The Ultimate Canadian Love Affair: Nimmo Bay

My love affair with Canada began with a high school graduation gift from my old man: a week-long, father-son fishing trip. We bunked in a rundown resort in the woods of Ontario. Wind and rain besieged the camp, and daily thunderstorms forced us off the lake back into our knotty pine cabin, which housed a pair of field mice. In the black of night, a wind gust blew open the cabin door and in our semi-awake state we shoved a dresser in front of the door to prevent it from blowing open again and letting even more rainwater pour in. I loved every minute of it.

Since that stormy initiation, the Canadian wilderness has beckoned me back annually, if not two or three times a year. My dad and I found a new resort we escape to every Father's Day and now consider our home-away-from-home.

A family road-trip to Niagara Falls a decade ago gave me the chance to see the highest flow rate of any waterfall in the world; it also provided a few afternoons of fantastic stream fishing near Toronto.

A group of high school buddies and I brave the conditions every couple winters and snowshoe through the lakes and highlands of southern Ontario––punching through thin ice on a spring fed lake chilled my bones but did nothing to cool my passion toward Canada.

A few years ago, Vancouver welcomed me to the beauty of British Columbia, and served as a lovely launching pad for an Alaskan cruise.

A fly-in fishing adventure near Ear Falls two Septembers ago, during the full moon phase, taught me that walleyes can indeed feed so ferociously that your jig doesn't hit the bottom of the lake. More importantly, it allowed me to treat my dad to his first fly-in fishing excursion––a trip he had dreamed his whole life of going on "someday." The big moon lit up Bear Paw Lake as we caught walleye after walleye into the late night hours, all alone in the silence of the wilderness.

The year after, I breached Manitoba for my first time at a resort that presented a miraculous collection of contradictions: extreme luxury in the remote Atikaki Wilderness Provincial Park; 5-star service and gourmet food at a fly-in camp; world-class fishing with lavish accommodations in the midst of a beautiful and unspoiled boreal forest.

This May, a decade and a half after that first Canada fishing trip, my love affair with the Canadian wilderness will culminate with the adventure of a lifetime: a week of ocean kayaking, mountain hiking, heli-fishing and glacier trekking at the incomparable Nimmo Bay Wilderness Resort in the Great Bear Rainforest.

Nimmo Bay Wilderness Resort

The resort, recently featured in the New York Times best-seller, "1,000 Places to See Before You Die," consists of nine chalets built on stilts on a tidal, fjord-like bay just south of Alaska's Inside Passage, and is accessible only by helicopter and sea plane. From this pocket of luxury, guests have access to over 50,000 square miles of breathtaking beauty, including 10,000-year old glaciers, mountain tops, old-growth rainforests, remote islands, white sand beaches, hot springs, a 5,000-foot waterfall and over 50 pristine rivers and streams––the majority of which can only be reached by Nimmo Bay helicopters.

Daily adventures include whitewater rafting, kayaking, paddle boarding, deep-sea fishing, glacier trekking, bear- and whale-watching excursions, hiking and stream fishing. With all that activity, guests work up a hearty appetite to fully appreciate the mountain-top picnic lunches and gourmet dinners back at the lodge––a dining experience that has been called "one of the best in Vancouver" by New York Times best-selling travel author Patricia Shultz.

As grand as the operation is today, it all began with one man's dream over 20 years ago to run a fishing lodge with his wife and kids. "I wanted to make a living doing something where I could be with my family," explained Vancouver Island local Craig Murray, who started the lodge in 1980 after purchasing an old float house near Port Hardy and towing it by barge to Nimmo's current location. "Not a lot of jobs out here at the time other than logging and commercial fishing and those would require me to leave my wife and kids behind and travel to wherever there's work."

"There are 150 million things that can go wrong, and most of them did at some time or another, but we managed," said Craig. "We had no options––we had to make it work, even when the bank would say, 'Sorry, no more money.'"

The resort initially focused just on fishing, and gradually grew from accommodating eight guests to its current capacity of 18. For nine months of the year, the eco-friendly operation is powered by electricity generated from the waterfall. A hydroxyl waste management system converts all the camp's waste-water into to bacteria-free, clear water that can be released back into nature. Nimmo Bay has always led the way with sustainability and consciously minimizes its carbon footprint.

"There are too many things in this world that are not sustainable, too many people that aren't thinking about that," Murray said. "Right from the get-go we had a catch-and-release only fishery, so we never killed any fish at all. We have the purest, sweetest drinking water coming down from Mount Stevens. We did all the stuff you can possibly do to be green right from Day 1 because we know how fortunate we are to live in this pristine environment."

Over the years, visitors from all over the world have taken note of the pristine environment as well. Nimmo Bay boasts a 76 percent return rate. It is consistently rated as one of the elite wilderness resorts in the world. The secret behind it all is simple, according to Murray, who in his early years visited his guests at their homes to study their behavior and preferences in order to optimize their future Nimmo Bay experiences.

"There are three reasons for our success at Nimmo Bay: humor, music and detail," Murray said.
"Music is the universal language, and it's all around us in nature," Murray said. "If more people got involved with making music it'd be a happier place."

His own children have taken the advice to heart. Murray's middle child, Clifton, serves as an international ambassador for the resort while traveling with his popular band, The Tenors. Murray's youngest child, Georgia, works full-time at the resort by day and is a professional singer by night. Guitars, sing-a-longs and karaoke are common at Nimmo Bay.

Fraser and his generation of Murrays were the driving force in expanding Nimmo Bay's offerings to include a wider breadth of activities beyond fishing, such as heli-hiking, whale watching, whitewater rafting and glacier trekking.

"We have all dedicated so much of our lives to Nimmo Bay that it is hard to separate life from work," Fraser admitted. "Dad taught me the value of a long, hard day's work and to never give up on something you believe in. I would say the only thing that was ever bigger then Nimmo Bay in our lives was our family, and this is true to this day."

Younger sister, Georgia, agrees. "It is very special to be a part of a family business," she said. "We are so lucky to be carrying on our mom and dad's legacy and putting our own stamp on it."

As for me, I am lucky to have the chance to visit this remarkable place and this remarkable family in less than three months. Given the Murray's legacy, it is fitting that this trip will be my last great adventure before I myself become a father later this summer.

I hope one day I will be able to share my love of the Canadian wilderness with my son or daughter as Murray has done with his.

Photos courtey of Jeremy Koreski.