Alan Skeoch

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  • Fwd: EPISODE 234 YUKON DIARY SUNDAY AUUST 26, 1962 TO sept. 9, 1962



    Begin forwarded message:


    From: ALAN SKEOCH <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>
    Subject: EPISODE 234 YUKON DIARY SUNDAY AUUST 26, 1962 TO sept. 9, 1962
    Date: January 27, 2021 at 10:54:40 PM EST
    To: Alan Skeoch <alan.skeoch@rogers.com>


    EPISODE 234    YUKON DIARY   SUNDAY AUGUST 26, 1962 TO Sept 9,1962


    alan skeoch
    Jan. 2021

    Mystery photo.  Either taken at beginning of Yukon job (i.e.  no beard on my face) or at
    a later job on North Shore of Lake Superior.  Camps always similar.   First set up sleeping
    tent…then latrine…then construct kitchen  furniture for kitchen tent.

    Each camp needed a kitchen which I got good at constructing.   Hope you agree.   When  we 

    left one camp for another I do not remember what happened to our food supply.  Given  away’
    I think…but not the rolled oats or the peanut butter or the pork and beans.   This picture looks  like
    an advertisement for Minute Rice.


     I cannot be sure where this kitchen camp was located.  My green and black  bush shirt was with me in the Yukon.  But this camp

    kitchen looks too well stocked for the Yukon job.




    By end of job I  had  nice full red beard

    I  am wearing the same green and black bush jacket as first photo…but have beard.   This bush camp is  not as neat however.


    Sunday August 25, 1962

    8 a.m. Had coffee at Luigi’s and  drove to Silver Titan where Dick, the Japanese cook,
    insisted I have bacon and  eggs with all trimmings.

    A very dreary day with no one around. I unloaded part of the Turam gear
    then continued  on to Rio Plata where Bill Scott made me another hot rum
    and we continued packing the Turam gear.   Axe and  I then drove  on up
    to Jack Acheson’s to pick up the huge Mammoth tooth.

    We got into a fierce rainstorm back at the Rio Plata camp.  Dumped all 
    the Turam  gear at Silver Titan and  then drove to town for supper and
    a shower.

    Hans Bahr is very excited about the anomalies we  found on their property.

    Axe and Bill Scott are still very sick.  Axe paid  back the $30 he borrowed in Whitehorse.

    Monday, August 27, 1962

    Packed my crate full of antlers and ancient miners tools…shipped to Toronto…100 pounds
    cost me $33.00…had supper with Gilroys then drove back north to Silver Titan camp
    using Ruth McGurlay’s truck,  Nice  supper cooked by Dick.

    Got boys together…Terry Doubt and  Bill Andrechuck.   Bill Dunn showed me his
    new dog…part wolf.  And his new  car, a 1951 Pontiac,  How can he afford a car even if
    11 years old?  Amusing character.

    We   drove into a new property North of us and began assembling the equipment in
    another new camp…a loose term as  a camp is always short term and  not pretty.
    Andy brought a bottle of  Lindemsn’s Port to celebrate our new location.

    Expenses  meals  $3.50. tape  $2.20

    Tuesday August 28, 1962

    Up at 7.30 with long day ahead of us.Terry and I packed grounding rods  and  reel of cable
    to the south end  of Base Line #1.  Back to camp to do same for North end of BL #1.

    Built a table  then settled down by candlelight.   Traded  stories in evening as usual.
    Seems that bush  camp workers have  a never ending number of  stories some of  which
    might even  be true.  The hookers of Keno City in the 1920’s are favourite subjects.

    Wed.  August 29, 1962

    Up at 6, out by 7.45 in pouring rain.  Managed  to get 12 lines  done which is  half  the property.
    Both Terry and Andy are good  men in the bush…no complaining.  The wet bush makes  work
    really miserable.  A big fire and billy can of tea was nice at lunch. (Billy can is just a fruit can with wire
    for hanging over open fire).



    Picture taken in late August as the trees are beginning to change colour…Fall season is short…then winter.


    Came across 20 blue geese as tame as chickens

    In the evening Terry and  I made beds from long poles.  Cooked  by candlelight…not good.
    Got some custard  ready and we  all ate from the pot.  

    Picked  up  large anomaly…largest yet in the Yukon.

