Armchair Historians

Valley of the Headless Men, Craig Baird, Canadian History Ehx

October 20, 2021
Armchair Historians
Valley of the Headless Men, Craig Baird, Canadian History Ehx
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Show Notes Transcript

Welcome to episode five of our 2021 Halloween Season Series! This one promises to scare the living daylights out of you.  In this episode,  Anne Marie talks to fellow history podcaster Craig Baird who tells us the tail of the Valley of the Headless Men. Steeped in lore and legend, this isolated valley is situated in Nahani National Park Reserve along the Nahanni River in the Northwest Territories of Canada. 

Craig is the host of several podcasts, including Canadian History Ehx and From John to Justin.

He loves Canadian history and has ever since he was a child. Craig says "too often our history is not known because we are overshadowed by American, British or world history. Canada has a history that is interesting and deep and it is my goal with my videos and podcast to spread that history."

Resources

Canadian History Ehx: website: https://canadaehx.com

CHE episodes mentioned
Mary Two-Axe Earley: https://canadaehx.com/2021/09/11/mary-two-axe-earley/
The Shawinigan Handshake: https://canadaehx.com/2021/02/06/the-shawinigan-handshake/
Mr. Dressup: https://canadaehx.com/2020/11/28/mr-dressup/
The Beachcombers: https://canadaehx.com/2020/09/26/the-beachcombers/
History of Picture Butte: https://canadaehx.com/2021/09/13/the-history-of-picture-butte/

On Twitter: @CraigBaird

From John to Justin podcast

On Instagram: @bairdo37


Pierre Berton:  Author of Canadian History: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Berton

Maclean's Magazine Article: Valley of Mystery by Pierre Berton, March 15, 1947: https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1947/3/15/valley-of-mystery

McLeod Brothers: https://nahanni.com/blog/river-stories-the-mcleod-brothers-three/

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Anne Marie Cannon:

Hello, my name is Anne Marie cannon and I'm the host of armchair historians. What's your favorite history? Each episode begins with this one question. Our guests come from all walks of life. YouTube celebrities, comedians, historians, even neighbors from the small mountain community that I live in. There are people who love history and get really excited about a particular time, place or person from our distant or not so distant past. The jumping off point is the place where they became curious than entered the rabbit hole into discovery. Fueled by an unrelenting need to know more, we look at history through the filter of other people's eyes. I'm Chair historians is a Belgian rabid production. Stay up to date with us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Wherever you listen to your podcast that is where you'll find us. I'm Chair historians as an independent, commercial free podcast. If you'd like to support the show and keep it ad free, you can buy us a cup of coffee through coffee, or you can become a patron through Patreon links to both in the Episode Notes. Hello, fellow arm cheer historians. Welcome to episode five of our 2021 Halloween season series. This one promises to scare the living daylights out of you. In this episode, I talked to fellow history podcaster Craig Baird, who tells us a tale of the valley of the headless men, steeped in lore and legend. This isolated Valley is situated in the honey National Park Reserve along the Nahanni River in the northwest territories of Canada. Greg is the host of several podcasts, including Canadian History X. And from John to Justin. He loves Canadian history and has ever since he was a child. Greg says Too often our history is not known because we are overshadowed by American, British or World History. Canada has a history that is interesting and deep. And it is my goal with my videos and podcasts to spread the word. Craig Baird, welcome. And thank you for being here today.

Craig:

Thank you for having me.

Anne Marie Cannon:

I'm super excited. I didn't do too much research. I know what you're going to talk about. This is one of my Halloween episodes. So we're going to talk about some spooky history up there in Canada, where some of my people are from as we were talking about before I started recording. So why don't you tell us what your favorite history that we're going to be talking about today is

Craig:

we're gonna be talking about the headless valley in the Northwest Territories,

Anne Marie Cannon:

The Headless Valley? Yes, of course, it brings to mind the idea of the Headless Horseman. So I know nothing about this history. And why don't you just give us some background,

Craig:

I guess I'll start with the Northwest Territories. Most people know Canada is a very large country, and the majority of people actually live south of the 49th parallel. So 70% of Canadians actually live south of like North Dakota, Montana and Washington, when you really, when you think of Canada, you don't think of that you kind of think it's above the United States. But there is that portion in southern Ontario. But then there's this massive amount of area that is so sparsely populated, you only have a few 1000 people every day 10s of 1000s of kilometers of space. And many of these places can only be reached through planes, winter roads, or hiking, if you can do it. And it kind of creates these unique little legends, these mystical places that a lot of people can't go to, you know, it's not like going to Niagara Falls where he can go right up to the falls, these are places where you got to get permission to go to and it's this huge process just to get there. And it creates these legends around these places.

Anne Marie Cannon:

So this area is exactly where in Canada then it would

Craig:

be in the Northwest Territory. So above the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, you have the Northwest Territories, which used to be much larger, but it got split into two back in 1999. And now you have none of it on the one side and the Northwest Territories and the other side. And then right next to the Northwest Territories is the Yukon. And the next to that is Alaska. So right on the border of the Northwest Territories in the Yukon, you have it's called by some people the headless valley, but its official name is Nahanni Park, and it's actually protected area. There's a lot of history that goes into it for all the way back to the Klondike days up into just recently and it's a place that a lot of people like to go to because it is very beautiful. It's got hot springs, it's got whitewater rafting, and a waterfall that's actually twice as high as Niagara Falls. Wow. And yeah and gorgeous, that are both 1500 feet deep. So a lot of people actually call it kind of Canada's Grand Canyon. But it's much harder to get to then the American Grand Canyon without a doubt. Yeah,

Anne Marie Cannon:

you have some amazing wilderness up there in Canada. So how did it get its nickname?

