Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History No. 10

Commissioners of the Yukon, 1897-1918

by Edward F. Bush

The Last Frontier

Although Sir John Franklin explored the Arctic coast bordering the Beaufort Sea in 1825, the first white man to investigate the remote and rugged territory of the Yukon was John MacLeod who, in 1834, followed the Liard River into the southern Yukon. Another early explorer to penetrate to the interior of this area was Robert Campbell: in the years 1842-48, he travelled the Yukon downstream to its confluence with the Porcupine where later (1847) the Hudson's Bay Company built a trading post, Fort Yukon.

For a time the fur trade dominated the scene. The territory at this period was a part of the vast domains of the Hudson's Bay Company, which by this time controlled much of the hinterland of British North America. Fur rather than gold was the staple product of the region at mid-century, although as early as 1853 Robert Campbell knew that there was gold to be found along the Yukon and Pelly rivers. The discovery of gold was to awaken the Yukon from its long sleep, and by the late nineties it would be a household word from Chancery Lane to the antipodes.

In 1870, with the celebrated transfer of the extensive Hudson's Bay Company holdings and the trade monopoly which included the Yukon, the territory became an adjunct of the uninhabited and partially explored North West Territories, ranging from the head of the lakes to the Pacific slope and from the international boundary to the Arctic seas.

It was in the decade of the 1870s that the triumvirate of Al Mayo, Leroy Napoleon McQuesten and Arthur Harper, later joined by Joseph Ladue, established a chain of trading posts along the Yukon, generously grub-staking prospectors in their quest for gold. By 1866 some 200 miners had penetrated the territory via the Chilkoot Pass, fanning out to explore the many tributaries of the Yukon. Pierre Berton in his Klondike: The Life and Death of the Last Great Gold Rush asserts that without this chain of trading posts there could have been no gold-rush; that this practical and utilitarian preliminary was a basic requisite for the stampede which was to follow in little more than a decade.

The influx of prospectors, miners and camp followers by 1895 induced the Canadian government to take its first step to secure its sovereignty and to provide for the administration of what had so recently been a wilderness. In June of 1895, Inspector Constantine of the North-West Mounted Police was despatched to the Yukon with a detachment of 20 men to up hold Canadian sovereignty and maintain law and order in what was quickly becoming a rollicking mining camp, and to oversee and issue trading permits to the two commercial companies operating in the region,¹ the North American Transportation and Trading Company and the Alaska Commercial Company, both of which were American concerns. Constantine had to be a jack of all trades. He represented in his own person all the departments of government; as well he was dominion lands agent, collector of customs and chief and sole magistrate. So multifarious and onerous were the duties piled on him that he could no longer attend to them and act effectively in command of the North-West Mounted Police detachment. On Constantine's urgent entreaty, Thomas Fawcett was despatched to the territory to take over the increasingly demanding duties of lands and mines administration, arriving at Dawson on 15 June 1897.

With the influx Canada could afford to waste no time in asserting her sovereignty over the territory, so soon to dominate the headlines throughout the world. In 1895, a surveyor of high repute, William Ogilvie, destined to become the territory's second commissioner, was sent by federal authority to complete his survey of the 141st meridian from where he had left off in 1888. This was the line agreed on to constitute the international boundary on the west.² It was as well that this precaution was taken, for it readily became apparent that many of the newcomers fancied that the Klondike lay in American territory, a fallacy which newspapers on the "outside" perpetuated by referring to the riches of the Klondike as "Alaskan gold."

Almost a year to the day from the great strike, by proclamation dated 16 August 1897, the Yukon was constituted a district of the North-West Territories, reflecting no doubt the feverish development already in train. The year previously Dawson, on the right bank of the Yukon River at the confluence of the Klondike, consisted of a store and trading post with attached shanty established by Joseph Ladue. With the then current population, estimated at 5,000 expected to treble by the next season, the Canadian government thought it well to appoint a chief executive officer with the title of commissioner, vested with full authority over all government officials (except the judge of the Supreme Court of the North-West Territories) and the North-West Mounted Police.³ The commissioner was to be appointed by Governor in Council, and was to be assisted by a six-member appointive council. His powers were extensive: although his administration was subject to the Governor in Council or the Minister of the Interior, the commissioner held authority over all federal officials in the territory (with the exception of the chief justice), "with power to remove, suspend or supersede any official, pending the action of the Minister under whose Department such official is employed." Continuing, "He should also be placed in full command of the North-West Mounted Police Force, and the officers of the Force should receive their instructions from him and obey any orders that may be issued by him."⁴ These recommendations were contained in a report of a committee of the Privy Council, approved 17 August 1897 by the Governor General.

The commissioner's executive authority was shared with the council, and comprised such functions as direct taxation, establishment of a territorial civil service, administration of prisons and municipal institutions, licensing of shops and saloons (of which there were to be many in Dawson), solemnization of marriage, property and civil rights, administration of justice, education and the expenditure of appropriations.⁵ Representative government was not considered at the outset both because of the very recent organization of the territory and the largely alien population which had flocked thereto. The lack of democratic process was, however, to become a contentious and highly-charged issue within a very few years.

James Morrow Walsh

The choice of the select committee of the Privy Council for the Yukon's first commissioner⁶ fell on James Morrow Walsh, a 56-year-old, ram rod-straight veteran of the renowned North-West Mounted Police, who had first won fame in his skilled and courageous handling of the Sitting Bull incursion in 1876, taking the surrender of the fugitive warrior and 3,000 of his followers. Born in 1841 in Prescott, an attractive little town on the upper St. Lawrence in what was then known as Canada West, the son of Lewis Walsh and Elizabeth Morrow Walsh, James was raised in the Presbyterian persuasion. First having seen active service at the time of the Fenian raids, Walsh was well-equipped for a position of high responsibility with the newly created semi-military mounted constabulary, taking charge of the critical Cyprus and Wood Mountain district near the international boundary. In 1879 he was credited with preventing Sitting Bull from attacking General Miles by means of a daring sortie across the boundary. A strikingly handsome man of military bearing with a good head of hair and luxuriant moustache. Walsh did not belie the confidence reposed in him in taking charge of a territory which gave every indication of following the lawless way of the American West. Already by 1897, last year's general store and shanty had mushroomed into a sprawling tent and shanty town of 5,000 souls, and this was just the beginning.

