The mighty Yukon River, from its source at the Llewellyn Glacier high above Atlin Lake in north western British Columbia, runs about 2,300 miles, northwards through the Yukon territory, the Cities of Whitehorse and Dawson, continuing westwards across Alaska to the Yukon Delta, where it empties into the Bering Sea. In 1896 prospector George Carmack and his Indian brother-in-law ‘Skookum Jim’ Mason, and another Indian relative named ‘Tagish Charlie’ were panning for gold far up north on the banks of the Klondike river. Carmack lifted some sand from Rabbit Creek a small stream running into the Klondike River, and discovered the precious metal, thereby unwittingly creating the greatest goldrush in history.
    Fortune hunters in their thousands disgorged themselves from ships at Skagway in Alaska. A shantytown of saloons and gambling dens grew up as they prepared themselves for their journey into the Klondike region over the infamous White Pass. Those with horses blindfolded them; even so, thousands of dead horses lay sprawled at the foot of Dead Horse Gulch.
    The Chilkoot Pass, about 3,000 feet in height at its summit, with temperatures reaching -60C degrees in the winter, snaked along a trail of ice and rock no more than four feet wide that was permanently packed with a line of prospectors. It was an ant-like black army crawling up the icy pass, each man with a huge pack on his back, clinging to its slippery face. Their sleds, carrying a years supply of food and weighing up to 2,000 pounds, traversed the canyons that lay ahead, with the aid of the ‘Jacob’s Ladders’ that were carried with them. Men dropped, and the gaps closed up; the march went on. ‘Klondike or bust’ was the slogan that bound together these men of the High North, the Arctic Brotherhood
    Of those who had managed to traversethe Chilkoot Pass before the freeze-up in the winter of 1898/9, arrival in the town of Atlin, British Columbia, gave them the determination to build on their fraternal beliefs, both masonic and, at times, somewhat more whimsical. Some of these brought with them their initiation rituals. The badge was a beer bottle cork and the dues a bottle of beer. In 1905 another camp was established in Discovery, British Columbia, seven miles east of Atlin, and a hall was built next to the Nugget Hotel. By this time whimsy had given way to Freemasonry, and the membership rose to 182, including Discovery and Atlin’s most prominent citizens.
    Dating from the summer of 1899, there are regular reports of meetings of the masonic brotherhood in Atlin and in Discovery. It was in July 1899 that seventy five ‘sojourning brothers’ gathered in Atlin with one aim in view, to form their own masonic lodge. The Grand Lodge of Manitoba was not convinced of the permanence of the town of Atlin, and Atlinto Lodge No. 42 was not founded until December 1904 and its charter issued in June 1906.
    The history of Atlinto Lodge and the town of Atlin are closely linked. The town came into being as the result of gold being found in the adjacent creeks during the latter part of the 1890s. Many of the social events in the town were organized by the masonic lodge and were not restricted to ‘members only’ but were designed to include everyone who wanted to attend. The annual picnic to Ben-My-Chree, on Tagish Lake on the steamer Scotia, marked the end of the summer season. Attendance at lodge meetings was looked upon as mandatory for members living in the district, and it was a regular occurrence for many to walk from the creeks where they worked and lived, to Atlin on a lodge night. Distances varied but for some the round trip would be fifteen miles.
    Although gold was discovered in the Klondike in August of 1896, it was not until July 1897 that this news reached Seattle and San Francisco. Most ‘argonauts’ remained frozen in for the winter, on trails over inhospitable mountain passes and it was only after the ice on the lakes ‘went out’ that the gold-seekers were able to continue their journey. They hiked treacherous mountain passes, rafted wild rapids and sailed storm blown lakes, in all directions. Vancouver and Seattle doubled in size almost overnight; the capital cities of Victoria and Edmonton tripled.
    In one day alone in 1898 7,000 homemade boats and rafts of all descriptions set forth from Lake Bennett, where they had spent the remainder of the winter, to complete the last part of their journey via the Yukon river to Dawson City, a distance of six hundred miles. In fact the earliest existing account of Freemasonry is of a gathering at Lake Bennett in the spring of 1898, while waiting for the ice to break-up. The following is an extract from a letter written by Brother W. Galpins describing what he saw :

