Wild Art Heart

Fraser Murray grew up at his parents’ beloved Nimmo Bay fishing lodge. Now he and his wife are taking it in a new, high-adventure, ultra-luxe direction.

- Jen Murphy

WHEN CRAIG MURRAY initially motored his boat through Kenneth Pass and into Nimmo Bay, a remote inlet deep within British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest, it wasn’t love at first sight. The grey fog was so thick that summer afternoon in 1980 that he could barely see his boat’s bow, let alone the surrounding untamed swathe of ancient cedars. But when he cut the engines, he heard the gentle rumble of what he was seeking – the waterfall local loggers had told him about. A quick wander onshore led to the source of the sound: a powerful cascade coming down from 2,655m Mount Stevens.

At the time, he wasn’t thinking of its beauty so much as its potential to provide power and drinking water to a fishing lodge and family home. Murray, originally from Ontario, had moved west to Vancouver Island in 1973. After working in commercial fishing and logging, he craved a job that would let him lead a salt-of-the-earth life with his wife, Deborah, and their young children.

“I knew an isolated lodge in the wild would depend on a clean, quiet power source,” he says. “Many a local told me I’d find a waterfall strong enough to turn a water turbine in Nimmo Bay. As soon as I saw the falls, I knew it was the place.” A moonshot thinker, he devised a scheme to tow a floating house by tugboat across Queen Charlotte Strait to the secluded bay, jury-rig it to a hydroelectric system and start selling saltwater fishing trips.