1 James Morrow Walsh. (Public Archives of Canada.)

Walsh had resigned from the force in 1883 to enter business, but rejoined its ranks in 1897 and was appointed superintendent of police and commissioner of the Yukon Judicial District the first of seven to hold that office in the course of the next 11 years. Curiously enough, Walsh's commission, approved by the Governor General on 17 August 1897 (one year to the day from Carmack's sensational strike in the Klondike) mis-quoted his Christian name:

The undersigned [Committee of the Privy Council] would therefore recommend that John [sic] M. Walsh of the town of Brockville, province of Ontario, be appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Government in the Yukon Territory, and that he shall be known as the Commissioner of the Yukon Territory...his appointment shall take effect from and after the 15th day of August, 1897, and he shall receive a salary at the rate of $5,000 per annum.⁷

(Walsh was also to be saddled with the supervision of customs and of the mail service, which with the influx of humanity in the summer of 1898 was rendered well nigh chaotic.) A few months later, 13 December 1897, Thomas Fawcett, the recently appointed gold commissioner, reported the non-existence of any municipal organization and the dreaded appearance of typhoid in the camp with the dire likelihood of an epidemic the following summer.⁸ Ogilvie, the future Yukon commissioner, reported that gold-dust at $17 per troy ounce was the accepted medium of exchange and that what little currency there was in circulation was for the most part American.⁹ With the territory and its booming capital (if such it could be termed at this date) in this parlous condition, its first commissioner, Major Walsh, though he departed Ottawa vested with full authority on 23 September 1897, was fated to reach his destination only by 21 May the following spring. Walsh spent but a few months in that frenetic summer of 1898 in Dawson, but it was sufficient to make his mark.

Led by Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior, the official party received much publicity along the route. It included Justice McGuire of the Supreme Court, F. C. Wade to act as crown prosecutor (presumably he would not be idle), Captain H. A. Bliss, accountant, mines inspectors Captain H. H. Norwood and J. D. McGregory, Dufferin Pattullo, Walsh's private secretary, and Philip Walsh in charge of Indians and transport. Accompanying the party as far as Dyea at the head of the Lynn Canal, whence the party would proceed to the interior via the Chilkoot Pass, were William Ogilvie, serving at the time as astronomer and surveyor; W. F. King, chief astronomer; G. R. Maxwell, M.P. for Vancouver; A. J. Magurn, a correspondent for the Toronto Globe; Reverend R. M. Dickie (founder of the Presbyterian Church at Lake Bennett); D. Stewart of Vancouver, and one Dr. Carruthers of Edinburgh. The expedition, for so it must be termed, was given a tumultuous welcome on de-training at Vancouver on 1 October.

The following day, the expedition set forth from Vancouver aboard the Quadra for the passage up the coast.¹⁰ The Quadra, 265 tons net register, a 175-foot, steel-hulled, schooner-rigged vessel, was well-laden on the rainy voyage north. Seventy-eight sled dogs, 25 sleds, four months' rations for 60 men plus 6 weeks' rations for 8 men, a full complement of Winchester carbines and Enfield revolvers, two Gatling guns and 5,000 rounds of ammunition filled the holds. The inadequate cabin accommodation and the inclemency of the weather must have made the ship's arrival at Skagway on 8 October after six days in passage a welcome event. The expedition had anticipated that sufficient provisions had been packed over the pass to enable it to proceed at once to Dawson; this, however, had not been done.¹¹

The party found very little in the way of reliable information on the condition of the White and the Chilkoot passes, and so they reconnoitered both, ascending the Chilkoot and returning via the White to Skagway.

The Skagway trail is all that it has been described to be, such a scene of havoc and destruction as we encountered through the whole length of the White Pass can scarcely be imagined. Thousands of pack horses lay dead along the way, sometimes in bunches under the cliff with pack saddles and packs where they had fallen from the rocks above, sometimes in a tangled mass, filling the mudholes and furnishing the only footing for our poor pack animals on the march — often, I regret to say, exhausted but still alive, a fact that we were unaware of until after the miserable wretches turned beneath the hoofs of our cavalcade. The eyeless sockets of the pack animals everywhere accounted for the myriad of ravens all along the road. The inhumanity which this trail has been witness to, the heart-breaking sufferings which so many have undergone, cannot be imagined. They certainly cannot be described.¹²

Returning to their base at Skagway on 19 October 1897, Walsh found that most of their supplies had been packed over the passes. He therefore despatched an advance party to Dawson the same day and a second five days later. Before leaving Skagway, Walsh appointed Captain Z. T. Wood of the North-West Mounted Police commandant of the whole region from the international boundary on the south at the 60th parallel to Fort Selkirk at the juncture of the Pelly and Yukon rivers in the north.

2 Commissioner Walsh and staff, 1898. Left to right: Capt. Bliss, T. D. Pattullo, Comm. Walsh, F. C. Wade, J. D. MacGregor, Capt. Norwood. (Public Archives of Canada.)

