Once described by Bruce Hutchison as a mixture of Thoreau and Jack London, R.M. Patterson left a comfortable position with the Bank of England in the 1920s to look for gold and adventure in the Peace River country and the Yukon. Patterson twice canoed down the treacherous Nahanni River to write the best-known of his five books, The Dangerous River, republished this year by Boston Mills Press. David Finch's R.M. Patterson: A Life of Great Adventure (Rocky Mountain $34.95) profiles the explorer, rancher and dyed-in-the-wool conservative who died in Victoria. A foreword by Gray Campbell, who published Patterson, was written prior to Campbell's death last year. R.M. Patterson 0-921102-75-5; Dangerous 1-55046-316-0

[BCBW SPRING 2001]