    Thursday August 30, 1962

    UP at 7, out by 8…finished  B.L #1…12 lines.  A wet long day.   Terry tells some damn good
    stories…i.e. the bear that nearly got him on a glacier….and  the girls he had  success with.

    Went to bed at 6.30 … telling each other stories in the dark.

    Bill Scott is working in the other tent using our Coleman lantern.   Andy decided to cook apples
    tonight but pot boiled  over. Bit of a mess. Applesauce was edible. Overall things are fine now that we have a tin wood
    stove in the tent as  nights are getting colder.

    Terry regaled us with with story of a woman he met in Haileybury, Ontario.  Funny.  Sensitive.  Terry
    knows my friend Bob Tyson back in Ontario.   Laughed  a lot in the darkness.



    Diary…now reconstructed after 58 years.


    Friday  August 31, 1962

    Slept late…9.30…then got fellows up for a  hasty breakfast.  Ice in the water bucket .  Rolled up Base Line #1
    and  laid  out Base Line #2.  Packed in  the motor generator and got everything working …even managed
    to do  4 lines finishing at 6.30 pm.  Not pleasant.  We are not  tourists…work to do.

    Extremely cold weather.  We needed  a big fire at noon just to get warm.   

    Andy is really bitching today as  he wants to get back to Mayo Landing tomorrow evening as
    his First Nations woman wants him back fast.  Not  sure how true that is…he  drinks a lot.

    Terry gave a whole load of tips on women.  True?  Maybe.  Bill Scott gave all of us Hot Rum
    drinks while Terry read  poetry of Robert Service.

    The Northern Lights  lit up the night sky tonight…flashing  across the darkness  like lightning bolts.

    Our dinner plates were frozen to the table before we had  time to dry them.  Now that is cold.
    Stacked up pile of  firewood in our tent.  We will try to keep stove going all night. Must be careful as
    stove is just tin plate…could get red hot and very dangerous.


    Trying to pound in grounding rods … snow and  ice on the ground.


    Saturday Sept. 1, 1962

    Up at 6 and got out in bush by 7.30. Finished  C.L. # 3 by noon.   Had good lunch of cold french
    toast and bacon…and  hot tea over the bush fire.

    Andy is determined to get  to Mayo Landing … decided to hike over the mountain to Silver Titan
    leaving us at noon.  Terry and I pulled ground rods and coiled  cable.  Bill Scott helped
    carry out some of the load.   Terry and I heard  a scream and rushed down the trail thinking
    Bill was  in trouble.   Instead we met Bill and Mr and  Mrs. Gilroy drinking beer.  Bill gave
    me a can of beer and a pile of mail.

    We  put our food  up in a cache where bears could not get it then packed out several loads
    of the heavy equipment.   I ripped the ass  out of my pants  again so had to keep facing
    Mrs. Gilroy.

    Terry and I hopped in the back of the Gilroy truck…a bitterly cold northern night.  We stopped
    at Elsa for beer then drove on to Mayo Landing…delighted the little girls there…so cute…then
    dinner at Luigi’s  and a drink with Andy and Ted in the Silver Inn.   Quite tragic to see Andy’
    so drunk…and  Ted sitting there in his own urine as it trickled down his leg to the floor and out the door.

    Met Henry Robachuk  who offered me a set of caribou antlers.  Amazing how many  friends  i now
    have in Mayo  Landing…end  of third month here.
    (Note:  I got the Antlers  from Henry and not from Moses as previously mentioned…or
    maybe they were both involved  in the gift(

    Expenses  $1.85  meals

    Sunday  September 2, 1962

    Packed some of our gear.  Visited Mrs  Moses and bought moccasins….$20 for two pair…Took
    load of  waste to the dump.  Gilroys…then visited Mrs.Robachuk and got the caribou antlers.

    Bob Gilroy bought a case of beer from the bootlegger and  gave each of us  a  can.  Poor Bob
    Gilroy is an alcoholic which  is very hard on Mrs. Gilroy who is a  very kind and  extroverted French
    Canadian lady.  Bob is great guy…charismatic…but wonder about his future.

    Drove back to the Silver Titan  camp where Dick, the cook, fed us  all … seemed surly today.
    Too much alcohol around today. Mrs. Gilroy and the little girls Patricia and Susan fled in tears.