Setting forth himself for Dawson, Walsh reached the summit of the Chilkoot Pass, 3,498 feet above sea level, on 28 October, arriving at Lake Lindemann that evening soaked to the skin through the fording of streams en route. On 2 November, perilously late in the season, Walsh set off down the river from Bennett. By 13 November the thermometer had dropped to 8 degrees below zero Fahrenheit: the sun, Walsh recorded, appeared over the mountains about ten in the morning to disappear shortly after three in mid-afternoon. Ice cakes of ever increasing size and menace appeared in the river. On 17 November, at a point a dozen miles beyond the confluence of the Big Salmon, collision with an ice jam resulted in the drowning of one man and the loss of more than a ton of provisions. The nearest point of supply, Fort Sifton (Tagish) lay 176 miles distant.¹³

The condition of the river and the depleted state of their supplies decided Walsh to winter on the banks of the Yukon. Walsh's party included his brother Philip, Bliss, Pattullo, and two Indians. By November 30 the mercury had plunged to 58 below zero. The rest of the expedition was strung out at various points along the Yukon. Rations were short, but depots and shelters were set up at intervals along the river.

His failure to reach Dawson by freeze-up was, of course, a disappointment to Walsh, but the enforced delay was not wasted.

Situated half way between Dawson and Dyea I have been in a position to meet daily large numbers of the people coming over the trail from the gold districts, to ascertain from them the causes of the famine, the conditions of the people, the difficulties of transportation as affecting the food question, and their opinion upon all questions affecting mines and mining and as to the nature of the regulations Which would prove most satisfactory and at the same time effective.¹⁴ Walsh concluded that the prime essential on the Klondike was an adequate food supply; there would always be the foolhardy ones who would set out with inadequate supplies and short rations on the off-chance of striking it rich in the gold-fields. Police posts should be established at 35-mile intervals along the Yukon, each staffed by four or five constables; each post was to be supplied with a good boat, three tents, a double set of cooking and heating utensils, a dozen axes, a half-dozen shovels and some fish nets. Once these posts were established, the territory could be policed easily. A good mail service should receive immediate attention. First aid would be available at the posts.

In the light of subsequent events, Walsh's recommendations concerning the policing of the territory are of primary interest.

I would also recommend that the men required for service in this country be not drawn from the North-West Mounted Police force. I find them unsuitable for the work that is to be done. They are neither boatmen, axemen, nor are they accustomed to winter bush life, three of the first qualifications for service here.¹⁵

Rather, experienced bushmen and rivermen, for example from the Ottawa valley region, should be recruited, be given a little police training and placed under the command of a young and competent Nort-West Mounted Police officer, with his subordinates drawn from the ranks of the militia. Walsh's discounting of the Mounted Police, considering his long experience on the Great Plains with the force and its subsequent magnificent record in the Yukon Territory, is indeed a curious phenomenon, for it was not as if the commissioner were unfamiliar with the force. It goes without saying that the excellent name earned by the police on the Plains, albeit to suffer a temporary eclipse in the course of the Northwest Rebellion, was amply confirmed in the Yukon; but one commissioner had nothing but the highest praise for the force which made of the explosive Klondike a model mining camp, without precedent for the absence, relatively speaking, of serious crime. Perhaps Walsh revised his opinion of the scarlet-coated force before his death some seven years after leaving the Klondike.

It was Walsh who insisted that the police at Lake Bennett and Tagish ensure that every entrant to the territory carry with him a year's supply of food. This imposed a considerable burden on the stampeders, many of whom were city dwellers of sedentary occupation, unused to heavy manual exertion over sustained periods. But the regulation undoubtedly saved many from starvation. Those who could not meet the requirement were denied entry to the territory. As Walsh wrote in his report in the fall of 1897 while still on the trail himself: "Food is the first of all questions. It is the most important question with which the country has to deal,... There is no year since mining operations commenced here, that the country has had a full and sufficient supply of provisions."¹⁶

In the same report, Walsh pointed out the desirability of Canada gaining access to tidewater, a design that has been frustrated in the region. He foresaw that gold would be the principal product of the territory for some years to come — most of which would find its way to American coffers, for at the time of the gold-rush as many as four in five of the stampeders were American; and until the early years of the present century. Americans predominated in Dawson to such a degree that the Fourth of July took precedence over Dominion Day. Though Canada would take its toll of the gold production by means of a highly unpopular royalty, Walsh recommended that Canada secure the trade connected with the gold-rush. "If we lose the trade connected with the gold rush then we might better give up the whole territory rather than to shoulder the costs of government and development."¹⁷

Walsh finally arrived in Dawson on 21 May 1898: he was to stay in the burgeoning mining town close under the Arctic Circle less than three months. The commissioner had been criticized by some for his delay in reaching the Klondike, but a combination of circumstances had indeed conspired to hinder his progress or keep to any sort of schedule. His first action on arrival was to impose a royalty of 10 per cent on gold output, in order that Canada, within those boundaries the territory undoubtedly lay, should realize some return from the gold-fields. On the other hand, Walsh rejected the proposal that aliens (in those days non-British subjects) be banned from mining activity, as indeed they were in the United States. A much larger population than Canada could possibly supply would be needed for the full development of the vast territory. Walsh saw no objection to government officials staking claims but he would not countenance anyone in the public service speculating in claims. A sum was at once appropriated for the improvement of the trail between Dawson and the creeks tributary to the Klondike, where actual mining operations were being feverishly carried on in the 24-hour daylight as the full tidal wave of the stampede flooded the dusty streets of Dawson. He curtailed the importation of liquor into the territory (Walsh himself was an abstainer), but honoured all the liquor permits and saloon licences already issued. Sunday observance was enforced rigorously. He authorized a grant of $5,000 to St. Mary's Hospital, the only one in Dawson at the time, and granted a further $2,500 for the opening of a second hospital. At that time the Anglican was the only Protestant church open in Dawson: Walsh readily granted permission to the Presbyterians, Methodists, Greek Orthodox and Salvation Army to establish churches in the canvas and clapboard community whose largely itinerant population had swollen to something in the order of 25,000 making Dawson, it was said, the largest Canadian city west of Winnipeg. And he categorically denied charges of malfeasance being bandied about concerning the conduct of government officials.

