Alan Skeoch

Year: 2021

  • 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

  • EPISODE 230 YUKON DIARY SUNDAY AUGUST 5, 1962 TO AUGUST 25, 1962: “WHAT CAN GO WRONG, WILL GO WRONG”

    EPISODE 230   YUKON DIARY   SUNDAY AUGUST 5 , 1962  TO SATURDAY AUGUST 25, 1962

                               “WHAT CAN GO WRONG, WILL GO WRONG”
    alan skeoch
    Jan   2021

     Silver Titan and Peso Silver base camp.  Best tent camp we ever experienced
    in the Yukon.   Most of the tents were used by The mining crew. While we were in this camp the old Silver Titan mine of the 1930’s was
    being pumped out.  The flooded mine was almost intact as the timbers shoring up
    the mine had been protected   from wood rot by the water.  The question on the minds
    of he mining executives was ‘How much galena ore remained?”  We were expected
    to help answer that question.


    Our campsite  construction was not as polished.  


    We had a far less attractive campsite on the banks of Haggart Creek which
    we used part of the time.

    HAGGART CREEK CAMP

    Sunday August 5, 1962

    Cooked pancakes which we ate standing up because everything was soaked
    in the tent…rain got through…torrential rain.  Then spent time building shelves
    seat, table for the cook tent.

    Camp looks good now we have a stove …need heat …cool nights.

    Cooked supper for Bill Scott and Axel…potato patties  with cheese  and bacon,
    rice, tea and coffee…sherry before supper…cognac after supper…not a bad
    life Sunday afternoon and evening in the Yukon bush.

    The creek has turned into a raging torrent wiping out our little dam but
    sluice system is still working.  (Why did we need a sluice?  No idea.)

    Monday  August 6, 1962

    Pancakes and syrup again.  Fred arrived from Peso  and offered  us a lift
    into town. Axel, Bill and I wound up 1500 feet of cable.  Drove to Peso and
    then to  Elsa and then to Mayo.  (Correction distance from Keno City to 
    Mayo Landing is 50 km, not 60 miles. The trip just seemed like 60 miles)
    Truck had 2 flat tires on the way…one
    front tire happened at 60 mph.  Thanks to Fred no one was hurt.

    Luigi picked us up and took us to town…Gilroy’s house…then got groceries
    and borrowed Bob Gilroy’s truck to drive out and fix tires on Peso truck.
    Supper at Luigi’s cafe then to Chateau  Inn bar….port wine with Bill Wells,
    Fred, Axel, Bob Gilroy, Terry and Lorenson.   Rolling  discussion of religion
    of all things.    The  fellows Told stories of incidents in Yellowknife.

    A First Nations woman  joined us later.  Wanted me to 
    go up to her room for a haircut.   Rather silly but amusing. 

    Fred and I split cost of room for the night…last room available.    

    I had  a bad leg cramp.

    Expenses   meals   2.25
                      repellent   4.90
                     groceries   15.82

    Tuesday  August 7, 1962

    Bob Gilroy picked us  up for trip to Silver Titan mine site to look at
    diamond drill core…Comment….”granite Schist with Pyrite  disseminated at 190 to 205 foot level.”


    Had great dinner then drove to Proctor’s with the Rio Plata and Silver Titan boys.

    Bill Scott hitch  hiked to Mayo Landing for a time.   I stayed with the Rio Plata 
    boys while we waited  for job.   Spent pleasant time reading  handwriting…book
    Sons and Daughters.

    expenses   1.75  meals

    Wednesday August 8, 1962

    Alex cooked breakfast then Fred Carter dropped in for coffee.    Pile of mail
    arrived at 4 pm.  Nice  music on radio …CBC from Whitehorse.  Wrote Marjorie
    and Eric. At 10.30 got word Eric job problem.   (turned out to be both funny and
    difficult)

    Thursday, August 9, 1962

    Rain.  Packed up in afternoon and drove to town …powerful rainstorm….arrived 7.15

    No sign of Bill Scott.  Tragedy.  Went to Gilroy’s and was told Bill’s father was seriously ill…dying…
    in Toronto…Bill had caught the DC 3 flight to Whitehorse and then on to Toronto.
    Hard to believe this could happen.   Severe illness and death are never expected because
    most of us are young.

