Red River Gold series returns for second season

Season two of a popular treasure hunting documentary series will begin on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network on Sept. 24.

The first season of Red River Gold was nominated for five Rosie Awards, annually presented by the Alberta Media Production Industries Association for various film and television categories.

Red River Gold chronicles the 1870 disappearance of gold coins, originally valued at $1 million. The coins were on their way to fund a British military force making its way across Canada to thwart Louis Riel and the Métis during the Red River Resistance.

The gold coins, however, disappeared and were never recovered.

And that’s what Red River Gold is about—a group of Métis treasure seekers who are hoping to find the loot, which is still considered lost or stolen by the Royal Mint of England.

The first season of the series concluded with the treasure hunters on a frozen bog believing they might have found the long-lost treasure. But instead of gold, their discovery included an axe from the fur trade era.

Season two of Red River Gold has the treasure hunters having to adjust their thinking and come up with some new plans.

Memphis Pambrun, one of the leads and the host of the series, explains the plot twist.

“As we gain those little truths about history, all of a sudden a big narrative changed in a number of different ways,” said Pambrun, who lives in Calgary. 

“We started to learn through the research that the story pivots a little bit from being as simple as looking for the footprints of the one soldier who was carrying this gold, to all of a sudden learning from that folklore that actually there were three men who were charged with carrying this gold.” 

This information changes things considerably.

“Now, all of a sudden, we're starting to see that there could be slightly different journeys taken along the Dawson Trail,” Pambrun said. “There could be different ways that they could have emerged as they're trying to work their way through the bog. So, it increases the number of spaces that we have as an opportunity to search.”

This news revealed in season two might be discouraging.

“But by the same token, the gold is still out there,” Pambrun said. “So, as we're hungry for truth, we're hungry to find that gold.”

By talking to some historians and educating themselves with some reading material, Pambrun and his team discover the mystery behind the lost gold coins has intensified.

“All of a sudden, there's a few passages that tell us there's actually potentially a conspiracy when it came to the gold,” he said. 

Since they are trying to retrace the steps of more than just one individual, “because of that there are some new routes that we need to explore along the Dawson Trail. And that widens our path. But it opens up more challenges.”

For obvious reasons, Pambrun is reluctant to give away details of exactly what his team does find in season two.

“Regardless of what we pull out of the ground, there's always more story that we're finding,” he said. “And even if we were to find the gold—even if I was to say to you we did or didn't find the gold—there's still more to this story. And a lot of that is the part that we need to share.”

While the same treasure is being sought as in the first season of Red River Gold, the value of the goods has also been altered.

“We're looking for $2 million worth of gold,” Pambrun said. “In season one, we sort of called it $1 million. But what we've come to realize is that history makes it more valuable, plus the value of gold has gone up considerably. So, it's about $2 million in lost coins.”

Pambrun believes this helps to explain the popularity of Red River Gold.

“Everybody in the world right now is looking at shipwrecks,” he said. “We're looking for the truth in gold that was being carried to put down an Indigenous resistance. So, our story runs really deep. Just like my hope. It runs really deep.”

Pambrun also said he is not disappointed that Red River Gold did not win any of the five Rosie Awards it was nominated for.

“You realize you're up against a lot of amazing other stories that people are sharing,” he said. “And this wasn't our year for that. But there's always another year. Being nominated though is probably one of the greatest accomplishments for me when it comes to storytelling.”

Pambrun said he is now currently working on another series titled 300 Years of War, an eight-part series that talks about Indigenous soldiers. The series puts Pambrun into battle scenes with soldiers that are recreated to tell the history of these soldiers.

“This is more about putting the audience in the experience and understanding war is not glamorous,” he said. “But we need to understand the contributions of these Canadians, our Indigenous leaders, our Indigenous war heroes and what they did, because for too long that story hasn't been shared.”

The series is expected to be released in the fall of 2027.