Walsh's strong hand was resented by the lawless and shadier elements which were well represented in the Klondike. Ill-founded charges of peculation in high places were current, in which the commissioner became a prime target. Malicious gossip went so far as to couple the commissioner's name with that of an attractive young woman who had appealed to Walsh concerning a disputed claim in which she had an interest. Walsh assured the young woman that justice would be done, and her claim was upheld when the case finally came before Justice McGuire. Walsh insisted that on the several occasions he had called on the young lady, he had been accompanied by others, and that the occasional cigar and a glass of lemonade was the extent of his indulgence in her company.¹⁸ It transpired that the woman in question was one of strong character who had withstood a good many temptations while in the rollicking and free-spending Eldorado of the north. Walsh considered it worth his time to write to Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior, to clear himself of these slimy insinuations.

Berton, in his highly readable Klondike: The Life and Death of the Last Great Gold Rush. says that Walsh had the habit, on occasion, of commandeering police constables for purely personal chores, an undesirable practice taken up by other officials but not continued after Walsh's departure.¹⁹

But one and all who valued the establishment of the rule of law agreed that the commissioner's justice, though arbitrary, was speedy and summary. There were none too humble to gain the commissioner's ear. The Dawson Daily News, a paper published by two Americans and anything but well-disposed at that time to the territorial government, depicted Walsh some years later as a fair-minded autocrat who defended the weak against the strong, redressing grievances and wrongs with a promptitude and celerity not usually associated with bureaucracy. "We personally have knowledge of many appeals made to the major against arbitrary official acts which were remedied, not the same week, not the same day, but within the hour."²⁰ The editor went on to assert that on the whole Walsh's influence had been beneficial, and that had he remained, many of the evils which plagued the territory would have been rapidly set to rights.

Having arrived only in the spring, Walsh was fated to be recalled before the Yukon's brief summer had run its course. He departed Dawson on the evening of 4 August 1898 aboard the steamer Willie Irving, having been in the sub-Arctic city less than three months. From the subsequent charges laid by Sir Charles Tupper in the House of Commons on 31 May 1900,²¹ it can only be concluded that he was recalled under a cloud because of rumours of misbehaviour in office which had reached the Minister. From subsequent correspondence with Sifton it is manifest that Walsh left the territory seething with resentment at the treatment he had received.

It is not the intent of this paper to attempt an appraisal of the first commissioner's relative degree of culpability or innocence concerning the charges laid. The debate on the Tupper motion is laid out in full in the House of Commons Debates, Session 1900, volume under date 31 May 1900. In brief, Tupper alleged that during his term of office, Major Walsh had used his subordinates to acquire mining claims for himself and his brother Philip, which constituted an abuse of his trust. Tupper's allegations, he made clear, were directed against the Laurier administration which had refused an inquiry, rather than against Walsh himself. Facetious innuendos were made by Tupper concerning Sifton's absence in Europe. Tupper's motion, when put to a vote, was defeated in the House by 74 to 38. In such manner, so far as party politics went, was Major Walsh vindicated. In an affidavit sworn out on 4 June five days later, Walsh categorically denied complicity in any of the charges raised in the House either as to the improper acquisition of mining property or misbehaviour with a Mrs. Koch, who figured in the allegations in connection with a disputed claim. Pierre Berton infers that the onerous nature of the office at the height of the gold-rush had been too much for Major Walsh. It appears both from the man's previous record and from his age at the time that he was not recalled because of over-strain, let alone at his own request, but because, whether culpable or not, the Laurier administration found his further retention in office an embarrassment. Malfeasance charges were frequent in the early days in the Yukon: Walsh's successor, a man of unimpeachable integrity, suffered from careless slander.

In writing to Sifton shortly after his return, Walsh defended his record in words which could almost have served for his epitaph

I entered the country and found it without supplies, not even sufficient for the few men stationed in it. I found men without clothing fit to stand the winter cold, and the post without knives and forks, plates or drinking cups, camp kettles, tents, stoves, shovels or any of the articles required... I permanently established law and order throughout the whole district and in defiance of 30,000 miners inforced the mining regulations and showed that royalty could be collected.

The government may not be satisfied with what has been done and the public may not, but I am, for I know that all was done that any man could do under similar circumstances, and my experience in this kind of work has been as great as any man's in Canada.²²

Somehow this reads as from the pen of a man with a clear conscience.

James Walsh did not long survive a paralytic stroke, reported in the Dawson Daily News of 24 July 1905, for the following day he was dead at the by no means advanced age of sixty-four. His had been an active life in the old Northwest, in which he won fame by his fearlessness, decision and good judgement in moments of crisis. It may be fairly assumed that his place in Canadian annals has not suffered as a result of his short-lived Yukon administration, for somehow the stature of the man rises above the tides of malice.