    (*Note:  As mentioned earlier Mrs.  Gilroy committed  suicide around Christmas  time in 1962.
    I  was  informed  by some of the boys still in Mayo Landing.   Alcohol would not be a reason…
    but would be a complicating factor..
    I wondered what would happen to those two little girls)



    Mayo Landing airport


    Monday Sept. 3, 1962

    Dick had  great breakfast for us today.  Then I washed 8 pair of  dirty socks  before starting
    work.

    Terry and I  packed motor generator, 2100 feet of coiled wire, 4 rods,  sledge, etc.  into the
    old C.L. #2 of Silver Titan in preparation for a day of Turam work.tomorrow.  Too  many
    swamps to slosh through…water is icy.

    Northern lights are spectacular.


    When drive shaft falls out;   Bill Scott giving advice … note U. of T. Engineerng jacket.


    Bill Scott

    Bill Scott…first day on the job in June.

    Tuesday Sept. 4, 2021

    Up ar 6…cook provided
    6 slices  of bacon, 2eggs,2 pancakes,  3 cups of orange juice
    and coffee.

    Terry Doubt, Jim Coyle and I packed carried rest of  Turam  equipment in to C.L.#2 at
    Silver Titan.   Started  motor generator and read  lines 10, 15, 17, 20 on East side of  loop.
    Left off line 18 because  10 degrees off proper grid. Survey error.

    Packed  equipment uphill to the road.  No easy matter as  each of us  had  60 to 70 pound 
    packsacks.   Poor John Coyle had  just come off a two to three week bender…drunk in other
    words.  We  really thought he would have a heart attack,  We Left packs at side of road  and hiked
    into town.

    Bill Dunn reported we can expect snow any time…for sure next week.   Bill Scott got
    us another hot rum drink … for all crew.

    Nights are getting very cold.

    Wednesday Sept. 5, 1962

    Snow.   All pipes and pails with water now frozen.  Steve drove us to job site.  Then Jim Coyle,
    Jack Gillis, Terry Doubt and I packed Turam equipment in to the new prperty which is very wet…swampy.
    Did lines 132, 134, 134, 128, 126, 122….all west lines.  

    Feels like December back home.  Ice  on all the small ponds, snow flurries most of the day.

    Did all my washing in the wash basin in evening.  Two letters from Marjorie  Now starting to
    get serious about plans to return home..the long way rather than the direct flight from Whitehorse.
    I want to get the full Yukon experience which means Skagway…need to know more about the

    Treadwell mine disaster on Douglas Island near Juneau.  Know so  little about these big events

    that are keyed to a man  called  Livingston Wernecke.  Hope to discover.

    Thursday Sept. 6, 1962

    Motor trouble today…likely dirty gas.  Cleaned  the carburetor.  Broke the governor by accident.
    scraped  carb  with a spoon.  Walked out to road and borrowed Hans  Buhr’s Land Rover then
    on to Elsa for repairs.  Had the master mechanic do some spot welding on the governor..excelent job.

    Hard drive back to camp then walked  down Proctor’s Road to site…not much of a road, more like a track..
    put things back together
    and completed the layout…116, 118, 120, 124, all on west side of base line.

    I feel relieved..proud of myself getting  repairs done and survey done  But my legs
    are very sore.

    I hope I can  get some work on the side for the next few days…tagging claims  for Hans Buhr…I will
    need the money for my escape route from the Yukon.   It will be a tight trip. Have some money but
    not enough.  Will take a chance anyway…be  a  shame to miss Dead Horse Pass, Skagway,
    Juneau…all landlocked places…mysterious  places.

    Friday, Sept. 7, 1962

    Muggy day…reclaimed cable from BL #3 and talked with Hans Burr in morning.   Read  book in pm.
    Our last day and Silver Titan was slow and  uncomfortable.  

    Pleasant feeling now job is  over and the weight of the world  off my shoulders.
    This has been fascinating job but very stressful at times.   Yukon hills are not hills.  They are

     6,000 foot mountains.


    Drove to Mayo Landing with Steve Rudnicki … slept on floor of  the Tim-o-Lou Motel basement.

    Visited Bob Gilroy and got job tagging claims for a day…a little extra money.   

    Had a Tom Collins at the bar and later a glass of sauterne white wine and shot of
    rye with Bob Gilroy…hard on my stomach I fear…gut ache.

