Derek Neary
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jan 08/99) - The Deh Cho lost a determined and enigmatic character just over a quarter century ago, but Albert Faille's name and legend live on.

Faille, who was renowned for his preoccupation with finding gold, was rarely seen in the community of Fort Simpson where his small cabin along the banks of the Mackenzie River has become a museum.

"He was a good man in many, many ways, in fact, an admirable man...he was friendly, but he liked to be alone," said Fort Simpson's Bill Laferte. "He welcomed people while he was in the settlement but then he didn't stay very long. He'd be here for a month and then gone again for another year."

Morris Lafferty, also of Fort Simpson, recalls when he first heard of Albert Faille, who died 25 years ago as of New Year's Eve, 1998. Lafferty, like most others in the community, was curious about Faille's fate after he left on a prospecting trip and hadn't been seen for nearly two years. Presuming he was dead, members of the RCMP were making a trip up river the following spring, equipped with a shovel to bury Faille's remains, when they encountered him.

"He told me that he was up in the mountains, busy working on the gold mine that he was looking for," Lafferty, a youth at the time, remembered. He added that Faille simply lost track of the date.

"I'd ask him all sorts of questions and get him going (telling stories)," he said.

Just like a good work of fiction, Faille professed to be in possession of the McLeod brothers' map, which supposedly revealed where they found gold nuggets in the Nahanni mountains. (The McLeod brothers, by the way, were found beheaded in 1908 after prospecting in the area.)

Faille was identifiable by his black Stetson hat, hunched posture and large hands.

"Physically, he was as tough as you made a man," Laferte said. "He was terribly tough...but gentle."

He was said to be a prolific trapper, to the extent that he was the subject of many complaints in the Minnesota area where he previously lived.

"That's the reason he came North," said Lafferty. "He was quite a bushman."

He was also respected for his boat-making ability, and was often found at Andy Whittington's hotel while in the community. He was said to be a card player, particularly fond of cribbage, and was supposedly involved in his share of high-stakes games.

Faille was the subject of an 18-minute National Film Board of Canada movie which won a number of awards. He is also a prominent figure in several articles and books on the region, including Dick Turner's Nahanni. Faille's small cabin, located in Fort Simpson along the bank of the Mackenzie River, has been turned into a historical site.