William Ogilvie

Yukon's second commissioner, a land surveyor of high repute, was born in Ottawa 7 April 1846, the son of James Ogilvie and Margaret Halliday Ogilvie. By 1869 at the age of 23, he had qualified as both a provincial and dominion land surveyor, an exacting profession which took him early to the vast and un-mapped regions of the North-West Territories long before the strip of steel had spanned its southern reaches. The year 1876 saw the young surveyor working out of Winnipeg, where he carried out a survey of the Riding Mountains of Manitoba. The same year Ogilvie was reported as far afield as the Peace River district. In 1878 Ogilvie was sent to the Battleford region in order to locate some points of geographic interest. It was on this assignment that Ogilvie, then 32 years of age, acted as interpreter for a band of Sitting Bull's restless Sioux who had presented themselves in full array before lieutenant-governor David Laird of the North-West Territories. In his reminiscences dating from this time, Ogilvie wrote of the huge herds of buffalo that darkened the Plains, in one of which near Battleford he estimated at least 10,000 head.²³

By 30 December 1878, Ogilvie had returned to Winnipeg. The winter of 1882-83 saw him back in the Peace River district, and the following year he completed a survey of the Peace and Athabaska rivers. In 1885 and 1886, when the stupendous enterprise of the Canadian Pacific, Canada's first transcontinental railway and the darling of the Macdonald government, was being pressed to an arduous conclusion, Ogilvie was to be found in the service of the CPR, surveying a stretch of that 2,700-mile line from Revelstoke in the heart of the Selkirk Range.

3 William Ogilvie. (Public Archives of Canada.)

In 1887 Ogilvie first saw the Yukon: in that and the following year he carried out surveys on the Yukon River and through that remote and mountainous region between the Yukon and the Mackenzie rivers. In 1888 the intrepid surveyor was awarded the Murchison Gold Medal in recognition of his geological explorations. It was at about this time that the Americans named one of the highest mountains in the lofty Saint Elias Range of southeastern Alaska after him, "as a tribute to his worth and integrity in international dealings."²⁴ In 1890 Ogilvie returned briefly to eastern Canada in order to carry out a survey from Mattawa on the Upper Ottawa River to the East Main River, tributary to James Bay. The year 1891 saw him back in British Columbia, and in 1892 he was placed in charge of all surveys in the Prince Albert district. It is a measure of his growing reputation that he was appointed to serve on the International Boundary Commission in 1893 and 1894.

In the spring of 1895 Ogilvie returned to the Yukon, and from this date the most significant phase of his distinguished career began. He was commissioned to make all required surveys — town sites, mining claims, and mineral deposits. In the winter of 1895-96 he carried on a survey begun at an earlier date (1887-88) along the 141st meridian, designated as the international boundary on the west between the Yukon Territory and Alaska. A subsequent survey completed in 1908 by a joint Canadian-American party of the 141st meridian corresponded so closely to Ogilvie's, made with less precise instruments and under much more primitive conditions, that the discrepancy between Ogilvie's line and that established by the definitive survey was found to amount to only a few seconds of longitude.²⁵ The members of the subsequent international survey, with more elaborate and precise equipment, had high praise for the extraordinary accuracy achieved by William Ogilvie a dozen years before. It should be noted that much of this survey work was carried out in the depths of a sub-Arctic winter with the mercury dipping to 50 degrees and more below zero. Such was the timber of which William Ogilvie was built.

Ogilvie reported Carmack's strike to the Department of the Interior on 6 September 1896. Since that momentous day (17 August), he wrote, about 200 claims had been staked. Ogilvie was confident that the strike was no flash in the pan.

I cannot here enter into the reasons for it, but I unhesitatingly make the assertion that this corner of our territory from the coast strip down and from the 141st meridian eastward will be found to be a fairly rich and very extensive mining region.²⁶

But at the outset the department was sceptical of Ogilvie's reports of mineral riches. Indeed when later serving as commissioner he was blamed by the miners for having excited the cupidity of the Canadian government, with the resultant imposition of the royalty. Ogilvie's estimates later were found to err very much on the low side. It was his fate to preside as chief executive over the destinies of the territory during the most hectic and frenetic period of the world's last great gold-rush.

Ogilvie's enforced wintering in the Yukon in 1896-97 was seen by the Department of the Interior as highly forfuitous, for his presence "helped to prevent conflicts in the newly discovered gold fields."²⁷ This, as the experience of the past had shown in the American West, was only too probable a development. Claims were carelessly staked, claim jumping was rampant; and in any case, for want of accurate surveys, properties encroached on one another in inevitable fashion giving rise to disputes and frequently to violence. Ogilvie's imperturbable and impartial investigations did much to alleviate tensions and rectify errors.

In 1898 Ogilvie set out on a lecture tour of the British Isles to acquaint public opinion in the Mother Country with the extraordinary opportunities to be had in the wilds of Canada. Sifton's letter of introduction is indicative of the esteem in which Ogilvie was held.

This will introduce Mr. Wm. Ogilvie, D.L.S. who has been for many years past engaged in making explorations and in doing important scientific work for the Government of the Dominion of Canada in the North Western Territories. Mr. Ogilvie has devoted special attention to the Yukon District in which the very rich gold mines have been discovered during the last two years. Mr. Ogilvie is a man of the highest character and attainments, and is the author of the Official Guide to the Yukon and Klondike Districts lately issued under the direction of the Department of the Interior.²⁸

It is perhaps not surprising that such a man should be chosen as Walsh's successor as chief executive for the territory at a time when the demands upon the incumbent would be of the heaviest.

William Ogilvie's appointment took effect by Order in Council dated 5 July 1898. Ogilvie accordingly left Ottawa on the night of 2 August, stopping over first in Toronto, then in Rat Portage (later to be graced with the more melodious name of Kenora), and finally in Winnipeg before proceeding on to Vancouver along the single track of the CPR. He sailed from Vancouver northward bound aboard the steamer Horsa the evening of 20 August, reaching Skagway four days later. Ogilvie later wrote to Sifton that his vessel and that bearing Walsh southbound passed on the high seas somewhere in the vicinity of Wrangell on the scenic Alaskan coast. Hence Ogilvie did not receive Walsh's resignation as commissioner, and so considered his appointment in effect from the time he departed Vancouver.²⁹ Ogilvie, accompanied by 18 officials, arrived at the scene of his labours aboard the riverboat Flora at four in the afternoon of 5 September 1898.