    Have got really attached to Mayo Landing and all the characters I have met…even
    the drunks.  Often drinkers have nice personalities.

    Saturday Sept. 8, 1962

    My idea of sleeping on he floor was not a good idea….bad  night.  Had breakfast 
    at Luigi’s.  Dirk and Ray were there.  Dirk put on quite a show  by vomitting…food
    poisoning…mild.  

    Bill Scott and I went to the airport to make  sure the bags got away.    Cold, bleak
    day in the Yukon.  Later  we went back to the Gilroys and jointly presented a bottle
    of sauterne ($4.50) which  may not have been  a good idea.   Perhaps better than
    a bottle of rye whisky though.

    I arranged  to take the little girls, Patricia and Susan to the movies after our
    supper at Luigi’s   The show  was terrible…John Wayne at his worst…killing Indians.
    Patricia fell asleep.  Susan seemed happy about the movie.

    Bob Gilroy  showed us his new discovery on Silver Titan…good stock market
    opportunity for us but we had no money.   Stock  tips are to always accurate.

    Expenses   $5.50

    Sunday Sept. 9, 1962

    My last Sunday morning in Mayo Landing.  Had biscuits for breakfast, read a little…in
    afternoon I helped  Bob Gilroy cutting brush.

    Made  arrangements to do the tagging of  claims.
    …What  a nightmare that turned out to be…ice about an

    inch or two thick in the swamps where claim posts were located.

    …feet freezing wet…silence…armed with a rifle and compass…so
    even my final work day in the Yukon was no picnic.   We arrived  in
    the Yukon two weeks after the ice was swept down the Stewart 
    River…and  we left the Yukon as  the ice began  to return…3 months
    later.  Now there is  One nice event though!  The goddamn mosquitoes froze to death.


    YUKON DIARY   to Sept. 9, 1962..END  OF THE JOB.

    NEXT EPISODE:   PERSONAL  PLANNED ESCAPE FROM THE YUKON




  • EPISODE 237 THE NIGHT I MET DR. AHO: “ALAN HERE’S A DOUBLE O.P.” “WHAT IS IT?”

    EPISODE  237   THE NIGHT I MET DR. AHO:  ”ALAN, HERE’S A DOUBLE  OP!” 


    alan skeoch
    january 2021


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  • Small error in Episode 235

    Correction of error in episode 23e
    where I say poop, it should say pool (WHAT A STUPID ERROR)

  • EPISODE 235 YUKON DIARY THE “SPORTING GIRLS” OF KENO CITY (I.E. PROSTITUTES)


    Note:  This Episode might be a little too crude for some readers.  But it is
    part of my experience and certainly part of the mystique of the Yukon. Read
    it if you will.  You have been  warned.  Livingston Wernecke is a very large
    part of  Yukon history.  His story, very upright man that he was, has  been  reserved
    for a special  Episode…


    EPISODE 235    YUKON DIARY   THE  “SPORTING GIRLS” OF KENO CITY (I.E. PROSTITUTES)


    alan skeoch
    January 2021


    NO PICTURES AVAILABLE,,,UNLESS YOU’
    CAN FIND A COUPLE.  DOES  ANYONE HAVE
     A PICTURE OF THE KENO CITY SPORTING GIRLS?



    WHEN LIVINGSTON WERNECKE  MET MADAM VIMY RIDGE

    (Below  is my interpretation of the night that Livingstone Wernecke, the puritanical mine manager on
    Keno Hill met Vimy Ridge, the lead Madam of the  sporting girls in Keno City.  The dialogue
    is fictitious but the event likely happened because  it is mentioned so often )

