Raymond Murray Patterson – R.M. Patterson – was born in Darlington, County Durham, England in 1898. He was an only child of a tempestuous marriage. His father was a newspaperman who left England in 1901 to report on the Boer War in South Africa and then didn't return to England for 23 years. Young Raymond was educated by his mother's family at Rossall, a tough and spartan school that he later credited mainly for teaching him to cope with lack of food and cold temperatures. In early 1918, Patterson went straight from Rossall into World War I as a freshly-minted artillery lieutenant, but was captured within a few weeks. He spent the remaining months of the war in a German POW camp for officers.
After the war and repatriation, Patterson longed for solitude and mountains but instead attended Oxford for seven terms and graduated with a nebulous degree that somehow got him a job at the Bank of England. His time in the Bank was a drudgery he wished he could escape.
And then his long-missing father showed up, after an absence of 23 years. The son and his absentee father met several times over the few weeks of the visit, the father urging Ray not to settle for the “grey desert of stone” of London, but instead to travel abroad to seek adventures in the unknown. Father then returned to South Africa.
Raymond decided that his adventures lay in Canada, and from 1924 until 1929, he worked in rough farm and logging jobs in Alberta, finally obtaining a homestead in the Peace River country. After getting his ranch going, he hired people to run it while he was gone for months at a time, exploring.
In 1927, Ray Patterson lined and paddled a canoe up the Nahanni River from the Liard, then rode it back down. A year later, he returned with a friend to spend the winter in the upper Nahanni, near the border between the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. Patterson wrote great accounts of these adventures, publishing them many years later under the title Dangerous River. The book is especially interesting because of the way he interweaves the stories of earlier explorers. The reader gets not only a first-person account of great wilderness adventures but sees them in the context of earlier explorations in the region. The book was such a success that Patterson was inspired to write several more books of wilderness adventure. They are all great reading:
Dangerous River (Allen & Unwin, London, 1954; William Sloane Associates, New York, 1954; Gray's Publishing, Sidney, BC, 1966). Terrific accounts of wilderness exploration on the Nahanni River by canoe and on foot, with history of the region.
The Buffalo Head (William Sloane Associates, New York, 1961) Ranching adventures in the Highwood River region in the 1930s and 1940s.
Far Pastures (Gray's Publishing, Sidney, BC, 1963) Stories of bushwhacking, exploration, prospecting, canoeing, trapping, and ranching in Alberta, NWT, and the Yukon.
Trail to the Interior (Sloane-Morrow, New York, 1966) A terrific tale of adventure as the author travels up the Stikine River of northern British Columbia to Telegraph Creek, then overland to Dease Lake and down the Dease River to the Liard. Much exciting history is woven in.
Finlay's River (MacMillan, Toronto, 1968) Centered around the author's canoe trips with his son down the Parsnip River to the Finlay Forks, then by himself down the Finlay to the Peace River, this is also an account of the early explorers of that region, and the incredible hardships they endured.
There is also an excellent biography of Patterson, filling in some background and clarifying much that Patterson himself left unsaid:
David Finch: R.M. Patterson - A Life of Great Adventure (Rocky Mountain Books, Calgary AB, 2000).
After the war and repatriation, Patterson longed for solitude and mountains but instead attended Oxford for seven terms and graduated with a nebulous degree that somehow got him a job at the Bank of England. His time in the Bank was a drudgery he wished he could escape.
And then his long-missing father showed up, after an absence of 23 years. The son and his absentee father met several times over the few weeks of the visit, the father urging Ray not to settle for the “grey desert of stone” of London, but instead to travel abroad to seek adventures in the unknown. Father then returned to South Africa.
Raymond decided that his adventures lay in Canada, and from 1924 until 1929, he worked in rough farm and logging jobs in Alberta, finally obtaining a homestead in the Peace River country. After getting his ranch going, he hired people to run it while he was gone for months at a time, exploring.
In 1927, Ray Patterson lined and paddled a canoe up the Nahanni River from the Liard, then rode it back down. A year later, he returned with a friend to spend the winter in the upper Nahanni, near the border between the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. Patterson wrote great accounts of these adventures, publishing them many years later under the title Dangerous River. The book is especially interesting because of the way he interweaves the stories of earlier explorers. The reader gets not only a first-person account of great wilderness adventures but sees them in the context of earlier explorations in the region. The book was such a success that Patterson was inspired to write several more books of wilderness adventure. They are all great reading:
Dangerous River (Allen & Unwin, London, 1954; William Sloane Associates, New York, 1954; Gray's Publishing, Sidney, BC, 1966). Terrific accounts of wilderness exploration on the Nahanni River by canoe and on foot, with history of the region.
The Buffalo Head (William Sloane Associates, New York, 1961) Ranching adventures in the Highwood River region in the 1930s and 1940s.
Far Pastures (Gray's Publishing, Sidney, BC, 1963) Stories of bushwhacking, exploration, prospecting, canoeing, trapping, and ranching in Alberta, NWT, and the Yukon.
Trail to the Interior (Sloane-Morrow, New York, 1966) A terrific tale of adventure as the author travels up the Stikine River of northern British Columbia to Telegraph Creek, then overland to Dease Lake and down the Dease River to the Liard. Much exciting history is woven in.
Finlay's River (MacMillan, Toronto, 1968) Centered around the author's canoe trips with his son down the Parsnip River to the Finlay Forks, then by himself down the Finlay to the Peace River, this is also an account of the early explorers of that region, and the incredible hardships they endured.
There is also an excellent biography of Patterson, filling in some background and clarifying much that Patterson himself left unsaid:
David Finch: R.M. Patterson - A Life of Great Adventure (Rocky Mountain Books, Calgary AB, 2000).