All 18 messed together in a cabin next the commissioner's office; eight of them had perforce to sleep on the floor until bunks and sleeping accommodation became available. The commissioner's office was located in a building rented from the firm of Beaver & Lory shortly after his arrival, 19 September 1898, until the end of June the following year. The ground floor housed the commissioner's and comptroller's offices and their staff: the second storey provided Ogilvie with his living quarters, for three years were to pass before a commissioner's residence would be available. Even at that, the officials rented but half the building, the other half being given over to a hotel.

In light of the circumstances of the time, the very height of the stampede when revellers were turning night into day and paying for their drinks in gold-dust, the commissioner's complaint in his report of 20 September 1899 must be considered temperate.

This was, at that time, about the most commodious building in Dawson, with the exception of the two stores of the two trading companies. The other half of this house was occupied as a hotel, and the noise incidental to the keeping open of a hotel until all hours of the night — it may be said practically the whole day and night — was very uncomfortable and annoying to us in our work, because sounds could be heard through the board partitions, practically as if there had been no partitions.³⁰

But beginning in August 1899, a house in which he must have rested more quietly was rented for the commissioner for $250 per month from the Reverend Gendreau. Ogilvie mentioned that this rent was the most reasonable available in Dawson at the time. He needed the whole of his living allowance of $2,000 per annum, with meat at a dollar per pound and the best grades $1.25.

The new administration building would not be ready until November 1901, and so Ogilvie had to make do with primitive arrangements. In the latter part of his term Ogilvie lived in a house rented from the Reverend A. Desmerais at the same rent, $250 per month. In his estimates for the fiscal year ending 30 June 1900, Ogilvie bid for an increase in his living allowance from $2,000 to $3,000 per annum. He was required to do considerable entertaining, which at Dawson's inflated prices came to an expensive item. As an example, he cited a dinner he had given for 20 officers of the Yukon Field Force, an army unit posted to the territory to back up the North West Mounted Police, for which the meat bill alone came to between $25 and $26, with the accompanying vegetables costing as much again and the latter limited in both quantity and variety.³¹

Ogilvie was not 24 hours in Dawson before he was besieged by a horde of claimants, petitioners and office seekers clamouring for attention. The commissioner worked an 18-hour day, and even at that could not keep abreast of the work. Working conditions, as noted were primitive and inadequate, noisy and cramped. The main wave of the influx, which struck Dawson like a tidal bore in the summer of 1898 swelling the population from about 5,000 the previous year to something in the order of 20,000 to 30,000, simply swamped the administration and nowhere more so than in the harrassed gold commissioner's office. Predictably and inevitably confusion ensued and mistakes were made in the complicated process of registering claims. But the grievance mongers and the opponents of government saw in this a calculated design whereby wily officials battened on the miners. The mining code in any case was unpopular with the miners, many of whom were Americans with little notion of Canadian procedure. Few stopped to consider that in their own country aliens would not be allowed to mine; it was enough for them that what seemed to be an unfair royalty was being levied on the hard-won products of their toil by a government which appeared not to have their interests at heart. Matters came to a head with serious charges of malfeasance directed at Thomas Fawcett, the gold commissioner.

On 6 February 1899, Eugene C. Allen, proprietor of the outspoken and anti-government Klondike Nugget, accused Fawcett of using his office for the benefit of his friends, throwing open his records to them while denying the public access. The Nugget attacked the harrassed gold commissioner remorselessly, both on its front pages and in its editorial columns. Ogilvie had been informed of his commission to investigate charges laid by the miners' committee against divers government officials by Sifton on 10 October the previous fall. On 28 February 1899 he reported to Sifton that the miners' committee had withdrawn their charges. There remained, however, the Fawcett imbroglio to investigate which Ogilvie sat as a one-man commission.

By 24 February 1899, the Nugget had withdrawn its inflammatory charges against the sore-pressed gold commissioner, but Fawcett insisted in a letter to Ogilvie that the investigation proceed in order to clear his name, Ogilvie's findings had, by the end of April, cleared Fawcett of all charges. Ogilvie's opinion of the Nugget was expressed forcibly to Laurier in a letter of 22 March.

We have a blackguard sheet here called the Klondike Nugget whose principal object seems to be to vilify everyone who in any way runs counter to its wishes or thoughts. It is American as are all the papers in Dawson [scarcely the case, for the Yukon Sun was a government supporter, and edited by an arch-imperialist, Major Woodside] — strongly American and has continually held up the action of Council and myself to Americans in an unfavorable light, imputing antipathy of Americans in our acts. This has been furthest from our thoughts, as far as we can help it. . .

It abused poor Fawcett until it nearly broke the poor man's heart; and because I did not take sides with it, it is pitching into me. It is utterly regardless of the truth in any statements it may make, simply asserting anything it may imagine will improve its standing with a certain class of people here; and there are a good many of that sort here, I regret to say — principally Americans.³²

Fawcett may have been inefficient, was undoubtedly short-staffed, but definitely not dishonest. However, as is so often the case, the mud sticks despite an acquittal.