    Telegram arrived from Dr. Paterson

    “To  A. Skeoch.
    TURAM REPAIRED AND AIR EXPRESSED MAYO TODAY stop ONE TUBE CHANGED
    AND BATTERY CABLE REWIRED stop THESE CABLES INCLUDED stop CAN YOU
    CONTINUE SURVEYS BY YOURSELF
    Paterson  Hunting Survey Corp.

    I sent reply immediately

    DR. PATERSON.   PLEASE CONVEY MY GRAVE CONCERN TO BILL stop I SHALL CONTINUE
    SURVEY AS WE HAVE PLANNED  stop THE CALCULATIONS WILL BE SLOWER BUT I WILL
    SATISFY CLIENTS CONCERNING ANOMALIES IN ADVNCE OF FINAL REPORT stop
    BETTER SEND  SOME MONEY stop    SKEOCH


    Friday August 10, 1962

    Poor sleep..nervous night.  Wrote letter to Bill Scott.   Bob Gilroy came . Seems we will be OK.

      Arranged wth CPA for refund of my ticket home…$194.00///
    I plan to use the money to travel by different route.  Any money above my airfare is my
    responsibility.   

    Repaired Turam was not on flight today.  Bob Gilroy offered me a day’s work at Silver Titan for
    pocket money…what a relief.,,we now have 3 camps 110 miles apart.  

    Ted Swanson, Dirk and I split a bottle of Schenley’s and traded B.S. as usual.

    Mrs. Gilroy told us how her daughter explained a ride home with me…ie. a stranger…
    “He was a friend  of  Jesus Christ”…ie. my beard and Jesus beard made us look similar.

    Expenses   5.50 meals
                       6.00  board 

    Saturday  August 11, 1962

    UP at 6.45….breakfast…went down to the old diamond drill site and  tied in two lines….got soaked in the effort.
    …returned  to camp….afternoon  plotted…did lines 52, 62, tying them in to old lines 1,2.  then 34, 40 to R. Base  Line.
    Exchange results superimposed  and found some errors.  Met Bob Gilroy and informed him…(corrections?)

    In the evening I drove to Elsa to make two iong distance phone  calls…1) A. Donlis in Mayo  2)CPA in Whitehorse.
    Had to get secretary to mine manager to open office.  Took 3 hours  and  no luck.   Bought Bill Dunn coffee and
    also got copy of  Atlantic magazine.

    Expenses    meals, phone calls.

    Sunday August 12, 1962

    6.45 up…then down to old R. Base Line (1956) and tried  lines 46,,48, 54, 56, from T Base Line to R. Base Line…all
    in general agreement.   Made my inked location map for Bob Gilroy;   Sent Bill Dunn down to Base Line #3 to haul
    cable  and load reels.

    Axel Doulis arrived at 11 am.  I had Dick prepare lunch for him and then drive him to Rio Plata.  I just hate that 2 hour
    drive.  The Land Rover was covered in mud.   

    Saw two moose on the road but did not get pictures. Drove back to camp as  fast as possible and finished location map .
    Had steak for supper at 5 pm.  Packed  bag and  drove to Mayo Landing…checked in to the Tim-o-Lou…shower then
    bed.  I am not feeling too well.

    Monday August 13, 1962

    Bad sleep…had shower and changed clothes. Telegram arrived

    SKEOCH, HUNTING SURVEY CORPORATION,
    GENERAL DELIVERY , MAYO, YT

    CHEQUE FOR 200 AIR MAILED TODAY stop REGRET ADVISE
    BILL’S FATHER  DIED THURSDAY

    PATERSON  HUNTING SURVEY CORP

    Tough for poor Bill Scott.  Then things got very busy.   Ordered two pairs of  moccasins from  Mrs.  Moses  (Mackenzie First Nations)
    she is local chef’s wife. 

