to sign up in Whitehorse.21 Several members of the territorial assembly left their seats to serve king and country, as did sixty-seven members of the Fraternal Order of Eagles.22
They came from all walks of life: lawyers, bankers, dockworkers and ships’ crews. There were miners in large numbers. George Chapman was the son of the man who ran the steam power generating plant in Dawson. Alfred Cronin worked as a clerk for the Northern Commercial store in Whitehorse. Jack Taylor was the son of the magistrate in Whitehorse. Rowland Bourke, son of Dr. Isadore Bourke, formerly of Dawson City, was rejected from all three branches of the Canadian military, so he booked passage overseas and enlisted in the Royal Naval Reserve. Other Yukoners, like Selwood Tanner, who joined the 11th Hussars when he got to England, did the same.23
The Yukon volunteers were of various nationalities. The United States was not at war with Germany until 1917, but Americans in the Yukon signed up to fight with the Canadian forces, and a number of impatient citizens from Alaska came to Dawson to enlist with the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Seventeen men of American birth joined the George Black contingent, which went overseas in early 1917. Russians, Italians and those from the Balkan states who were not called up from the reserves by their own countries joined the Canadian forces. Aside from volunteers from the countries of the British Empire, those from the Balkans formed the next-largest group of Yukon volunteers. A number of French citizens in the Yukon departed for France at the beginning of the conflict, including August Brun, who was working for C.P. Dolan at Granville; Charles Troceasz, Julius Barbe and Gustav Espenon.
They joined up singly, or in groups. Nearly two dozen Whitehorse men volunteered in Victoria together, their regimental numbers falling in sequential order. Most of them ended up serving in the 67th Canadian (Pioneer) Battalion. A year later, fourteen Dawson men joined the 231st Battalion (Seaforth Highlanders of Canada), along with a number of men from Atlin.24
One of the most remarkable volunteers of all was “Grizzly Bear” Jim Christie. James Murdoch Christie was born in Perthshire, Scotland, on October 22, 1867. When he joined the stampede to the Klondike in 1898, he had been farming in Carman, Manitoba. Christie remained in the Yukon after the gold rush, later becoming a guide and professional hunter, but his extraordinary story began in late October 1909, when he and partner George Crisfield were trapping on the Rogue River, a remote tributary of the Stewart River. Christie had been tracking a large grizzly bear that had disturbed one of their caches. A marauding grizzly bear at that time of year is never good news. The bear surprised him as he climbed up a snow-covered riverbank, and at a range of 30 metres, he got off one shot from his Ross rifle, which hit the bear in the chest, and a second round to the head, just before the bear was upon him. Christie tried to escape the charging grizzly, but to no avail.
Jim “Grizzly Bear” Christie was one of the heroic figures of the Yukon. He survived a vicious bear attack in 1909 to become a decorated hero during World War I. PPCLI Museum and Archives
The grizzly took Christie’s head into his powerful jaws and began to crush his skull. Christie’s jaw and cheekbone were crushed, his skull was fractured and his scalp was ripped away from his head, drenching the snow with his blood. One eye was blinded. To protect himself, Christie thrust his right arm into the angry bear’s maw, and it too was crushed. Christie might not have survived had the bear continued its attack, but the bullets finally took effect and the beast rolled over, lifeless.
Christie was in terrible shape. He was bleeding profusely, and his broken jaw hung open. He wrapped his jacket around his head to hold the fractured jawbone in place and staggered half-blinded toward his cabin, which was 11 kilometres away. By force of will, he overcame the impulse to give up and lie down in a snowbank and freeze to death. Leaving a trail of blood behind him, he struggled forward. It took him an hour to stagger and crawl the last kilometre to the cabin. Crisfield was not there, so Christie kept a fire going despite being half-delirious, until his partner returned. Crisfield barely recognized his mutilated partner at first. After a couple of days’ rest, Crisfield strapped Christie into a sled and headed to Lansing, the nearest trading post, on the Stewart River. Wrapped in his blood-soaked clothing, Christie endured in silence the pain from every bump and jolt on the four-day journey.
For two months, J.E Ferrell, the trader, and his wife (a former nurse) tended to Christie, slowly nursing him back to health. Ferrell even trimmed the jagged edges of Christie’s scalp wounds as the flap of skin began to heal. Eventually, Christie was fit enough for the journey to Dawson by dog team. He, Ferrell and Crisfield left Lansing on New Year’s Day. Christie even insisted on doing much of the physical work on the journey to Mayo, and then on to Dawson City, where he arrived in mid-January.
By this time, his jaw had healed improperly, so he could not chew solid food and was reduced to consuming a liquid diet. The staff of St. Mary’s Hospital in Dawson could do nothing for him, so he went to Victoria, where surgeon Dr. C.M. Jones reset his arm and his jaw, and reconstructed his face over the course of several operations. Dr. Jones told Christie: “You have no business to be alive.” Much of the credit for Christie’s recovery goes to the Ferrells, who tended him for so many weeks.25 Within months, he was back in the Yukon.
When war was declared August 4, 1914, Christie knew he wanted to serve, and signed up in Ottawa only three weeks later. The doctor’s physical examination noted the scars on his head from the grizzly attack five years before. If he had not lied about his age, he would never have been accepted into the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He listed his age as thirty-nine years, ten months, but in fact he was seven years older than that.26 He joined Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) and saw considerable action as a scout and sniper in France.
The federal government made a commitment to provide a force of Canadian soldiers to aid the British, so the need for volunteers was urgent. It quickly established procedures by which civil servants could enlist, with a job guarantee when they returned after the war. Notice was received that a new war tax would be imposed on tobacco products, alcohol, coffee, sugar and confections containing sugar. Commissioner Black received a letter from a miner on Independence Creek pointing out that miners and prospectors who enlisted for overseas duty would be unable to fulfill their annual assessment to keep their claims in good standing, and would thus lose their claims. Although this was beyond the powers of the commissioner to rectify, Dr. Thompson introduced the issue in parliament and was able to confirm, just six weeks later, that he had been successful in getting the government to consent to the proposal that: “In case of mining leases in the West, including Yukon, held by men who are enlisting to go to the front, they shall be exempt from payment of the leases while absent at war.”27
The territorial government also placed restrictions on the actions of German and Austro-Hungarian nationals, who were required to register with the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. The collector of customs was instructed to compile names, occupations, places of employment, ages and religions for these individuals. Note was made of any of those expressing pro-German sentiments, and restrictions were placed on their movement. None expressing pro-German sentiments would be employed in the public service in the territory, and any German attempting to leave the territory would be arrested. Superintendent Moodie of the Mounted Police hastily added that while Germans remained where they were and were neutral, they would be afforded the same protection under the law as any other person in Canada.28
Joe Boyle, the manager of the Canadian Klondyke Mining Company, posted a notice stating that any employees expressing pro-German sentiments, or those who failed to report anyone doing so, would be fired.29 The territorial government later instituted a similar policy. Pro-German magazines and newspapers were banned from the mail. Germans on the American side of the border in the nearby Fortymile district continued to voice their pro-German sentiments, as long as America remained neutral, but doing so often led to a “rap on the nose.”
On