Craig:

Well, because essentially because a lot of bodies are found there without their hits for some weird reason, this is what happens. And so I'll kind of get into a little bit of the background of it. The area of the Nahanni was inhabited by the Inuit who have lived there for 1000s of years, but specifically, the Denae people. And the name of the park actually comes from their language than the Hata hay, which means the river of the land of an AHA people. And it's it, we really start to find its history back into the Gold Rush days of the Klondike, which was this massive moment in Canadian history when gold was found in 1896. And then in 1897, people start flooding into the Yukon. And it's a reason why the Yukon is a territory because we were really worried about the Americans taking the Yukon with because it's right next to Alaska. And so many Americans were coming up for the Klondike. I think it was 100,000 people set out 40,000 Got to the Klondike, and only a few 100 actually got rich and those were the ones who were there. You know, when gold was first found?

Anne Marie Cannon:

Sure, yeah, just to interject. I live in Georgetown, Colorado, which is known to be a mining town. It started out as a gold mining camp. And it was the same thing. It's like those. The people came from the west after they realized that the 40, Niners that was like a bust and then they came here and settled. Some settle down. Yeah, crazy, crazy history. That's interesting, though.

Craig:

It is yeah. And so to get to the Klondike, there were a variety of routes. Most people like the vast majority took the going from Seattle up to Skagway and then over the Chilkoot pass and into the Dawson River Valley, and then up to Dawson City. But there was another route which went through Edmonton and that's actually I'm just actually outside of Edmonton. We used to have like a thing called Klondike days, we used to really celebrate the Klondike history. But there were people who went from the oil Canadian route, which was from Edmonton up into the Northwest Territories, and then into the Yukon. And they thought, well, this is a much better route, we can just walk over land, it was horrible. It was a horrible route to take. And barely anybody made it because it was twice as long as any other route. So in the summer of 1897, about 766, prospectors take this all Canadian overland route. And to do that route, they have to travel on the south Nahanni river. And that part of that river does go through the noni Park, most didn't go that full route, they only want to part of the way and then took a different route. But several dozen did take this route through Nahanni park or through the the, the headless Valley, and of the several dozen who made it who took that route, only to actually made it into the Yukon.

Anne Marie Cannon:

And the this wasn't a group, these are people who went individually or

Craig:

Yeah, yeah, it was a group. Yeah, maybe like, you know, four or five people, some would go by themselves, a lot would turn back just because it took so long to get there, they would set out at the beginning of the Klondike Gold Rush, and they didn't get to Dawson City until the Gold Rush was nearly done. Like it was a horrible route to take. I get why because it's overland and you're not climbing over this path. But

Anne Marie Cannon:

I can just imagine him being like, Oh, shit.

Craig:

You Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you come across people who are coming back the other way. And you're like, how much longer do I gotta go and it's like, you know, even halfway like, he's got so much so much to go. And you're walking through tundra and Arctic and just horrible. But there's a there's a really well known Canadian historian here in Canada called Pierre Burton. And he's written a lot of history books. He's passed away now. But he wrote about this headless valley from Maclean's magazine in 1947. So he said this, The Legend of the headless Valley, it is one of the few pieces of bonafide folklore that we have in Canada. I think you will agree that is a pretty good legend to for has something of almost everything in it. And it does it's, it says remote place that barely any Canadian has ever gone to before even knew about the headless Valley. I don't even know about the Nahanni park or the honey river because it is so remote. You can only get there by plane or by foot. And so it's not like you know, driving to a national park like Bamford or Jasper where you can just drive straight into it. You got a paved highway the whole way this is much more difficult. So you had all those prospectors only to actually make it through. But then the the story of the headless Valley really starts with the brothers of William Frank McLeod, who in 1904 went into the valley to find gold and they did they found kind of just a little, you know, medicine bottle worth of gold, but that was enough to kind of pique their interest. So they returned home with the gold, and then they decide they're going to do a second expedition in 1905. And they set out with a Scottish engineer. And they're never seen alive again. That's that's the last of it. So two years later, the their brother Charlie McLeod decides he's going to go there, and he's going to find them, or at least find out what happened to them. And he gets there. And he finds two skeletons, both heads have been severed, and one man is laying with his arm outstretched to his gun. There's a few issues with this story, just because it's been two years. So I find it a little hard to believe that their bodies would be laying where they die, just because you have wild animals, their bodies would have been eaten. And then there's also varying accounts of what was found some stories today that the MacLeod brothers were actually tied to a tree, and were both decapitated. And then another story says they were both shot, but they were not decapitated. But this is kind of where that legend really begins of the headless Valley. And then the river that they were at was used to be called cheap river. And then it got changed to McCloud River in honor of the two brothers. As for the Scottish engineer, he, nothing was ever found of him like he was just gone, completely disappeared. And then today, the last McCloud mine kind of created its own legend within the legend of the headless Valley. So all these people are like, well, I want to find this mine. It's very similar to the last Lebbon mine, which is much closer to where I am, same kind of thing where gold is found, people die. And you can never find where this mine is again. So it's creates this whole legend around it, which then just feels more people to try and find this, you know, this Eldorado of gold. So this is kind of where the story of the headless body start, and it just goes from there. We have Martin Jorgensen in 1917. He's out looking for gold, he finds some and he he's able to send some letters that he's found gold. And then when people come to find him after a while of not hearing from Him, they find that his cabinet is completely burned to the ground, his bodies found in the ashes. And again, he doesn't have a head. So it starts to really steamroll this whole myth around this, this park. Then we get to Raymond Patterson, and he sets out from Fort Smith, which is in the Northwest Territories. And he wants to explore the region and he's told by one of the the old timers in the region, that men vanish in that country and down the river and they say it's a damned good country to keep clear of. So he takes a journey. He actually lives he survives. And he writes a book about his travels on the Nahanni river called dangerous river. But he really did kind of buy into the the headless Valley and and the myths surrounding it. And the 1922 John O'Brien, who was a first world war veteran, he's found in the park, and he's found hunched over a pile of timber with a matchbook, still in his hand, as if he had just died while trying to light a fire. And that's just how his body was resting. No idea how he died four years later, and l'affaire Tay, she was with a wandering party or a hunting party, and she wandered away. And then she just disappeared into the bush. And nobody saw her for months. And then she was seen months later climbing a hill nearly naked. And the person who saw her thought she was possessed by the devil, so he didn't fall away, you refuse to follow this woman who as she was climbing into, further into the park, and then from that moment on, she was never seen again. In 1928, Angus Hall, he was a prospector again, looking for that last McCloud mine. And he was with a group of other people. And he was getting really impatient with how slow labor moving. So he decided, I'm going to go off and go alone, I'm going to go ahead of these guys. And that's the last time he's ever seen. He just completely disappears. It keeps happening, you know, into the modern age, we kind of think of these legends is the stuff that happens in the 1700s in the 1800s. But these things continue to happen, you know, into the age of the Second World War. In 1945. Another minor goes in he came from Ontario, he wants to find that lost McLeod mind. And when his body's found, it's found in a sleeping bag, and his head is not attached. So again, wow. Yeah, these headless bodies keep keep popping up. And so 1946, a geologist named Frank Henderson, he, he's coming into the park with his partner, Jack Patterson. And they agreed to meet at Virginia falls, which is the falls that are twice as high as Niagara Falls, and I've seen pictures of it, and it's really quite, quite stunning. And they they agree that the first to arrive will leave a message on a large tree that they both know of. So Hendersen arrives first at that tree and he leaves a message and then he ventures further into the valley. And he comes back weeks later, and he found that Patterson hasn't marked anything on the tree which would be on you Usually should have reached out three weeks ago. So Henderson and his party kept in the area for several days hoping to maybe see Patterson or come across him. And they stay until a group of Dene arrive and warn them that there's a group of white figures that are moving along the valley. And so they decided that they're going to get the hell out of there, which I would too if somebody told me they resist weird white figures moving through the valley, that would be the last time I'd go to that valley.