Dawson, January 9th,1906 The first sign of Freemasonry I met with in the Yukon was on Lake Bennett in May 1898, while thousands of hopeful Argonauts, bound for Dawson on the opening of the ice-bound rivers and lakes, were waiting at Bennett. Many formed themselves into committees for various objectives, such as the commemorating of [Queen Victoria’s] birthday or gathering information concerning the navigation of the little known Yukon River, or assisting the sick and needy. From these committees an invitation was sent out to Masons to attend meetings in a large tent used for religious services. Sometimes as many as 200 Masons attended and partook of the brotherly feeling and sympathy for which so many craved, cut off as they were from home and relations. Sweet Charity had many an opportunity to show herself and many a brother too, was with loving care, attended in sickness and not a few succumbed to the combined influences of fatigue and spinal meningitis, and were sorrowfully laid to rest with Masonic rites.
    On about the 1st June 1891 we had our final meeting, when Bro. Lisle presided, who reminded the brethren of the duties they owed to one another, laying stress on the necessity for assistance in the case of misfortune on the journey to Dawson. It was decided to tie a flag or paint the bows of our boats with the symbol known to Freemasons the world over.

The challenges that could await the intrepid stampeder were extreme, and one of these was a journey assumed to have been made by Robert William Service, a great poet and author who did so much to bring the ‘insiders’, the Yukoners, to the outside world, with works such as ‘The Shooting of Dan McGrew’, ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’, just two of about 1,000 poems that were written with much drama and intensity, of his time spent in the Yukon.
    His poetry was proving so popular that he became financially independent and made a short visit to the United States. However, he yearned again for the Yukon and decided by 1911 to return the hard way, by the ‘Edmonton Trail’, a journey by canoe down the Mackenzie River, over the Mackenzie Divide via the Rat, and down the Bell and the Porcupine to the Yukon River. The journey he undertook was hazardous in the extreme - one observer mentioned that ‘no one in their right mind would do that today; foolhardy would be the mildest term that I could think of’.
    Once back home in Dawson, Robert Service became attracted to Freemasonry and in 1912 he was initiated into the Yukon Lodge No.45. By the end of his life in 1958, having been sixty years a bard and penned thirty thousand couplets, he had introduced the world to the Yukon, a country that had tested to the full the endurance and indomitable spirit of the Klondikers.
    When these intrepid explorers of 1898 did eventually arrive in Dawson in July, after arduous months of travel and a harsh winter, they found that all the best claims had long since been staked by experienced prospectors who had been in the Yukon for years seeking their own Eldorado. The law of survival decreed that the people should start to build their own lives, and in the years of 1897 and 1898 Dawson City, with a population of around 30,000, became the biggest City west of Chicago and north of San Francisco.
    The lodge historian of Whitehorse Lodge No. 46 wrote:

‘The life story of Dawson City is much like that of a beautiful butterfly, in that it matures fully in one year and then dies. You could get anything you wanted - the finest French Champagne at $20 to $40 a pint, Paris fashions, the best foods. Prices were sky high, a shave was $1, haircut $1-50, bath $2-50. Diamond Tooth Gertie was a Yukon dance hall queen. Her nickname came from the sparkling diamond wedged between her front teeth. She made a fortune unloading the miners of their golden nuggets. Martha Louise Black, abandoned by her husband en route to the Klondike in 1898, hiked the Chilkoot Pass, sailed pregnant down the Yukon River in a home made boat to Dawson. She later became Canada’s second woman Member of Parliament. By early 1898, all the usual amenities of city life were available including the telegraph, electricity sidewalks, a police force, banks, the Lodge of course, a post office, theatres, and many bars. The saloons of Dawson were magnificent; a man could get a drink of anything he wanted, providing that he had the money. Whiskey flowed faster than the Yukon River, and legendary ladies like ‘Klondike’ Kate Rockwell were in demand. For many, payment was in gold dust only, at about $16 per oz. Barkeepers let their fingernails grow long to pick up a little dust. One enterprising youngster swept the sawdust off the floor every morning and panned the gold droppings out of the sawdust.’

So it was that by 1905 the Yukon Lodge No 45, the Whitehorse Lodge No 46 and the Atlinto Lodge No 42 were actively contributing to the community. The tenacity and the brotherhood of these men ensured the survival of the area and its populace. They lived hard and fast, never knowing if tomorrow would bring fortune or disaster, and the saga of their survival remains a legend of the area, and a testimony to endurance. n

Dennis Eve is the current Master of Temple of Athene Lodge No. 9541, the Research Lodge of the Province of Middlesex, and a member of Earsdon Lodge No. 6219 in Northumberland amongst others. He has travelled extensively in the Yukon Territory and Alaska.