Thomas Corville, a miner working at Coal Creek, also decided to enlist. Unfortunately, he did not have the fare to book passage on the riverboat for Whitehorse, and he could not get anybody to loan him the money for travel, so he put some hardtack into a pack, threw it to his shoulders and walked more than 600 kilometres overland to Whitehorse.10 Ironically, he was rejected because of flat feet! Jack Morgan from Mayo was also quick to respond, as was Kenneth Currie from the Fortymile district, a long-time miner who was “prominent on many a platform in stirring meetings of the camp.”11 Neither knew what was to come.
All twenty-five members of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police in the Dawson City detachment were quick to volunteer. Nine of the fifteen officers in the Whitehorse detachment offered their services, including Inspector Arthur Acland, who was the first to step forward. Acland, who served as a constable on the Dalton Trail during the Klondike gold rush, quickly rose through the ranks, and would eventually retire from the Mounted Police as assistant commissioner in 1933.12 Those who were British Army reservists were called upon to join their regiments in England, including Constables Harvey, Dooley, Hull, King and Greenaway. Greenaway reached London by November 1 and joined the Coldstream Guards. He was on the battlefront by the middle of the month.13
Sam Steele of the North-West Mounted Police, who had guided the stampeders safely through the great gold rush sixteen years earlier, joined and took a senior command position. Other former Mounties were commissioned officers in the British or Canadian Expeditionary Forces. Malcolm “Scotty” Morrison had served in the Yukon for thirteen years. Corporal Ward, who led the annual patrol from Dawson to Fort McPherson, and had left for the coast in the spring, joined the 68th Battalion of field artillery the day he arrived. Weston Burrell, formerly with the Whitehorse detachment, joined the 83rd Battalion. Constable George Pearkes, who was born in Watford, England, on February 26, 1883, came to Canada in 1906 and joined the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. In 1915, he enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, later rising to command the 5th Canadian Mounted Rifles.
By August of 1918, 101 former and current Mounties from the Yukon had enlisted for service overseas. Most tragic of all may have been a former constable named Spreadbury, who, after leaving the Mounted Police, worked for the White Pass and Yukon Route. Spreadbury had a good character reference with the force but was despondent after being rejected because of his age. In a fit of despair, he killed himself with a gunshot to the chest.14
Volunteering for military service quickly reached a fever pitch and continued during the protracted conflict overseas. For some, it was a family affair. Dr. P.F. Scharschmidt of Whitehorse and his two sons, Guy, a surveyor, and Howard, signed up.15 Three sons of Fred Maclennan, the collector of customs in Dawson, enlisted. Eldest son James found himself on a patrol boat in the Atlantic. Fred Jr. eventually left with a large contingent accompanying George Black. Son Jack was accepted by the British Columbia School of Aviation and trained in the flying corps.16 Frank Slavin, an Aussie pugilist and former empire heavyweight champion, signed up, followed by nineteen-year-old Frank Jr. a year later. The aging boxer would survive the war, but his son would not.
Elliott and Alfred Totty, and Kenneth and Hugh McDonald, all sons of Anglican missionaries and First Nation mothers, enlisted and served with distinction. Hugh was married and studying law in Winnipeg when he enlisted January 4, 1915. Kenneth joined the Royal Navy. First Nation men from the Yukon, however, found it difficult, or impossible to volunteer for service in the early stages of the war. According to military historian Timothy Winegard, “John Campbell, an Eskimo from the Yukon Territory, made a 3,000-mile journey by trail, canoe and river-steamer to enlist at Vancouver. He had previously tried to enlist in the Yukon with three Indians. They were all accepted by the recruiting depot and passed the medical exam; however, after complaints from men in the Yukon contingent, they were all summarily released from the unit. No Indian or Eskimo was accepted for service in the Yukon itself prior to conscription.”17
Several women enlisted for service. One was Mrs. L.G. Bennet, whose husband, a Dawson City lawyer, had enlisted as an officer on November 28, 1916. A few months later, in the spring of 1917, she was selling their Seventh Avenue Dawson home, hoping to close the deal by the breakup of the Yukon River.18 She then planned to go overseas as a nurse. Marie Thompson, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. W.E. Thompson of Dawson, served as a nurse in France and Flanders. Zowitza (Zo) Nicholas, second daughter of Mrs. Jennie Nicholas of Dawson, and later Mayo Landing, joined the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and eventually left with a Seattle contingent.19
In addition to the Scharschmidt family, Whitehorse residents Jack Taylor, W.L. Breese, James Salvatore, Harold Newton and Frank G. Wilson, a nineteen-year-old student at the University of British Columbia, all joined up. By war’s end, the Whitehorse volunteers would number ninety-six. Volunteers also came from Atlin, Mayo, Carmacks, Carcross and Fort Selkirk.
The news of the war filtered through the territory. Nevill Armstrong, a tall hardy Englishman, was returning with a hunting party after a trek to the south fork of the Macmillan River in search of large game. In the mid-afternoon of September 22, 1914, they encountered an old friend of Armstrong’s, a French Canadian by the name of Tom Jeffreys, who was hauling out the hindquarters of a moose onto a gravel bar in the river. When he saw them, Jeffreys became agitated; he had important news to convey to the party. According to Armstrong, Jeffreys told him: “The War—half the world fighting!… there ‘was one hell of a war going on on land.’ Thousands of Germans killed, in some places piled thirty feet high, the bodies being used as breastwork! Although it was impossible to obtain any coherent explanation of what was actually happening in Europe, it was only too painfully evident that the whole of Europe was up in arms, and it was our duty to get back as soon as possible and offer our services.”20
Within weeks, Armstrong was an officer in the 50th Regiment (Gordon Highlanders of Canada). Armstrong survived the war and left the military with the rank of captain and an Order of the British Empire (OBE) five years later.
Two men, William Annett and Walter Keddy, were on Herschel Island, the most northerly point in the Yukon, when they answered the call. They mushed by dog team hundreds of kilometres over ice and snow to Fort Yukon, near the mouth of the Porcupine River, then came up the Yukon to Dawson City, on the first boat of the season, to enlist. William Forbes came all the way from the Liard River in Dease Lake country 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)