    Drove to airport  and picked up instrument directly from the DC 3 .  Then  got my crew organized which was no easy matter.
    Got Moses Lord from his cabin full of  females…mother, sisters, etc. then Bill Dunn from the bar. Arranged to pay
    motel  bill later as money is really tight even with the 200 from Toronto…no problem.   Then met Ray and Len
    in Chateau Inn bar…drunk as lords.   I had  a nice Tom Collins drink and great supper at Luigi’s.

    Got haircut at Mrs. McCameny’s (1.25 plus 25)  …changed my appearance  so much that I  wore my
    good  pants  all day…partly because there was no rear in  my other pair…ass showing.  

    Drove back  to Rio Plata over the worst goddamned road in North America.  Spent evening getting ready
    for hard day  tomorrow.

    Meals   

    Tuesday  August 13, 1962

    Got boys on job early then the #$%^  Turam refused  to function.  Spent 2 hours trying to repair but failed…drove to town.
    Met crew of  Peso Silver en route.



    Phoned Toronto…Barrie Nichols and ordered a  Ronka instrument for  the Rio Plata job.  Signed in to Tim-o-Lou.
    Terribly frustrating.   Found bit of escapism in evening at movie in Oddfellows  hall titled Dark at the Top of the Stairs.

    Had drink at Hotel.   Moses Lord arrived in bad mood which is  unusual for him.

    Expenses   Meals, motel.

    Wednesday August 15, 1962

    SYNOPSIS OF TURAM SYSTEM: LOTS CAN GO WRONG 

    Copy of report to Silver Titan Mines re: Turam system sent June 14, 1962

    Telegram from Toronto.  Ronka  en route.  Must send Turam back  immediately…drove all the way to Whitehorse
    (250 miles) in Land Rover…arrived very tired…signed  into hotel that was once army barracks in WW2.

    Borrowed $100 from Bob Gilroy for travelling expenses as the  200 from Toronto is not enough. Lent Axel $30 in
    Whitehorse.   Nightmare time.  Have no idea  what is  wrong with Turam…tubes?  Did check all  connections with
    meter…seem fine.  Alternative Ronka could be better.  But unsure.  Turam is old.  I will be found  at fault I fear.

    Expenses   food 6.00, gas and oil 4.50   hotel 8.00 phone call 2.40, transportation ?? makers .70

    MAKING repairs … testing circuits.  Do not remember this site;  A real bed…Should have been unforgettable…likely in Mayo hotel room.


    Thursday August 16,  1962

    Out to CPA office  with Turam…shipped it air freight to Toronto.  Shopped A bit.  Had a beer at the Taku.
    Bought Marjorie a pair of  ear rings $11.70.   Bought pair of trousers $5.95

    In the evening we drove  down to Lake Bennett with Mike Scott and Ben Stangel … stopped at a 
    cabin filled with all kinds  of  trinkets and things (copper)used by Indians before  white men arrived.
    Moose,  Bear, Sheep, Caribou heads on walls also picture  of  Teddy Roosevelt and Sir Wilfred Laurier.

    Lake Bennett is a  beautiful emerald green colour.   But worry about the job trumps beauty of the lake.
    What else can go  wrong?

    Expenses   meals  7.50, transport 3.00, telephone 2.40


    Lake Bennett with White Pass Railway passenger train … Skagway to and from Whitehorse.   This is the route I will take when I leave
    the Yukon.  Skagway was the jump off point for access to the Yukon in the 1890’s.  


    Lake Bennett camp in 1900

    Boat building on shores of Lake Bennett. in 1900;   Plan was to float down the Yukon River to the goldfields
    of Dawson City.  Sounds more glorious than the trip really was.  People died.


    Bennett Lake.jpg
    Breathtaking Lake Bennett in winter.  Beautiful and  brutal in gold rush days.



