Patterson, Raymond M. Finlay’s River. Toronto: McMillan, 1968.
Mostly unknown to American readers, Raymond Patterson is recognized throughout the British Commonwealth as one of the finest writers on the Canadian wilderness. Reviewing his contribution to Canadian wilderness literature, Arctic Magazine in March 1991 said that, “While his writing skills earned him a wide and appreciative audience, he was more than a skilled wordsmith. He was also careful and sympathetic observer, and intrepid explorer and a meticulous historian.” Many of Patterson’s works are autobiographical accounts of his explorations in Canada’s British Columbia and the Northwest Territories set in a fabric of historical, geological, anthropoligical, and botanical insights. I discovered this works by accident: planning for an expedition to the Thutade Lake region of central British Columbia, my Internet searches led me to Patterson. it was a wonderful discovery.
Patterson was born in 1898 in Darlington, England. His father served in the Boer War and spent most of his life in Africa. His interaction with Raymond was episodic, though influential. In April 1917, straight out of secondary school, Patterson went into England’s wartime army as an artillery cadet. Early in his military career, on March 21, 1918, Patterson was captured. He spent the next eight months as a prisoner of war until armistice in November 1918. Returning to England, he entered St. John’s College at Oxford as a modern history major. There was plenty of time for extracirricular adventure, which he pursued vigorously. With the aid of an exceptional short-term memory, he passed his final exams in a heroic, last-minute effort.
From university, he went to the Bank of England, a likely course for a promising young professional. Yet the cosmopolitan life was an ill fit. Among the Bank’s austere columns, he learned of his father’s death in Africa. Patterson wrote in another of his books, Buffalo Head, “With the going of that man I came up to the surface again and took a look at the workaday world of London. And by God, my father was right! It was grey and it was a desert of stone! [London] was a swarming city like a nightmare by H.G. Wells. It was a vast human ant heap through which the inmates scurried with set, expressionless faces, tied to some fixed routine.” He siezed the reins and set course for North America where there was still wildness. At the age of 26, he pounded his tent pegs into Western Canada, where he remained for the rest of his life, making his way variously as a rancher, explorer, and writer.
He was a peripatetic explorer whose meanderings served up fodder for several books. Patterson twice canoed down the treacherous Nahanni River and wrote the best-known of his five books, The Dangerous River. In 1949, eager to understand the early history of exploration up the Rocky Mountain Trench, Patterson explored the Parsnip, Finlay and Peace Rivers in a 17-foot canoe. This trip served as the basis for Finlay’s River, published in 1968. The book was the first to deal with the Finley River from its mouth at the Peace River to its source, Thutade Lake. As Patterson describes his motivations, “my first trip to the Finley was purely to see, and I remember it is a happy summer and one that led, later on, to some very interesting to store the work.” During the exploration and the subsequent research, Patterson came to know some of the men who had traveled, explored, and mapped much of the remote country along its trace. He did so at the end of an era. Though the earliest explorers were dead, those who surveyed this country were aging but alive. Patterson made it his business to speak with these early surveyors, and consequence is grand: a number of early photographic plates and recalled narration make their way into the text.
For historical context, Pattison summarizes the expeditions of the Finley River from the 1700s to those of the early 20th century. During this broad sweep of roughly 150 years, most of the technology available to these explorers was rudimentary and unchanging. Heavily laden canoes, axes, dry goods, and other stores and sundries were packed on their backs and in their canoes up the hundreds of miles of rough, roadless wilderness. There were no maps, satellite and cell phones, GPS data, outboard motors. Nor, of course, was a ready supply of emergency aid or material assistance available. Such circumstances are almost wholly alien to modern explorers. Patterson wrote at the nexus of two eras and the contrast is dramatic.
Patterson describes the early explorations of the great North Westers Alexander MacKenzie, James Finlay, and Simon Fraser. These were the vanguard, exploring this country in 1793, 1797, and 1808, respectively. Each intended to open the country for trapping and trade. Each reached the Pacific Ocean - MacKenzie in one terrific journey in just one year, Finlay in an obscure journey over the Ingenika River, and Fraser in one of the greatest feats of canoe travel all time. Each failed in their ambition, for none found a practical trade route to the sea. Patterson describes their various journeys with the precision and eloquence that impart the soaring ambition that brought them to this beautiful country and the brutal toll it extracted. In the bargain, Patterson also recounts in detail the journeys of Samuel Black, the early trapper who made a first full expedition to the Finlay’s source on Thutade Lake and others who followed Black in the late 1800s.
Here Patterson introduces us to a cast of extraordinary modern characters. There was Captain W.F. Butler who took leave from the British army in 1870 to make an epic winter journey from the Red River to the Rockies and back, passing the fur trading forts of the Saskatchewan and compiling a report on the condition of the Indians in that vast territory. Along the way he he became a hardened winter traveler, journeying on foot and on horseback, by Red River cart and dog sled, with every hazard of northern travel successfully overcome. He subsequently made a trip up the Finlay and then ascended the Omenica River, passing beyond Patterson’s narrative.
We also meet Alfred Selwyn who in the 1880s explored this country on behalf of the Canadian director of the geological survey, laying the groundwork for the great gold rush that followed. Patterson also gives this extraordinary detail on the journeys of Canadian surveyors Fleet Robinson and Frank Swannell. These two men were among the first pioneers to take the measure of this country. Both were extraordinary men. their narratives, published reports, and photographic records remain. Some of these are included in Finaly’s River.
This history is wonderful and welcome. But the book also shines as a travel narrative of Patterson’s own journey up the Finlay. He has a practiced eye (as we would expect from an artilleryman) and a splendid pen (as we would expect from an Oxford history major). The book’s descriptions of the wild rivers, challenging canoe portages, the difficulties of surviving the territory are alone worthy of the read. Patterson is a strong believer in communicating the practical arts as well: he allows descriptions of his own fieldcraft and that of the old river hands he encounters along his way. This provides a snapshot into a bygone era, revealing insights for wilderness travelers that are unavailable in contemporary writing.
Among these merits, Finaly’s River is also a book of historical significance. Patterson’s work here he is among other things an anthology of personal and historical information about a region that was drastically altered and flooded by the Peace River Project. This Canadian reclamation effort of the 1960s dammed the Peace River and transformed the Rocky Mountain Trench and the vast country described in this book into a windswept reservoir, Williston Lake. Today, the old traces are gone: the river loads, the trapping trails, the cabins, and the remote outposts along these wild rivers are now submerged and exists only in books like Patterson’s.
I loved Finlay’s River and have since bought Patterson’s other books and an anthology of his shorter works. David Finch recently produced a biography, R.M. Patterson: A Life of Great Adventure, which has received good reviews.
The downsides: it uses a lot of power - You really need to be connected to a car charger - and application navigation can be complex, particularly while driving. Nevertheless, it makes me feel like I’m striking a blow for freedom every time I fire it up.