The Nugget at first had welcomed Ogilvie's appointment, looking to him for a reform of the mining code. But, continued the editor, there were only so many hours in the day, and while Fawcett remained as gold commissioner, there was little that the commissioner could do. On the maligned Fawcett's departure, when Ogilvie stated, "I expect at the end of twelve months I will be blamed and accused and in as bad a predicament as he is now. I am resigned to it beforehand. I don't care what the newspapers say about me,"³³ the Nugget editorially labeled this "another of those inexcusable prevarications for which the Yukon commissioner is noted."³⁴

If one characteristic stands out in the character of William Ogilvie above all others, it is surely the man's inflexible integrity. He was no more tempted to make a little money for himself on the side than was the selfless Father Judge, who died tending typhoid victims. He therefore, on taking office, at once divested himself of the few interests he had, but not fast enough for the Nugget. On 23 March 1899 the Nugget published a letter from the commissioner describing how he, in December of 1895, had made application in partnership with two others for 160 acres of coal-bearing lands on Coal Creek, the purchase being approved by Order in Council in 1898. Ogilvie sold his portion of the lands on 17 September 1898, 12 days after his arrival in Dawson. But, pointed out the Nugget, when a deputation of miners had waited on the commissioner on 8 September nine days before he had actually disposed of his property. Ogilvie had asserted that he had no interests in the territory. Under the biblical heading mene, mene, tekel, upharsin (Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting), the editor, in surely questionable taste, proceeded to impute dishonest motives to the commissioner: "The prevarication is really not of a serious moment except as showing which way the wind blows. Such people, in our estimation, are not to be trusted with affairs of state."³⁵ Ogilvie treated his journalistic critic with contempt: a successor at a later date was to refer to "the reptile American press."

Another issue of quite a different character which Ogilvie faced was that of widespread and blatant prostitution. This feature was common to all mining camps and frontier regions, wherever the men had money to spend following varying periods of enforced continence. In Dawson the problem, if such it should be termed, was closely associated with the numerous saloons, hotels and dance halls operated by a species of camp follower that often made more out of the gold-rush than many a man who dug for gold. Most authorities have divested the dance-hall girls of the description of common prostitute, their function rather being to induce their patrons to drink freely; this practice, besides the fleecing of many a careless or reckless fellow in from the creeks, certainly acted as a catalyst in the trade done by the girls along 2nd and 3rd Avenues. Ogilvie, a practical soul who knew the north if anyone did, as early as 1899 instituted medical inspection of the prostitutes on a monthly basis in order to control disease, which was rampant. Both the medical health officer and the surgeon of the North-West Mounted Police were issuing certificates to those girls found to be free of the scourge. But in a society as puritanical as Canada of the late nineties, moralists objected to these precautions on the grounds that they amounted to a condoning of vice; rather, vice should be ruthlessly extirpated, not made less of a health hazard for those so depraved as to indulge in such sinful pleasures. So it was that Ogilvie, a man of irreproachable moral rectitude himself, came under increasing pressure from Ottawa to close the dance halls and stamp out prostitution.

Replying to a letter from William (later Sir William) Mulock, then Minister of Labour, acting on a complaint from the Women's Christian Temperance Union, Ogilvie on 22 May 1900 explained his position. The Yukon Council had investigated the problem thoroughly and he was at one with them in deep-felt concern over the evil, but so widespread was perjury in the territory that it was very difficult, if not impossible, to secure evidence sufficient for a conviction. With all respect, continued Ogilvie, to the ladies of the WCTU, there was nonetheless widespread ignorance on the "outside" concerning actual conditions in Dawson.³⁶ Ogilvie's was the pragmatic approach to a problem as old, as the Pentateuch.

But this was not good enough for Sifton, The minister directed a missive to the commissioner dated 14 August 1900, ordering him to proceed forthwith against the dance halls, gambling casinos and bordellos of Dawson. Ogilvie made one final stand against the root and branch policy promulgated by the minister. On 12 September 1900 he again addressed Sifton on the subject. Gambling and dance halls admittedly were evils but understandable under the circumstances of the time and place. These establishments had served a function in Dawson and they should be phased out gradually. To proceed against them precipitately would only drive the practices underground. Better that inevitable licence be continued under strict surveillance than that it should rage uncontrolled surreptitiously. In any case, conditions in Dawson had been greatly exaggerated by moralists and sensation-seekers on the outside. But the minister remained adamant: the dance halls and their attendant evils must go.

I may say that after reading your letter, and also the account of the interview with Major Wood [NWMP] ... I do not see that the ground taken by you is one that could fairly be advanced for the continuance of this evil. No man in Canada has the right to expect that he will be permitted to continue in any illicit or illegal business and consequently he could have no claim whatever to any notice or compensation.³⁷

On receipt of this letter, Ogilvie had no choice but to implement the minister's directive. The decision was taken, therefore, to close down the gambling houses and the dance halls, effective 15 March 1901. The deadline was put far enough ahead to enable the proprietors and operators of these establishments to wind up their affairs, "as it would have been considered a breach of faith to close them instantly after the toleration extended to them in the past."³⁸ Subsequently the deadline was again extended to 1 June 1901. The dance halls were to lead an emasculated and tenuous existence for another seven years, however, the "Floradora" closing its doors only in 1908.

In addition to his onerous duties as chief executive, Ogilvie acted as mayor and city engineer of Dawson as well as fire commissioner. The council appointed Ogilvie city engineer with instructions to do something to improve the drainage of Dawson, Ogilvie arranged for the digging of a system of ditches by means of which the town's drainage was greatly improved. The commissioner was much concerned over the depletion of timber due to the voracious demand for fuel during the 7-month sub-Arctic winter and to the requirements of the mines. On arrival, indeed, he prohibited the cutting of trees exceeding seven inches in diameter in order to conserve timber in the region. He promoted road construction, very much a need in pioneer Dawson, and advocated the establishment of a brickworks, suitable deposits of clay having been discovered in the vicinity.

The territorial government of the time, with its fully appointive council and the broadly based powers of the commissioner, was neither representative nor democratic, The reasons for this have been already cited — a large itinerant population, only about one in five of which was a British subject. The agitation for popular government was to dominate the scene for the next five to six years. The Dawson Daily News, the town's leading paper from its founding in July 1899, fought strenuously for the introduction of representative government. The editor opposed taxation without representation, a sound democratic principle and one of the principal planks of the American Revolution. Ogilvie, on the contrary, considered that the powers vested in him by the Yukon Act empowering him to impose such duties and charges as deemed necessary for the carrying out of his functions, included the right to levy taxes on his own recognizance. To the News, this was a denial of a fundamental British right. The wording of the Act contended the editor, was ambiguous, as indeed it was concerning the taxing authority. The Yukon Act stated in part:

4 The Commissioner shall administer the government of the territory under instructions from time to time given him by the Governor in Council or the Minister of the Interior.