Anne Marie Cannon:

Oh, my goodness. So Oh, wow. Okay.

Craig:

So it's kind of a very creepy place. And Patterson was never seen again. But Henderson would write, there's absolutely no denying the sinister atmosphere of that whole valley, the weird continual wailing of the wind to something I won't soon forget. So there's a lot of RCMP reports of people who have vanished in the park. Some of the ones I have related, not all have their heads detached. But I think if you have one person found with their head detached, you're more or less going to call that place headless Valley, because it's a very strange thing to happen. A lot of theories abound about why their heads were attached to say could just be elements, it could be wild animals. One weird thing, but a lot of these stories is the bodies don't seem to be touched too much by wild animals. And there's plenty I mean, you have you have wolves, you probably have coyotes, you have Wolverines, like you have Yeah, tons of animal shared attack these Yeah. So it's this weird thing that a lot of these bodies seem to be untouched to the point where you could come across the one guy who was hunched over the timber, about to light the fire and just died. And it's not like you come across these while walking your dog like you're taking expeditions in and finding these after several years of these people being missing. 1962, there was a pilot of a light aircraft, and he crashed in the valley. And he survived. And he set up a camp, he had lots of food, fuel shelter provision, so he could survive quite a while. And he decided to just wait it out. He knew that they'd be looking for him. And he started writing in his diary. And he would write in his diary about seeing these planes flying overhead that were looking for him, but never landed, never saw him because you are talking a massive area, like I didn't get the exact figures for the size of the honey Valley. But I would say it's bigger than several North Eastern states, for sure. So it's not a small region. And so he continues to write in his diary, and he spends 50 days waiting to be rescued. And then his diary entries just stop. And there's nothing after that. So six months later, they finally find the plane, and they find his camp, and they find his diary. But they never find him, he again has completely disappeared. And no one knows why he had tons of everything he needed to survive, you could just last it there for months on end. But something happened that he just left his camp and never came back. So the valley itself is actually UNESCO World Heritage site because of its importance to the native people. So what's going on, people don't really know what's happening, it's terrain, that is only for an experienced traveler hiker. Like this isn't a case of you're going to just take a trail at Bath, like you have to know what you're doing, you have to have things to survive. So a lot of this could be people who aren't prepared, who go into this valley aren't prepared, wander away, get lost in the forest, and they're never seen again, they starve to death, maybe they drink some water and they get beaver fever. And it makes them very sick and ill and weak and they die. Many could be just attacked by wild animals. So there's a lot of things that could happen with this. But there's a lot of legends from the DNA people about this valley. And I take a lot of credence to that. Because if they have a lot of legends about an area going back centuries and 1000s of years, then there's something to it. And it probably means a lot more than the stories of like the the people are being found headless nowadays, because their stories come from somewhere. And to have it centered on this valley where there's already these weird, headless Valley or headless bodies showing up kind of makes it a really compelling story. So they say that evil spirits haunt the valley, and you can hear their shrieks in the Valley at night. Part of that could be the wind. But even so if I'm camping there and I'm hearing shrieks I'm going to tell myself, it's the wind, but I'm also going to be really freaked out that it's not the wind. They also say that hairy giants live in caves in the canyon walls, and they're led by a pale skinned woman, which is really creepy. And that's dating back to before Europeans started getting there. Because Europeans didn't arrive in that area. Except for the occasional explorer. Until essentially the Klondike Gold Rush. They also say that the Swahili inhabits the region, and it's the reason for the headless corpses, and the Swahili the Denae believes in the enormous solitary wolf like creature, very similar to like a bear dog that went extinct there about 8 million years ago or larger version Have a direwolf. And they believe that the race of giants that live there would cook food in the hot springs in the valley. And even today, the Denae will leave offerings of tobacco at these hotsprings for for good luck, because it is an important area. And then they also have the story of the MaHA the land was inhabited by the hot 1.2 Were these ferocious warriors, who would often raid Dene settlements along the Mackenzie in the Lair rivers. And then after several attacks, the day warriors decide that they're going to go into the Nahanni country, and they're going to pillage in the HA camp. So they approach and as they approach, they find the hot structures, but then the higher nowhere to be found, they've vanished completely. And according to the DNA folklore, the HAR never seen again. So a race of people that just completely disappeared. And I really like indigenous myths and stories, because I find they're very interesting, much more interesting than like modern religions, because their stories are very detailed and really fun to read and such. But they also have really creepy stories like, you know, the Windigo, or this entire tribe completely disappearing, or just their stories of these giants being led by a pale woman, and who are cooking people over hot springs and living in caves. So if you do want to go to the park, you can, but it's a long process, not even talking about flying in or hiking in, it takes about six months to get permission to say film in the park, because you do have to get permission from the DNA. Because there's so many sacred sites there, they don't want a lot of people coming in and ruining those sites, right. And if you do want to, like visit some of the sacred sites, it takes even longer to get permission because you have to show that you're going to represent it properly, that you're not going to disturb it. And then also, there's the account of the fact that a lot of people go missing in this park. So you got to be brave to camp there overnight. And to not think of the stories of all these headless bodies and people disappearing. And you know, Giants and pale women are wandering through through this through this valley.

