “Nahanni. Where few men go. Far off river – with shores of death.” The 18-minute movie’s most enduring image is that of a hunched Faille hauling his 5 hp Evinrude outboard motor up the portage trail at Virginia Falls so he can continue his search for gold above the falls. Among the cognoscenti of Nahanni enthusiasts, Faille’s aged indomitability is often celebrated as equal to Patterson’s exploits.
Then in 1980 singer Gordon Lightfoot had a well-publicized wreck on the Nahanni when a canoe he was “lining” down a set of rapids slipped its rope and folded around a boulder. It took a day of winching to work the canoe free, at which point the resilient ABS plastic hull popped right back into shape. This resulted in a display at the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ontario and the song “My Canary Yellow Canoe.” In addition, several novels make the river their subject, including the 2007 murder tale Above the Falls by John Harris, which distinguishes itself from the many current podcasts and horror websites by paying close attention to the actual facts behind the Nahanni’s famous death toll. Former Governor-General Lord Tweedsmuir, aka John Buchan, author of The Thirty-Nine Steps, also wrote a novel about the Nahanni called Sick Heart River, published posthumously in 1941.
Always on my mind: Two examples of the river’s uncanny ability to stay in the public eye include (top) the National Film Board documentary Nahanni about 73-year-old Albert Faille’s exhausting and unrequited quest for gold while (bottom) singer Gordon Lightfoot (on right) attempts to rescue his canoe from the clutches of the Nahanni’s whitewater. (Sources of screenshots: (top) nfb.ca; (bottom) The Canadian Canoe Museum/YouTube)
Finally, the river has grabbed its share of the political spotlight as well. In 1970 Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau famously arrived at Virginia Falls for a photo op, where he obliged the press corps by balancing on his hands at the river’s shore. Trudeau’s trip is considered a pivotal moment in the park’s creation six years later, since it stymied plans for a hydroelectric dam at the site. As part of the park mythology, it is frequently noted in contemporary news reports that Trudeau “canoed” or “paddled” down the Nahanni, marvelling at its wonders as he went. Controversially, Finch insists Trudeau could not have done so, based on the time it took him to reach Nahanni Butte and the comments of those who were with him. More likely, Finch says, Trudeau took a noisy motorboat. Of course, myth often has more traction than truth where the Nahanni – and Trudeau – is concerned. Today, federal park wardens at Virginia Falls diligently remind visitors of Trudeau’s great significance to the park without mentioning his mode of conveyance.
Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, on the other hand, gets scant recognition in the park or elsewhere for his government’s role in expanding its size six-fold in 2009. Long demanded by environmentalists and native groups worried that Trudeau’s old boundaries were too narrowly drawn, Harper’s move protected nearly the entire Nahanni watershed. In introducing the necessary legislation in the House of Commons, Environment Minister Jim Prentice called it a “landmark conservation achievement for Canada”; he also quoted at length from The Dangerous River, a book he said he read as a young man and that heavily influenced his desire to see and protect the area.
Among the reasons environmentalists refuse to give due credit to the Harper government’s Nahanni park expansion is that the Conservatives insisted on protecting an existing nearby mine site at the same time. The Prairie Creek zinc-lead-silver mine north of the Nahanni River now sits within a unique carveout inside the park. It is a project that’s been in the planning and preparatory stages for over 40 years; now it is finally moving forward with the current construction of a necessary all-weather road.
Allowing such a compromise between the environment and economic development in the Nahanni valley provides a new source of controversy. Prior to becoming an MP, Justin Trudeau campaigned against Prairie Creek, claiming “the world does not need this mine.” More recently Narwhal magazine bemoaned the incongruity of a “mine in the middle…[of] the ‘Grand Canyon of Canada.’” Hartling calls the presence of a mine inside the park “a pretty dangerous situation that will require constant vigilance.” Yet the mine, which promises a $505 million return over 20 years, also means much-needed jobs for the local Dene community. And zinc has been touted as a promising alternative material for electric vehicle batteries, a “green” technology of great interest to the younger Trudeau’s government. Even today, the Nahanni is never far from the headlines.
It remains Canada’s most famous, dangerous river.
Part I “A Bucketload of Adventure” can be read here.
Peter Shawn Taylor is senior features editor at C2C Journal. He lives in Waterloo, Ontario.
Main image shows the iconic Pulpit Rock at the Gate on the Nahanni River; source: NWT Tourism/Destination Canada.
