Janet Blanchet "Raymond Murray Patterson: A Life of Great Adventure"

Presenter: Janet Blanchet

Time: 12:00PM–1:30PM

R. M. Patterson, Adventurer and Writer

This is the tale of a young man who turned his back on a stable and promising career in banking in the City of London, and instead went to Canada, to seek a totally different life. In Canada he spent three years on a homestead in the Peace River country, went exploring up the Nahanni River in the North West Territories by canoe, and ran a cattle ranch in the Alberta foothills before he finally moved to southern Vancouver Island. There he wrote numerous articles and had five books published, the best known of which is Dangerous River, which is an account of the adventures he had on the Nahanni.

Raymond Patterson was born and brought up in County Durham in the north of England. After completing his time at boarding school during World War I, he joined the army and went to Germany. He was soon taken prisoner, and spent nine months in a prison camp before the armistice of November 1, 1918. Following his return to England Raymond went to Oxford, where he completed a degree in modern history. Through the intercession of a family friend he then joined the Bank of England, and spent three years there as a probationer, before deciding that banking was not the life for him. He never lived in England again.

Though he never found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, this is the story of a lucky man.