Anne Marie Cannon:

How long does it take to get in into this place from the nearest town?

Craig:

Well, the nearest town would probably be I'd say probably Dawson City like the nearest major center would be Dawson City because it's right on the border. The park is on the border with the Yukon and then Dawson cities just on the other side, the capital of the Northwest Territories, Yellowknife is way far away, probably 1500 kilometers to the east. So it's quite the journey. So you can probably fly into some of the larger towns like Fort Smith or Fort Simpson. And then you need to fly into Nahanni. So it's gonna take you several days to at least fly in there and you're kind of landing near the park, you're landing on the rivers, you can maybe take a vehicle to close enough to the park. But there's not a lot of roads that are set up in the Northwest Territories, there's a few main roads that go through the area. But there's not a lot like a lot of these communities, you have to take a winter road. So you wait until everything freezes. And then you're you're driving over the ice in order to get to these communities, or you're landing on a river and so I think that's part of it. The other way you can get there is by taking a river essentially because all these rivers drain into the Arctic Ocean so you can go from someplace like great Slave Lake and take a very long journey along the River all the way to the park and then through the park. So not even adding in the six months of just getting permission to go there because it is a national park and sacred. You do have to you it's days to fly into it or weeks in order to travel to it by foot or by river.

Anne Marie Cannon:

I'm spooked I have to say like and it's it's so right for legends. And do you guys have Sasquatch? Or do you have the hairy man?

Craig:

We mostly say Sasquatch, okay, and mostly that that story does come through in British Columbia. Because you know, British Columbia is mostly mountains, mostly forest, not so much in where I am in Alberta, which is right next to British Columbia, but a lot of the mountains for sure. But again, that kind of plays into the hairy giants who live in in the headless Valley. And like you said, it's very spooky because when you when you go to a place like Banff National Park, you're always within 20 kilometers of the highway and Banff itself. Whereas with this, you are so isolated that it can be very scary to be there hearing the shrieks of the wind, thinking about you know these corpses and the things that might be living there and you're so far from anything like if something happens to you. It might be a bit easier today with satellite phones and being able to radio for help but still your hours an hour From getting help, and that's if they can find you. That's if you're along the river. If you're deeper in into the forest, they might never find you. And I would imagine that this forest has a lot of bodies in it that were never found, just from the people I talked about who were never found, so there's probably skeletons littered throughout the forests of this place.

Anne Marie Cannon:

Why would they be decapitated?

Craig:

That's the that's the big mystery of it is why they are decapitated. Some of the stories very, like MacLeod brothers were, they were decapitated. They weren't decapitated. It could just be because it does take so long to reach the bodies like McLeod's brother, Charlie, it took him two years to get there and find what happened to his brothers. So a lot of it could be just the elements, you know, the the body starts rotting away, the head comes off, most likely it could be animals, but then that raises the question of why they don't take more why? If it's animals the head, why just take the head? Why aren't you taking more of the body parts, like the body should be scattered all over the place, you should only be able to find like a few pieces of bone. Because once the body dies, you're gonna have bears in there, you're going to have wolves, you're going to have a variety that even birds are going to come in and start, you know, picking at it. So as for why it's just the Hansi? Like, there's not even really a legend for why it's just the heads have disappeared in the DNA. It's just this weird thing that happens in this park. That gives it the name headless valley, but I think part of it would be wildlife, but again, why don't they get the rest of it?

Anne Marie Cannon:

Yeah. That's a great story.