    “Did you hear what happened to old man Wernicke last night?:
    “Did he fall asleep reading the Bible?”
    “Nope.”
    “Did he persuade that Swede to sell the Elsa claims cheap?”
    “Nope”
    Then what happened?”
    “Old Man Wernecke paid Vimy Ridge a visit in her whorehouse in Keno City”
    “The Madam who hires those sporting girls?”
    “Right.”
    “I thought he was morally pure.”
    “So did one of  the boys  who was wrapped around a sporting girl at the time.”
    “One of our guys?”
    “Yep.”
    “What happened?”
    “Our man looked  up, surprised and  said ‘So you use this place too, Mr. Wernecke.”
    “And?”
    “And Wernecke was embarrassed…said nothing….buggered off.”
    “Why was he down there? He did not like having the sporting  girls
    around.  Immoral.  Giving his boys some bad habits.”
    “He  went down there to make sure Vimy Ridge allowed his
    doctor to check out he girls…keep diseases out of Keno.”
    “What diseases?”
    “Don’t be naive…the ‘Clap’…you know right well…Old Man Wernecke wanted to
    make sure his boys didn’t end  up with syphillis or gonorrhoea .”
    “I thought he was trying to shut down the whoring in Keno City…drive the
    sporting girls down to Mayo …maybe  drive them back to Dawson where 
    they came from.”
    “You mean Wernecke has given up his crusade…surrendered to the Madams…”
    “Reckon so.  We’ve got 800 men up here…most of us  single…Wernecke figured  he
    was fighting a losing battle.  Best to keep the girls  healthy if he could.”
    “What happened  to the guy wrapped  around  the sporting girl?”
    “Nothing.  Wernecke just left the place.  Vimy Ridge let the mine doctor check
    out her girls.  Everybody seems to have won.”

    PROSTITUTION IN KENO CITY

    HOW TO TELL IF A MINE IS SUCCESSFUL

    In the summer of 1960, Dr. Paterson sent me on a short job to Elliot Lake…the uranium
    capital of Canada.  Weird job that did  not make much sense to me.  Can  Met UrAnium mine
    had been closed down.  The stope pillars deep in the bedrock had been pulled.  The mine was
    collapsing as we conducted our survey through the doomed passageways.  I suppose
    it was dangerous but I was used to danger, rather liked danger.

    We were assigned one of the last mine employees as an underground escort.  A rough talking, hard drinking, kind of guy.
    He asked me a question while we were sitting on a boulder that had  fallen from the
    mine ceiling when some roof bolts gave way.

    “Alan, do you know how to tell when a mine is successful?”
    “No.”
    “When the hookers arrive…that’s when we know.”
    “Did they arrive here in Elliot Lake?”
    “Sure did.  Some of them did double duty working in the mess
    hall in the daytime and on heir backs at night.”
    “Any still around?”
    “Are you kidding.  They bugger off fast when the mine began to close down.”

    FLASH FORWARD TO THE YUKON JOB 1962

    In 1962 there were no hookers in Keno City.  The great Keno Hill silver/lead mines closed down
    in the 1930’s…hit hard by the 1929 Stock Market collapse and the U.S. refusal  to buy foreign 
    silver.  The sporting girls were gone.   

    But they had been in Keno City.  Perhaps a  dozen of them, maybe a few more  They had their cabins
    grouped around Keno.  The sporting girls did not dominate Keno City…not nearly as dominant as
    they had been in Dawson City two decades  earlier.   some sources said that the Dawson City
    prostitutes  moved to Keno City once the gold rush ended in Dawson.  Possibly so.  But age
    would have crept up on them.  And active sporting girls in 1900 might be in her twenties.  That
    would make her 40 or 50 operating in Keno City.  A little old.  The Madams like Bombay  
    Peggy must have recruited younger girls.  Some sources say that big time criminals controlled
    the trade.  But that flesh business was  long gone by 1962.   Lots of stories  circulated as is
    the custom when young single men get together around a campfire.  The stories told were
    amusing.  Rough. Stories taken with a pinch of salt.

    Like the story of one sporting girl in Keno who walked around town stark naked except
    for her painted toe nails.  The story was made more startling when someone observed
    her catch and kill a rabbit with her bare feet.  The rabbit was to be her dinner that night.
    Now who could believe that story?   Think about it.   Summer time in the Yukon is made
    miserable by clouds  of mosquitoes so dense that it is unlikely a nude woman would
    be walking around town…unless she was insane.  Do  not rule out that possibility.
    Madness among these sporting girls I would not rule out.

    Prostitution must be a miserable occupation.  Seems to me that The glorification of prostitution is 
    exaggeration gone wild.  My experience? Zero.  Never had an inclination even.  I can identify closest
    to Livingstone Wernicke.   Sounds stuffy and boring around a campfire
    so most of the time I just listened to the stories.   Some were sort of amusing and  horrifying at
    the same time.  Like the story told by Bill Dunn who had a successful sex  escapade in Mayo 
    Landing one night.  “I fell asleep afterwards  and woke up to find the family sleeping
    in the same room.  They had been there in  the dark.”  Some  readers will find that story
    disgusting.  Others amusing.  Still others will find it ridiculous…fabricated.  Bill Dun had
    another story that seemed  true.   “We we’re sitting in the Power wagon and she tried
    to put a knife in me.”   Ring of truth there I felt.  But….

