Audio Excerpt

Sanka. You dead?  … Yeah mon… ohhh  

Well, luckily, Sanka wasn’t dead .. and in the popular ‘90’s comedy Cool Runnings, the Jamaican bobsled team went on to compete in the Calgary Olympics!  What does that have to do with this question? Well… nothing.. But we’re driving past the hamlet known as Dead Man’s Flats so I thought I’d take the opportunity to practice my Jamaican accent mon!  

 

With an interesting name like Dead Man’s Flats, there must be a very interesting story behind the name right!? Well there are actually quite a few! Unsurprisingly, one of the most popular involves, well, a dead man. The story associates the hamlet with a famous murder in 1904. The killer, who was acquitted by reason of insanity,  disposed of the body in the bow river which flows just to the North. Another of the more popular theories behind the name Dead Man’s Flats involves, well.. What do you think!?

A - A mountain pass so dangerous many have died attempting to reach the summit, B - a woman finding another woman’s flats beside her bed and publicly humiliating her cheating husband by telling everyone he was dead, or, C - a group of First nations people smearing beaver blood all over themselves to play dead?

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If you answered C, beaver blood, you must be pretty good at getting out of sticky situations! A small group of First Nations people illegally trapping beaver noticed the warden approaching… they only saw one way out of the predicament….. To smear beaver blood all over themselves and play dead…huh.. Bold strategy right!?  Well... it worked! They managed to escape when the warden saw the grisly scene and ran to get help.