Craig:

Yeah, like it's it's not super long, there's not a ton because it's so remote. So you don't have you know, hundreds of people going there. But it is a cool little legend in a very remote place, and very kind of ties in a lot with Canadian history with the Klondike and then with a lot of these explorers that go through. And in Canada, we do have a lot of those legends of lost minds, especially in the mountains that always seem to be attached to something you know, tragic, like the last lemon mine or the the last MacLeod mine.

Anne Marie Cannon:

Yeah. Do we see this history in pop culture anywhere?

Craig:

Not really. No, it's it's kind of a very obscure history, it has been written about like, Peter Burton did write about it and Maclean's magazine, which for a time was with like our Time Magazine, so but a lot of people like if you do searches online, you will find a lot of information about it. But then a lot of it will start repeating once you get to like the third page of Google. So a lot of it is repeating what other people have said, and then the facts will will differ quite a bit. But there's no like it would make a great horror movie or something like that, just to set something there because it is very creepy. But I think because of its remote nature, because it's it's so far north. It's not something that's well known by Canadians, you know, we do know a lot of scary stories, but they're again, centered around urban areas, you know, whether it's the Windigo in Fort Saskatchewan, who apparently killed his family, or the ghost of the bride in the Banff Springs Hotel, those things we know more about, because they're near urban centers like Edmonton or bounce, or Calgary. Whereas this is so remote, it creates more legend around it, more misinformation around it, but also more interest in in the cool tails of it. But then nothing's really happened since the 60s that we know about. So it could be because not a lot of people go there, though.

Anne Marie Cannon:

That would be a great documentary to have a group go in there and film and there's just so much wilderness up there. It's mind boggling.

Craig:

There is recently somebody did go up, I didn't write down the name, but he he was the one that took six months to get permission in order to go there. So I think that might play into it a lot is just the amount of time it takes just to do it. It's not a quick journey, it costs a lot of money, you got to prove that you are capable of of going there and surviving, which then probably prevents a lot of people from from going which then lowers the amount of bodies that that show up. Whereas you know, 100 years ago, you could just be like, Wow, I'm going to go and I'm going to go search for gold there. And nobody would stop you. And then nobody would hear from you again.

Anne Marie Cannon:

Oh, my goodness. I hate a mystery. I love a mystery, but I hate it because it's like I want to know I want to know what happened. Ah,

Craig:

that's the good thing about the park is it's this mystery that will probably never be solved because there's so many instances of the headless bodies that it really piques the interest because it's not just one or two, you know, it's several, and then so many weird occurrences, though a slight silhouettes the the woman who is must have lost her mind wandering in the forest, and then add in the Denae legends and And it just creates this whole interesting story around this place that amazingly, most Canadians don't even know about.

Anne Marie Cannon:

Yeah. Wow. Thank you for sharing that with us. I just interviewed horrifying history. Oh, Brenda. Yes, Brenda? Yes. Oh my god, and she told me the story of the black Donnelly's.

Craig:

Oh, yeah, that's like, that's what that's an example of a history that a lot of Canadians know about. Yes. When you were saying that, yeah, it is. So an interesting part of our history so dark. Yeah, the black Donnelly's is definitely a fantastic you know,

Anne Marie Cannon:

I am seeing I'm seeing a pattern with all these things. Macleod Donnelly's Irish

Craig:

Yeah, I think the last lemon mine might have been Irish to her Irish and Scottish. So yeah, weird. That crazy Irish. Yeah, getting associated with our spooky legends.

Anne Marie Cannon:

Well, is there anything else that you wanted to tell us about this history? Before we talk about where we can find you and what you do? Not really,

Craig:

like I said, it's unfortunately, kind of a shorter history versus say something like the black Donnelly's, because so much has been written about it. And and it's so well known. And there's so many stories behind it. Whereas this is a lot of, it's a lot of hearsay, it's a lot of Did you ever hear about the guy who went up there and lost his head, that kind of thing. And then because it's so remote, only a few people have. So the stories around it center on essentially the same people over and over with some facts changing over time. So there's not a ton to it. But what is to it? It's got a lot packed into a very short history for sure.

Anne Marie Cannon:

Oh, definitely. Definitely makes me want to go and find pictures of that waterfall and anything I could find on it. I'm curious.

Craig:

You know, the waterfall is really quite beautiful. Like I've seen pictures of the park. And it's it's a stunning area, with its, you know, a high hills and it's valleys and the river is really beautiful. Like, I think it's a beautiful place to travel through in the daylight. And then at night, it gets very spooky and scary. And then because of the valley, you got the wind that goes through the crates. Yeah, freaking right. Just lends to it. I mean, stories.

Anne Marie Cannon:

I live in a valley and you know is more in the winter, we get that shrieking sound and it's intense. And it takes it does a lot of damage to but yeah, that sound is it's unnerving.

Craig:

And that does play into it with what you said about the winter, because it is in Canada's north, you can only really visit it for a few months of the year. Like if you want to, I don't know why you would go there in the middle of winter, to be honest. seems horrible. But in the spring and summer, it's very beautiful. But you've only got May to September maybe made August so you don't have a ton of time to actually go in there and and experience that. So again, that lends to the the lack of people who actually go there.

Anne Marie Cannon:

Yeah. Why don't you tell us about I want to say I was listening to your podcasts, I listened to Mary to wax because I thought it was gonna be a horror story. But it was lovely. It was a beautiful story that I didn't know about. And then the other one, it was the history of the history of picture beauty. That's what I was doing. Yeah.