    Friday August 17, 1962

    Axel still asleep when I went sopping.  robert service book $5.95, necklace for mom $5.95, Slide film $1.00.

    Back to hotel and sent letters to Toronto and  Vancouver offices.  Drove to airport st 1 pm and picked up the Ronka
    from CPA truck.   They were keeping it at Whitehorse for the night.  Started long journey back to Mayo…raining all
    the way.  Spectacular red  glare gave eerie effect  around 8 pm.  In Mayo we had a drink and went to bed.

    Drink, drink , drink seems to give reason for living up here.

    I am quite anxious about the future…will everything work?

    Expenses   meals 5.50, transport ??, telephone,  gas and oil 3.93

    Saturday August 20, 1962

    Telegram delivered 3 days late.    Telephoned  Norm as instructed.  He sounded rather disturbed.  Claims Turam trouble
    was only tube trouble.  Seems strange to me because all tubes tested AOK.  Norm think Ronka will not operate successfully.
    ..because of overburden effects.   Decided to use it until new  instrument arrives with Bill Scott.

    Axel and I rounded  up Moses Lord who was  drunk…everyone seems to be drunk this morning.

    Bad air disaster north here … one killed, two badly injured…flown to Mao hospital.

    Drove out to Rio Plata after talking with Dr. Aho.  Didlines 48, 46 East and West with Ronka using 300 foot spread.  
    Results  are not at all appealing…quite erratic.    

    Hugh Naylor, Ron and Dr. Aho dropped in… explained what Dr. Paterson said huge
    overburden here could effect Rpnka.  

    I am damned depressed.  Doing the best I can.  Wish  I could do more.

    Expenses   food 3.50

    Sunday August 19, 1962

    Up early and out with the Ronka. Did lines 2 and 4 North with 200 foot and 300 foot spreads.  Checked lines 26 north on Peso property
    Spent dreadfull day in the rain….poor lunch with no drinking water while rain poured down.

    Moses Lord has the flu but had to use him all the same.   Bad situation.  We came across 5 ptarmigan.  Ate low bush
    cranberries and blueberries. 

    In evening things looked up.  Plotting results.  Notice anomalies…things I cannot explain in other words..

    Very tired.  Told we must expect rain from now until freeze up.   Cheered up by results however.

    Monday August 20, 1962

    Up early…plotted some results on graph paper…quick  breakfast and the out on the trail…did lines 8, 10,  12, 14 with 
    300 for spread.  Then lines16, 18 with 200 foot spread.

    Moses Lord is very sick  and went to bed early.  I opened a can  of chicken stew for supper then began plotting
    the results for several hours.

    Listened to a play from CBC radio from Winnipeg.  Then got stove going for bed. Still feel very depressed…doing
    all I can.   Third  year with Turam so do  know something about it…can  make minor repairs
    but not major repairs I cannot.  Defective tube?  

    Axel drove out to get Bill Scott this  afternoon…expect him back  late tonight or in the morning.

    Getting anxious to go home…feel something is not right back in Toronto.

    Tuesday  August 21, 1962

    Got Moses  our of bed…he is dreadfully ill.  Spent day extending the western grounding rods then did
    lines16N, 20N, 24N,28N, 32N, 36N, 30N,  44N.  It was a hard  day  for Moses who should  be in bed.  I cooked
    supper and he went to bed immediately.

    I spent next few hours depressed. Wrote  letter and  read a little from Generation of Vipers.

    At 9 pm the Land Rover arrived with Bill Scot, John andAxel.  I was very happy to see Bill and
    the Turam which had been repaired.   Bill thought my work shirt smelled … likely true.
      He has  been through a rough time.

    Apparently Bill Dunn got into trouble by leaving s  loaded  30-06 fully loaded rifle on the bar and
    Al, the bartender, pulled the trigger.  WHAM!   Everyone hit the floor.  Bill caught hell.