5 . . .but no ordinance made by the Governor in Council or the Commissioner in Council shall,

a) impose any tax or any duty of customs or any excise or any penalty exceeding one hundred dollars, or...

c) appropriate any public money, lands or property of Canada without authority of Parliament.³⁹

The above wording makes it easy to understand why contention should arise. In any case, Ogilvie interpreted the Act as giving him authority to tax without representation, which must indeed have been the intention of the legislators who drew up the Act, for how otherwise could the commissioner administer the affairs of the territory if he were not empowered to levy taxes?

But the unrepresentative character of the Yukon administration was not to remain such. On 17 October 1900, the first election was held for two seats on the Yukon Council, the other four to remain appointive for the time being. It was this election which resulted in Ogilvie's recall for alleged mishandling of the campaign. Four candidates were in the field, but neither candidate favoured by the Liberal party was returned. Several Liberals, including the defeated Thomas O'Brien, the owner of the government paper the Yukon Sun, denounced Ogilvie for the outcome of the first bid to introduce the popular principle into the territorial government. Laurier at first delayed recalling the commissioner and consulted with Sifton, But by one means and another Ogilvie's remaining tenure in office was made unpleasant. In tendering his resignation he pleaded ill health, but hinted that there were also other reasons "some of which are personal dislike of many things in connection with my position."⁴⁰ On his resignation becoming public knowledge the following spring, Ogilvie's inveterate critic, the Klondike Nugget, in its 7 April 1901 edition, paid the commissioner a handsome tribute.

Mr. Ogilvie steps down from his position with a record of unimpeachable honesty and integrity and the knowledge that, owing in no small degree to his efforts, the Yukon territory is governed today by wise and just laws.⁴¹

A week later a bridge spanning the Klondike was opened and named the Ogilvie Bridge in his honour.

As the time for his departure drew near, the commissioner was presented on the evening of 5 June with a handsome souvenir of his administration by the government staff in Dawson. Appropriately the gift took the form of a miner's bucket filled with the tools of the miner's trade wrought in pure gold and suspended by four ropes of gold. There was no doubt then in anyone's mind that the commissioner had laboured for the good of the territory and with no thought of self. Some verse composed on the occasion aptly expresses the debt the territory owed its second commissioner.

There are men who work for glory,
There are men who work for gold, There are men the love of woman urges on;
But the man who works for duty,
Has been cast in a nobler mold.
May the God of duty bless him when he's gone.⁴²

Ogilvie was so overcome with emotion that he was speechless for several moments. He then said that he felt no bitterness or rancor toward anyone, and that the sincerity of this farewell tribute had convinced him that none owed any toward him. Ogilvie departed Dawson aboard the Susie on the evening of 24 June 1901. With him passes the pioneer, mining-camp phase in the Klondike's brief history. The ensuing five or six years were to witness intense political turmoil centred upon the unrepresentative character of the territorial government and reforms in the mining code.

Of all the commissioners, Ogilvie impresses one as excelling in his honesty, integrity and indefatigable labours. He was adamantly against public officials speculating in mining claims or using their position to profit from the rich diggings of the gold-fields. He also disapproved of government officials holding other places of emolument in addition to their official positions. Early in his term of office Ogilvie reported the registrar, Girouard, for carrying on a law practice as well in Dawson. Far too many Yukon appointments, he continued, were had by means of political patronage, and too often a Yukon appointment was thought of as the sesame to a fortune. Public officials should be well paid and kept to their official duties. Apparently the prime minister agreed with him, for in a letter of 22 March 1899, Ogilvie expressed satisfaction that he and Laurier saw eye to eye on the matter.⁴³

Ogilvie was of a practical bent. When asked on one occasion what influence was most potent in human progress in the 19th century, he replied George Stephenson and the steam locomotive. Railways had revolutionized the art of war, as witness the American Civil War; had accelerated progress to the degree that the accomplishments hitherto of several generations were now compressed into one lifetime; had made possible the welding together of huge nations such as Canada, the United States and Russia, and had greatly facilitated travel and hence the freer intermingling of the human race.

Ogilvie next visited Dawson in July 1908 as president of the Yukon Basin Gold Dredging Company, bringing with him the first of the dredges to be used on the Stewart River. He was reported as looking hale and fit, albeit a little greyer, still with a great stock of reminiscences of the early days of the territory. A dinner was held in his honour in the Regina Hotel, at which the current commissioner, Alexander Henderson, paid high tribute to the tremendous load of responsibility Ogilvie discharged so ably in the early days of the territory, dwarfing by comparison his own responsibilities in the present settled era.

Ogilvie died in Winnipeg on 13 November 1912 at the age of 66. The Dawson Daily News in its edition of 31 January 1913 paid tribute to Ogilvie's career of public service. Ever generous himself, he died poor; the News supported the movement current among some members of parliament to secure a pension for his widow. The obituary brought out the kindly human side of the man, who as commissioner never sent penniless from his door a man down on his luck. He was known as a generous, big-hearted man, and his generosity to others in some measure contributed to his lean means in his old age. He was a storyteller of the first order, and had a varied and rich experience to draw on. Many of his reminiscences were gathered by him into a book published by Thorburn and Abbott in 1913, Early Days on the Yukon & The Story of Its Gold Finds. Ogilvie made nothing out of the fabulous stampede, but he died richer in experience and with a clearer conscience than many who had.