Craig:

Yeah. Well, I Canadian History X, that's eh, X playing into that stereotype of us saying A is

Anne Marie Cannon:

that

Craig:

when I made the name, I'm like, Oh, this is really clever. And now it's one of those cases of I can't change the name because everything is tied to it. And I have to explain. Some people get it, but a lot of people don't think it's hysterical. Yeah, I got to make sure people know it's not like x. It's eh X. And it's a reference to American History X, which is a movie from like, 25 years ago. So yeah, at the time, it seemed like a great idea, but I don't mind it. But Canadian History X is my my main podcast, and it releases every Wednesday and Saturday. Wednesdays is when I look at the history of small towns in throughout Canada, because I find small town histories to be really interesting. You get really cool tales, you get some spooky ones, you get a lot of normal ones. There's a lot of history and local towns that you that people don't know about because they focus on the cities. And then every Saturday, it varies what I talk about, I try and get a lot of indigenous history in and I talk about a variety of things I might talk about. For example, my post popular episode is my episode about the Beachcombers and Mr. Dress up, which are two very famous Canadian TV shows that ran for decades, and very well known in Canada. And those are my nostalgia episodes. So okay, yeah, I can see that. Yeah, good. Those are my episodes about something from our past. stuff related to pop culture and TV. And they always do really, really well. But then I also cover everything from you know, the when we outlawed margarine for decades and you had margarine, bootleggers from land coming over and bringing us margarine because we weren't allowed to have margarine to like the the 80s Almost. And then I talked about broader things, you know, major events that happen in Canadian history. I generally don't talk about anything that's newer than 25 years. The most recent thing I've talked about is what's called the show minigun handshake, which is when our prime minister was walking through a crowd, and this protester came up to him and our prime minister Sean Christian, grabbed him by the throat and threw him to the side. And it's this thing that's become part of like Canadian folklore. he recreates it. He has been Prime Minister for 20 years, but he recreates it in photo ops. It's really what is it called again,

Anne Marie Cannon:

the what? It's called

Craig:

the Sherwin again, handshake, because John Christian was from Shui and Sherwin again. And they always call them yeah, they call them the little guy from Schwinn again. So he was our prime minister from 1993, to 2003. And in 1996, was when this happened, and it's there's pictures of it, where he's grabbed the guy and tosses them to the side, because he's getting in his face. And it's just kind of this weird Canadian thing where you could get that close to the Prime Minister, that he can actually, you know, essentially choke you and throw you to the side. So there's a variety of things I cover, and I cover, you know, those recent things, but I also cover going well back into Canadian history to the 1700s, the Hudson's Bay Company, indigenous history. I like to go as far back as I can. Yeah, it's really hard pre colonial, I get into a lot of more myths and legends. Yeah, well,

Anne Marie Cannon:

that's, that's that story, though. I do history tours here in Georgetown, and the ute people were here for 1000s of years. But it's a very nebulous history. I need to learn the legends, though, that you just reminded me of that, because that is their history.

Craig:

It is. And it's really interesting. I was just kind of doing travels around Alberta this past summer, and I was exploring historical sites and filming to make videos for it. And one side I visited was the Okotoks eratic, which is this massive boulder that weighs about 17,000 pounds, and it had been transported from hundreds of kilometers to the north by glaciers and then dropped there. And then the indigenous used it as like a marking place for themselves. But then they it split in two. And so I related the legend of this, this erotic and how, you know, nappy, who was the trickster god had laid his blanket on top of the boulder to sleep, or his rope, and he told the boulder he could have this rope, but then it started to rain. So he wanted to rope back in the boulder wouldn't give it so he ripped his rope away from the boulder and started walking away, and the boulder started rolling towards them. So the pronghorns and the bears tried to stop the boulder from reaching nappy. They were all crushed by it. And then he called on the bats and the bats came and started diving at the boulder. And they broke it into and that is why it's broken into. But it's also why bats have flat faces. So it's a really cool legend that combines these two different stories to explain two different things. And having the the actual history of the landslide happened 14,000 years ago, onto this glacier, and this glacier moved in hundreds of kilometers during the Ice Age and then dropped these boulders, that's cool. But I like the the indigenous version. It's it's a much more interesting

Anne Marie Cannon:

well, and it gives us a record of the their, you know, history and that they were aware that it was one rack and then it's Mm hmm. That's pretty fascinating. When you think yeah, that,

Craig:

yeah, it's actually really cool site like it is massive. I think it's one of the largest in the world. But so that's why I try and have indigenous history. I think the farthest I've ever gone back is about 1000 ad, where I could use the Viking sagas to relate some indigenous history from Newfoundland when the Vikings had settled there briefly, and how they called the indigenous scalings. And the indigenous and the Vikings had conflicts but also traded. But that's that's as far back as I can go. Anything else is purely speculation at that point.

Anne Marie Cannon:

Well, I I like it. It's a very well researched podcast.

