Otter Falls, Yukon

There are strange things done in the Yukon. Take money for example. The 1954 five-dollar bill was the first to have a likeness of our new Queen, Elizabeth on the front. She had been crowned Queen in 1953 and, the following year, the Bank of Canada replaced the portrait of her late father King George with hers.
Well, it didn't take long for the conspiracy theorists to get in on the act. They saw the likeness of a devil’s head in her hair. Thus, the 1954 series of Canadian bank notes became known as the 'devil’s head series'. Of course, there was no devil in her hair. It was a mass case of seeing something that does not exist.
A story made the rounds that a French Canadian, who designed the portrait, slipped a devil’s head past the scrutineers because he opposed the monarchy. That was never true. Just to be on the safe side, the Bank of Canada had the plates (from which the notes were produced) darkened in 1956, so any chance of seeing a fictional devil’s head vanished.
Now you are right to ask, "what does this have to do with the Yukon?"
In a round-about way, plenty. You see, the 1954 five-dollar bill, long out of circulation, has, on the back, a picture of Otter Falls, Yukon, where I often fished for rainbow trout with my brother-in-law.
I have been trying to find out why Otter Falls is on the "devil's head" bill? Who took the photo? How was it chosen? When was it taken? Questions, questions.
A Yukon friend from my distant past says it was taken by Blondie Hougen, late brother of Rolf Hougen. He says he was there when Blondie took the photo. There can be no doubt that my friend was with Blondie that day and that Blondie took a photo. But did his photo end up on the five-dollar bill? It is possible, but I could not confirm that from officials at the Bank of Canada’s museum.
They tell me that in preparing for the 1954 issue, officials at the Bank of Canada reviewed literally thousands of images of Canada, searching for examples that would capture the diverse nature of the Canadian landscape. Various firms, including the National Library, Canadian Pacific and several news agencies, supplied the images. They say that they have no specific information about the source of the photograph used to engrave the image of Otter Falls.
So it remains a mystery - for now - how or why Otter Falls came to grace the 1954 five-dollar bill. It is, of course, no longer in circulation and, as a collector’s item, it is not worth very much. To a Yukoner, however, who fished the falls and marvelled at their grandeur when the water raged over the rocks before they built the Aishihik dam in the mid-seventies, the sight of the falls living forever as a famous image on an historic piece of Canadian currency is reason enough to hope that Blondie Hougen took the photo, because it captured, for Yukoners everywhere, the magic and the mystery of the land. You can see a video about Otter Falls at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6Tkx37BI3o