    Received some happy mail from Marjorie,  mom and Wally Little…and Dr. John Stam.
    Also received my copies  of the Peso Silver and Silver Titan properties.  Pleasant evening
    with Bill and Axel.   A new man arrived…First Nations person to replace poor Moses.

    Wednesday August 22,  1962

    Joy!  We covered  4.28 line miles with the new Turam….half finished Base Line #1…Moses Lord wanted
    to work so joined new man John Peter.  Rained all day long.  

    Found old prospectors cabin plus lots of  fresh bear shit.  No danger as bears  are
    quite happily wolfing down blueberries, swamp apples  and red currents and  cranberries.

    In the evening I was inspired enough to do  my washing.  Sent my $93.00 second  instalment to the
    Ontario College of Education…total tuition is $163.00.  Cut out some more newspaper clippings from
    the old World War I wallpaper magazines.  

    Moses  Lord  has recovered. Joking about.  Really good fellow to work with.  Seems  other First Nation
    people look up to him.

    Got $100 from  Bill Scott to pay loan  from Bob Gilroy. The company really left me in the lurch
    after Bill left so suddenly.  Lucky we could get credit.

    Thursday August 23, 2021

    Out in the cold rain  by 8 am.  Poured rain all day  long. I kept the men moving and we managed to complete
    Base Line #1…no small task …3.5 line miles then coiling up cable.  steep up and down.

    Lunch was quite an experience.  we built a  roaring fire using  3 trees in an effort to dry our raincoats.
    But the rain kept falling so drying was hopeless.  Ate two peanut butter sandwiches

    Came back to camp.  t Bill and Axel were planning a trip to town. No food in camp.

    Friday August 24, 1962

    Skimpy breakfast of 2 scrambled eggs then out to work on Base Line #2…in the pouring rain of  course.
    Done.  Coiled up Base Lines 1 and 2…then put down Base Line #5.  Had to bolt 3 bridges…log across streams.

    Back at camp  at 5 and prepared ghastly supper of the last of  our bacon and sardines.

    Wheland Read and Jack Acheson dropped in with the Mammoth Tooth for me.   Brad  Pearson arrived
    anticipating a letter from his wife but he was disappointed.

    Plannned trip to  Dublin  Gulch to explore an old adit.

    We have no bread, no milk, no meat.   Hope some groceries arrive.

    Saturday August 25, 1962

    Moses made French Toast for us all.  Bill Scott is sick with the flue  as are whole crew except me.  Started Base Line
    #5 at 8 am…south side lines 0 to 20 .  Finished by noon so pulled the grounding rods and went
    back to camp.   Bill Scott made me a nice hot rum/.   Then we went back out with  Bill to coil cable.


    Drove up Dublin Gulch and bought 3 nuggets from George…$2.50, $2.25 and 90 cents…got big one for Bill
    Scott at $4.50.   Moses,  John and I then explored the old adit using our Coleman Lantern…fantastic ice
    crystals have formed in the stillness.

    Back to camp for a roast beef dinner…groceries have arrived.  Beef tough…chewy.

    Since Bill Scott and Axel were sick I had to drive Moses and John to town later in evening.  Chased a
    black bear down the road.  Arrived in Mayo at 9.30.  Visited the Gilroys.  Treated royally….2 glasses of white wine
    and wedge of lemon pie.

    Bob Gilroy offered Terry Doubt as helper since all are sick in our camp..  Moses and John are off to another job.  I will miss them.


    White Gold starts drilling at Titan project, shares upwww.mining.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/White-Gold-Yukon-300×184.jpg 300w, www.mining.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/White-Gold-Yukon-768×471.jpg 768w” sizes=”(max-width: 927px) 100vw, 927px” apple-inline=”yes” id=”7E6716A2-1F02-4DDE-B7BF-240C3A75AC2A” src=”https://alanskeoch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/White-Gold-Yukon.jpg”>
    The Yukon Hiils were once mountains.  Time, Erosion, glaciation ground the mountains down hence
    the gold nuggets on the bed rock …Heavy.

    alan skeoch
    Jan.2021