Craig:

But that's my main podcast. And then I have several others that I also put out. So my other big podcast is from John to Justin. And that looks at every prime minister in Canadian history, from Sir John A Macdonald to our current one of Justin Trudeau. And that actually finished and so I was going to end the podcast, but people really enjoyed it. So I started covering all the leaders of the official opposition who never became prime minister. Oh, yeah. So then kind of adding to that history. I'm going to cover the governor's general, but we had an election in Canada just like a week ago, and it was 36 days long. So what I did was I covered for 36 days straight All 43 of our elections every single day, which was a lot of work, because I had to continually be putting out this content on a daily basis. But it was really interesting to talk about all the elections. So that's my other big podcast. And then I have coast to coast, which is just about to finish. It looks at the building of the transcontinental railway in the 1880s. And then I have Canada's great war, which looks at the Canada during the First World War, and the how it changed Canada immensely. Those four years that we were involved in the

Anne Marie Cannon:

war, is that also a limited series podcast? Yeah,

Craig:

that'll end. I think it'll end probably sometime in December, about 1916 right now. And once that one's done, then it's done, it's done. And then I'm probably going to, I'm working on some more limited series podcasts cuz I really like those because I can just do a quick series. And then it's done. And so my next one is probably going to be on the Halifax explosion that happened in 1917. When these this one ship collided into another ship that was jammed full of explosives and blew up. And I heard about that. Yeah, it's still the the largest accidental manmade explosion in history. And when it happened, it was the largest manmade explosion in history until the Hiroshima but it destroyed Halifax. It killed 2000 people, injured 7000 Like it was, it was a massive explosion. So I'm going to do a kind of a quick Nine episode series on that. But that's not going to come out till December, which is the anniversary of when the attack or the attack when the explosion happened.

Anne Marie Cannon:

So I read that you're a full time podcaster

Craig:

I am, yeah, I

Anne Marie Cannon:

When did you start podcasting,

Craig:

I kind of did it off and on for a while, I used to be a computer programmer. And then I left that and became a journalist. And I was a journalist for 12 years around Western Canada. And I was a paper journalist. So newspapers aren't doing well. So I could kind of see the writing was on the wall. And I became a freelancer. And then I started doing it kind of just as a quick little hobby, whenever I'd have time to put an episode out. So it was very few and far between. And then in August of 2019, I was like, Okay, I'm going to commit to three episodes a week. And I'm going to make sure I get these out. Right now, it's two episodes a week because I got all these other podcasts I could have put out. But I'm like, I'm going to commit to this and stay on a steady schedule. So I started doing that. And then it slowly kind of started to build at that point. And then in March 2020, when the pandemic hit, and in Canada, we were, everybody got essentially $2,000 a month for five months. And I was like, Okay, well, I'm going to use that. I'm not going to do freelancing anymore. I'm going to put everything I can into podcasting. And so that's what I started doing. I decided to make my full time job on March 2020. Then I started launching new podcasts, as I got later into the year into December was when I launched launched from John to Justin. And then in March of 2021, is when I launched coast to coast and Kansas Great War. So that's when I really started getting going with it, and then started looking for sponsors and pushing Patreon, and donations and all of this, those sorts of things. But March 2020s, like when I was like, Okay, this is my full time job now. And so far, so good. We'll see.

Anne Marie Cannon:

I would love to be a full time podcaster but that's just not in the cards right now. I need to pick your brain to figure out how to I don't have sponsors. I do have Patreon. I do have cofee. But it's you know, pays for my subscription for Buzzsprout. Pretty much. Yeah. Same

Craig:

with mine is I think I'm up to about 30 patrons right now. And it covers with for podcasts, I gotta pay for podcasting, hosting fees, and then the amount of content I put out. I gotta make sure I'm on the upper plans. So yeah, but it pays for that essentially, which is really nice.

Anne Marie Cannon:

Yeah, yeah. That's pretty much how my story went. Except for I wasn't doing podcasts as a hobby. I just had this idea. I wanted to do podcasts. So it was my, actually my massage therapist. She was she was obsessed with the Vikings. And I would you know, she told me about the Vikings. And I'd be like, we should do a podcast. And she didn't want to be on any podcast. But I it gave me the idea to do this. So I wish I could figure out how to do it full time and pay my bills, but I haven't been able to figure that out. And I also Yeah, I was on unemployment in the US for gig work because I'm a freelancer. And so that really helped me to and honestly, it saved my sanity during COVID When we are in lockdown.

Craig:

Yeah, absolutely. And I found that with Canadian history at the time. There wasn't a lot of it on podcasts like you know, in the very early days of podcasting 10 years ago, the history was American history, British history, Roman history. And that's all there was and now it's much more varied. You have Everything from like with Brenda, with horrifying history, to Viking histories to even more Canadian history. Now there's a lot more Canadian history content that's out there, which is great. Because personally, I find Canadian history fascinating. And I think that, you know, it's not not a knock against Americans, but a lot of our history is greatly overshadowed by you know, our massive neighbor to the south. Yeah. And how we are, we know tons about your history just because of, you know, the cultural bleed effect. And we know so little about ours. And I really want to push that more and, and really show people that we have a fascinating history, that it's not, it's not boring. It's not, it's not all hockey, it's, it's, you know, there's a lot to it, if you start to look for the stories,

Anne Marie Cannon:

right there, it is a fascinating history. And, well, yeah, we're Americans. So it's annoying, you know, but I did read today that you're and I don't remember where I read this, but yours is the number one Canadian History podcast.

Craig:

Yeah, it was, for a few months, in 2020 was the number one. And right now all of my podcasts generally rank in the within the top 100. Usually up until the 50s, depending, depending on the episode that I put out. Some episodes do really well. So episodes, you know, people aren't as interested. And that's okay. But definitely my nostalgia episodes are the ones that get the greatest amount from people. They're interested in such interesting. Yeah, so it's, you know, you fluctuate and everything, but I'm just happy to kind of remain in the rankings and actually have money that comes in for this, you know, just seeing people will donate randomly. It's like, wow, that's Yeah, that's

Anne Marie Cannon:

cool. Yeah, it is. It's really nice. Well, plus, it's something that I can tell you're passionate about, is as am I you know, history is everything to me. Like I want to know the history of everything. I remember Terry Gross from fresh air. Do you ever listen to that? Yeah, I remember. She did an episode about the history of this blight of bananas, banana blight. And that's when I realized how much I absolutely love history, told Wow. Yeah, it was that episode because I thought this is one of the most fascinating things I've ever heard. She interviewed a guy who wrote a book about banana blights. And he talked about the history of that. Anyways, I digress. So is there anything else I will, you know, obviously, I'll link out to your podcasts, all of them, and anywhere else that you want me to link out to? Is there anything else that you want my listeners to know about you your podcast or the history?

