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September/October 2002 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Editor’s Notebook Feature: Northwest Territories The Inside Story Reverberations À la carte Mosaic

Changing courses (feature) |  NWT license plates | Territorial timeline | The shape-shifting territory | Archives

A few hundred people canoe, kayak or raft the South Nahanni River in the southwestern corner of the Northwest Territories every year. They are, almost without exception, highly skilled paddlers with a great deal of outdoor experience. Those with less experience hire guides. But every once in a while, a couple of novices, naive young adventurers, come in with an inflatable boat, a big bag of rice, fishing gear and only the remotest idea of what it takes to do a three-week river trip like this. The wardens in Nahanni National Park Reserve do their best to talk them out of it.

In the summer of 1999, a 19-year-old with a boyish look about him arrived in the dusty town of Fort Simpson in a beat-up Volkswagen he had driven across the country from his parents’ home in Ancaster, Ont. William Sommer stepped from the hot sun into the park office to ask warden Sharon Weaver about how to access the river with his kayak.

"He tried to give the impression that he was really skilled, with lots of wilderness experience," says Weaver, "but the more questions I asked about his plans, the more evasive he became. That’s when I called in Chuck, our superintendent. I was pretty certain this guy was in over his head, but he wasn’t going to listen to a 22-year-old woman."

Chuck Blyth has several dozen river patrols down the South Nahanni behind him, and he has seen more than his share of mishaps and near disasters, many of them involving skilled paddlers.

"I tried to make it clear I would strongly advise against anyone going down the river alone," Blyth recalls. "And I really thought I had talked some sense into him when he left the office and told me that he would think about it. When I didn’t hear from him again, I figured that was the end of it. He had either gone home or had driven off to do something more within his range of skills."

More than a month later, Sommer’s worried mother contacted the park office, wondering whether anyone knew of his whereabouts. Her son was more than a week overdue and had not called home. Chief park warden Steve Catto immediately filed a missing-person report with the RCMP, and the search was on. A helicopter crew eventually spotted Sommer’s kayak overturned and wedged in bushes on the Little Nahanni River, an extremely challenging whitewater stream that feeds into the bigger, more famous river. His body was never found.

This tragic story weighs on my mind as I set off with a group of Nahanni park wardens, interpreters and biologists on the hour-long flight from Fort Simpson for the first river patrol of 2001. I am also kicking off my own 2,300-kilometre journey from one end of the Northwest Territories to the other, kayaking down the South Nahanni, Liard and Mackenzie rivers to the Beaufort Sea. By following these wild rivers and exploring the lands and communities through which they flow, I hope to witness how this great wilderness frontier is changing as residents grapple with several major resource-development proposals, including a multi-billion-dollar natural-gas pipeline. Since the creation of Nunavut in 1999, the Northwest Territories has been reduced by two-thirds of its former size, but it is still a vast land of almost 1.2 million square kilometres, about twice the size of Alberta. And it is undergoing dynamic and unprecedented cultural, environmental and economic upheaval.

Like Sommer, I intend to paddle most of the way alone. Unlike him, I have more than two dozen Arctic river trips under my belt, a number of them more challenging than the South Nahanni, Liard or Mackenzie. Still, I’m nervous. These big rivers have claimed more than their share of victims over the years, some of them, no doubt, with skills better than mine.

For the rest of this story, visit your local newsstand or go to our store to buy this issue.

Ed Struzik is a writer based in Edmonton

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