    Which get  me back  to the sporting girls of Keno City.  No glory there.  Some Yukon writers
    like Pierre Berton (Klondike), Jack London (Call of the Wild), Robert Service (Songs of 
    a Sourdough) give readers a distorted view of the lives of  sporting girls. 

    I think Dr. Aaro Aho’s book (Hills  of Silver) paints the most accurate picture of
    the sporting girls of Keno City.

    “Up to seven eight sporting girls operated  in Keno in the 1920’s and 1930’s. They were
    known  by names  like Vancouver Lil, Jew Jess, Alice, Vimy Ridge, Silver Fox and Nora. and
    most had  seriously unhappy lives.  Some were exceptionally good hearted, others cruel,
    some made fortunes, but most worked for fear of their lives under organized vice rings
    centred in Vancouver, at least one of them, Silver Fox, was murdered there. (in Keno  City)”

    This strikes me as a bit odd.  Seven or eight sporting girls to service hundreds
    of miners seems a little one sided…and exhausting.  But Dr. Aho seems to have
    researched the situation.  Let’s say he missed a dozen.  Even so the population
    of girls of the line is very small.  

    “Nora painted her toenails and often went around in the nude….Nora was really tough
    and in the 1930’s moved in with one  the successful discoverers. She got him to hire
    a cook for $7 a day,  pushed dope, and  helped  him go  through $17,000in nine months
    whereupon his female partner … showed up and put a  stop to it.” (P. 132 Aho, Hills of Silver)

    “Marie, a good looking woman, came to Keno in 1928, did very well as ‘a girl on the line,”
    bought another house, added onto it to make a restaurant, and got her boyfriend  Barney to cook
    for her. She then started a taxi business, but Barney Barney began to drink up the profits….She
    closed the cafe” married several other men but became more and more mentally 
    disturbed and impoverished.  Finally Marie  ended up on $20 a  month welfare then in
    1941 just disappeared one winter.  She was tracked to a broken bridge.  “She had no next of kin
    and no one ever made enquiries or tried to find her.”

    So,  Aho reduces the sporting girl population to 7or 8 and most had unhappy lives.

    There were lots of things to do in Keno  City other than pay $3 a trick  to a sporting
    girl. “ice-skating, tennis, poop,ball game between the mines, villages, steamboat crews, 
    swimming at Five Mile Lake, and occasionally boxing.”  Add the sporting girls and
    there seems to have been lots of recreation activities.   Which one dominated
    Alcohol consumption.  “But from all accounts it would
    appear Keno’s main recreation was drinking.” (P. 130)

    Police?  The RCMP sent an  undercover man to infiltrate the criminals in Keno City.
    He was successful and a police raid followed.  Guess  who the criminals were?
    No mention of the sporting girls.  None.  But a lot of time and effort was spent trying
    to catch the bootleggers.  Lots of them during Prohibition.  Making hone brew out
    of anything they could find that could be distilled.  Proof that drinking was the main
    activity in Keno  Hill.

    And that still seems to be the case if you have read these episodes.

    alan skeoch
    Jan. 2021

    Post Script:  No mention of sporting girls was made in my diary.  But I do remember
    one of the guys pointing out an elderly lady in the Chateau Inn, Mayo  Landing, and
    saying she was once a hooker in Keno.  She would be in her late 60’s, perhaps  70’s
    in 1962.   My memory is fuzzy.  Did I see her or just hear about her?   Apparently she
    returns to Mayo Landing in the summer time.  A generous person from whom old timers can
    always borrow a  few dollars.  Warm hearted.  Just a memory that I hope was true.



    Dawson City prostitutes and their cabins.  Not glorious at all.   





    The Yukon’s dance hall queen

    ‘The men did not come to the Yukon for the gold; they came to see me,” Klondike Kate Rockwell, perhaps one of the most well-known dance hall girls during the Klondike Gold Rush, is quoted as saying.