Craig:

First Canadian history is really interesting. And I try and find those gems in the in the rough. I talk about Ken Carter, the Mad Canadian who tried to jump the St. Lawrence River in a car with a rocket attached. And I talked about rebellions that happened, you know, in the 1830s. And when we burn down our own parliament buildings, so you get a wide variety of history with my podcasts, and every podcast, all of my transcripts, everything are on my website, which is Canada, eh, X calm. There's over 600 posts there right now. There's with Canadian History X, you have 482 episodes that you can enjoy. I think you can only see the past 100 that are on on Apple podcast, but on other podcast platforms or on my website, you can both listen to the podcasts and read them. And then I'm you know, I'm always tweeting out interesting Canadian history tidbits on on Twitter. My handle is Craig Barrett, CRA AIG ba IRD. And I do the same on Instagram at Barito 37. And then if you have questions, if you want to learn more about Canadian history, or you have suggestions about something I should cover, you can email me at Craig at Canada, eh x.com

Anne Marie Cannon:

I found you on Twitter. Yeah, I like the podcast show network that there is on Twitter, especially the History podcast. I've met a lot of fascinating people who are doing really interesting things such as yourself and you know, I I don't understand Twitter. But I stick with it and if I spend a little time on it, I usually come up with a great guest for my show or I find something really interesting out so I haven't mastered it though.

Craig:

It's a good community though for sure. Like so many great podcasters out there like for example mentioned Brenda I met Brenda through Twitter and then we're going to look at collabing on an episode coming up and then so many other people that and then they share your stuff and you share that stuff. It's it's just a nice community of history podcasters that has sprung up and we all oddly we all seem to find each other.

Anne Marie Cannon:

On Twitter seeks its own level. Yeah. Elisa from civics and coffee. That was She was I think that's how we connected was. I think so. Yeah.

Craig:

I think she Yeah, she retweeted something. Yeah. And I think I saw that our It was either her or Brenda had commented or liked something. And then I saw that. And I was like, Okay, well, you know, here's the story. Well, I

Anne Marie Cannon:

think it all really kind of started with Elisa, I had her on my show we talked about she talked about the Shirtwaist Factory Fire,

Craig:

right. In New York. Yeah. Fascinating. Oh, yeah.

Anne Marie Cannon:

She's another one who does a lot of research and is really, you know, her information is solid.

Craig:

Yeah, for sure. That's a story that is an example of something you know, we know in Canada, better than parts of our own history, because, you know, because we're, well, Canadians, for some reason, we don't like to celebrate things about ourselves, you know, whereas I'm, like, you we should be celebrating, you know, we should be yelling to the rafters that, you know, Neil Young is Canadian. And we have all these cool people like John Candy, who are Canadian, and we have this great history, and we invented all these really cool things, you know, we should be proud of ourselves, you know, we should take an example from the Americans and really push our history and and be proud of it. You know,

Anne Marie Cannon:

that's really interesting that you say that, because I'm thinking about my dad. And, you know, he was like this proud Irish Catholic man who, you know, believed that we were pure cat Irish and that type of thing. He didn't realize about his English side who had come down through Canada. You know, that history. And it was very hard. So he passed away, and then I continued on with the genealogy. That's a weird, maybe it's just a weird coincidence. But our Canadian history was hidden from us.

Craig:

Mm hmm. Yeah, you focus on on, you know, one part of it. And we do that in Canada, too. We very much focus on certain parts of our history. And then other things were like, well, we don't want to talk about that, or we don't want to know about that. You know, I did an episode on Canada slavery history, we had slavery for 200 years. We never got rid of it. The British Empire didn't. We're part of the British Empire. So we got rid of it. We don't like to focus on certain things, or especially anything with indigenous history until recently, we're really starting to explore that more, we tended to try and not think about that, especially things like residential schools. And with my podcast, I try and show like, okay, there's bad stuff in our history. But we can learn from it. And there's also really good funny stuff, too.

Anne Marie Cannon:

Right? Right. I'm really starting to appreciate my Canadian ancestral roots in the history there. There is a lot. So I really recommend to my listeners to subscribe to Canadian history, eh, Acts? Like a,

Craig:

a x. A,

Anne Marie Cannon:

how would you say that?

Craig:

I don't know. I think I in my head. It's x. A, and I that's how I say it. I say Canadian History X. But then whenever I make, like, all my outros, and intros are like, eh, X.

Anne Marie Cannon:

I think I've seen it. Canadian history with an exclamation mark as well as Yeah, eh, X.

Craig:

Yeah, yeah. So it's like I said, it was a good idea. When I came up with it. And now it's referencing a movie from most people don't even remember. But I'm stuck with

Anne Marie Cannon:

it. Well, we're history geeks. And that's the kind of humor that we have. Exactly. I think it's hysterical. Thanks so much for being here. Craig. I really enjoyed talking to you.

Craig:

No, thank you for having me.

Anne Marie Cannon:

There you have it. The Valley of the headless men, told by Craig Baird, of Canadian History X. For more information about this topic, and Craig, including links to his podcast, be sure to check out our episode notes. Thanks for joining us. Have a great week.