    ‘The men did not come to the Yukon for the gold; they came to see me,” Klondike Kate Rockwell, perhaps one of the most well-known dance hall girls during the Klondike Gold Rush, is quoted as saying.

    Klondike Kate was born Kathleen Eloisa Rockwell in Kansas in 1876.

    It was a date she would often forget throughout her life, claiming to have been born in 1880, 1882, and even 1892.

    As a young woman Kate was beautiful and full of life.

    “My father showered luxury on me,” Kate told a biographer, May Mann, later in life. “How could anyone imagine that his beloved and indulged stepdaughter, who was being groomed to take her place as a society leader in the city, was destined to become a variety showgirl and a Yukon dance-hall queen?”

    She was expelled from a number of boarding schools because of her behaviour.

    Kate loved to dance and flirt, especially with older men.

    In New York City, Kate took the name ‘Kitty Phillips’ and got a job as a chorus girl in a variety theatre.

    There, Kate got her first taste of what the job entailed: “I was told to sit in one of the boxes. An old schoolmate joined my table. ‘Will you have a bottle of wine?’ he invited. ‘Oh, no, thank you,’ I replied. ‘I do not drink wine. I only drink lemonade. A bottle of wine cost five dollars and the box waiter almost fainted. My commission would have been $1.25 a bottle.”

    Later one of the girls told Kate that between acts she was expected to sit and drink with the customers on a percentage commission.

    “She also showed me how to pour the drinks into the spittoons when the customers were not watching,” said Kate.

    She worked in Washington and Oregon before coming north to the Yukon in 1898.

    “I shall never forget my first sight of Dawson,” said Kate. “Front Street, facing the Yukon was a solid line of saloons, dance halls and gambling houses.”

    During her first year in Dawson City, Kate made $30,000. One night, while wearing her $1,500 gown from Paris, Kate was crowned Queen of the Yukon. The men fashioned a crown from a tin can, and stuck lit candles on the jagged points. The boys went wild as Kate danced with wax dripping into her hair.

    While in Dawson Kate fell in love with a Greek waiter named Alexander Pantages.

    She supported him for five years as he worked his way up in the theatre.

    He sent Kate to Texas for a year to perform and make money. While Kate was gone Alexander met and married a younger girl from the “right side of the tracks.” Heartbroken, Kate sued Alexander for breach of promise to marry her.

    “The woman declares that by her earnings as a vaudeville performer in the Klondike during the early strike she enabled Pantages in five years to jump from poverty to riches, from a waiter in a dance hall in Dawson to the position of theatre magnate,” reported the Dawson Daily News in June 1905.

    The case was settled out of court, leaving Kate with a settlement of between $5,000 and $60,000, depending on the source.

    In 1933, she married John Matson and the pair returned to Dawson City for their honeymoon.

    Matson remained in the Klondike and continued mining; he and Kate rarely saw each though they wrote two letters each year.

    In 1946, one of Matson’s letters did not arrive on schedule Kate began to worry and soon after his body was found frozen about 12 kilometres from his remote cabin.

    Later, Kate settled in Oregon and married twice before passing away peacefully in 1957, at age 80.

    The MacBride Museum has a dress, purse and wrap that were owned by the legendary dance hall girl in its collection.

    This column is provided by the MacBride Museum of Yukon History. Each week it will explore a different morsel of Yukon’s modern history. For more information, or to comment on anything in this column e-mail lchalykoff@macbridemuseum.com.


  • EPISODE 235 YUKON DIARY KENO CITY: WHERE IS IT? “AT THE END OF THE WORLD”

    EPISODE  235    YUKON DIARY    KENO CITY:  WHERE IS IT? “AT THE END  OF THE WORLD”





    • “That was one hell of  a fire.”
“What fire?”
“The night not so long ago that the Keno City Hotel burned to the ground.”
“How did it happen?”
“No one knows for sure…but there is a police investigation.”
“How  has he fire affected  Keno City?”
“Well, there was never much to see in the City…now there is even less.”
“Was it ever s city?”
“Never.”
“Is it worth the trip?”
“Yes..for sure…if you like mystery…if you like  places that time has forgotten.”
“What about the ‘sporting girls’?
“Once upon a time the sporting girls were here but that was long ago.”



Too  bad.  The Keno  City hotel burned to the ground recently which means there 
is even less of  Keno City to find.  Mysterious circumstance fire.  Now there is only
one place to buy beer in Keno City.


Main Street in Keno  City.  The Museum has gathered together bits and  pieces of Keno City and  Keno Hill history.
Worth a visit?   I love adventure so  I would  without hesitation  say yes.  But if you are seeking the hurly burly days
of the rush for silver,  then you will be disappointed.


alan skeoch
Jan. 2021

KENO CITY

How  do i give you a short impression of Keno City?  Not very udiffcult.  “If  you are looking
for a place at the very end of the civilized world, then take a drive to Keno City.” Drive slowly
otherwise  you might miss the  metropolis.   There is not much left to see now that the
Keno Hotel has burned to the ground under mysterious circumstances.

 A couple of years ago  Keno City had two bars facing each other; Competing with each other
for the trade from the population of the city.  Population?  Are there 12 or 20 residents?  No more
than that.  If you are wanting  women  as well as  booze you will be very disappointed because
the ‘sporting girls’ have long since departed.  

I have come to the conclusion that rumours  of good  time girls were… like the rumour of Mark Twain’s 
death … grossly exagerrated.  That conclusion was  made after listening to story after story of rampant prostituion in 
Dawson City then Keno City. Stories magnified by men  who had  never been  in the Yukon in
those bawdy house years.  Stories around a smoky campfire.  Storie told to distract from the millions
of blood sucking bastards hovering on the smoke periphery.

After more than three months working and drinking in and around Keno City, we never
set our glasses down in a Keno City bar.  Was that a mistake, an accident or just good luck?
The city was dead.  The city could not be found except in the imagination.  The closest I came
to meeting a  Yukon prostitute was the woman  in Mayo Landing bar who offered to take
me to her room to cut my hair.  She was about 60 years old, very large, very drunk…very sad.

Keno City was never ever a City.  Nor will it ever become a city.  When  I passed through Keno City
in 1962, I was  stunned.   What city?  In1962 there were still some  reminders of better times.  Houses
and buildings in need of paint and attention to detail   Some boarded up.  No real main street. I do not
even remember any sign that there had ever been a main street except for a large false fronted
commercial building that could have once been store.   In 1962 there were only 20 people living
in Keno City.  Today, in 2021, I noted the population had fallen to 12.   Today they cannot even drink 
the water in the  town because it is loaded with arsenic which has percolated down from the
Keno Hill silver mine at the top of Keno Hill and the Wernecke Camp mine halfway up.

Stories told of the boom times in Keno City usually spent a lot of print on the ‘sporting girls’…the
hookers (prostitutes)  that migrated from Dawson City to Keno City in the 1920’s and 1930’s.
Dozens of them apparently organized and  housed by famous madams like Bombay Peggy, Ruby Scott and Tiger Lil…women
who had done well in the skin trade of Dawson.

Most stories I heard over campfires at night were  lurid enough to make me believe that Keno City
was once devoted only to prostitution.  Servicing the 800 or so men who got every second Sunday
off and had no place to spend their money except Keno City which was a bit of a boom town down at 
the bottom of  Keno Hill  in the 1920’s and 1930’s.  To stop fights for access to women and liquor the mine
owners made sure that the day off Sundays were  staggered.

In truth Keno Hill was never a place where there was no law and order.  Eventually an RCMP detachment
was stationed in Keno but the officers seemed to spend most of their time trying to find illegal makers of
moonshine…bootleggers in other words.  And they failed at that job since there were lots  of  places
to hide stills.

There was no need for a jail in Keno City.  Instead there was the flagpole.  Residents that needed police
discipline were simply handcuffed to the flagpole as a feast for mosqitoes in the summer time and near
frozen to death in the winter time where temperatures could get as low as 50 below zero.

If  you thirst for adventure then Keno City is the place to visit.  I mean it.  A city that never 
existed really.   Worth the drive?  I would say yes…for sure.   If  you want to find a city at
the end of  our civilized world.

 NEXT  EPISODE:  KENO CITY’S ‘SPORTING GIRLS’ (PROSTITUTES)






This is the famous  street of prostitutes  in Dawson City.  When the gold was gone they moved
to Keno City where silver had  been  found in the 1920’s and 1930’s.   Being a sporting girl
was never glorious or very profitable for most of the girls.

next EPISODE … SPORTING GIRLS AS TOLD BY DR. AHO