2.
THE EARLY YEARS

Kate, an impetuous type, decided to join Ned in the Yukon, fully believing that Ned would make his fortune and they would come home rich from the gold fields. At that time in 1898, Ned was still optimistic that he would make the big strike.

There is some confusion about Kate’s arrival. One account has it that Ned met her in Skagway, and another that he went to Victoria to meet her. My mother, Marjorie, said she had seen a picture of the ship on which they came north, covered with ice. It is uncertain if Kate arrived before the railway from Skagway was completed to Lake Bennett in 1899. If it was before that date, she would have had to climb the pass as Ned had done before her. If it was after that date, they could have travelled to Lake Bennett by rail and on to Whitehorse by ship or rail.

There is a gap in Ned’s letters between the previous one, written November 1898, and the Boothy Creek letter, February 19, 1905. The time lines are therefore a little confusing. My mother, Marjorie, wrote the following based on what she had been told of the years between 1898 and 1905.

Marjorie—Ned gave up on prospecting, at least for a time and probably because he needed to make some money. He and Kate went to Canyon City at the head of Miles Canyon, where for a time Ned piloted loaded scows through the Canyon and Whitehorse Rapids to the town of Whitehorse for $25 per load. [The scows probably carried rail supplies to Whitehorse as the railway started construction at both ends, Skagway and Whitehorse, meeting in Carcross in July 1900.] Canyon City was about three miles above Whitehorse on what was then called the Lewes River but renamed the Yukon River in 1945. There was a wooden tramway used to carry freight around the canyon as well as the scows. Miles Canyon, now quite a tame part of the river, was very different and very treacherous until the dam above Whitehorse was built. Ned and Kate lived in a small log cabin where Dorothy Evelyn arrived in October 1900, the first of their six Yukon-born children.

In 1901, the family was living at Caribou Crossing (now Carcross) which by then was served by the railroad from Skagway to Whitehorse. Ned worked on the steamships which supplied settlements along the lakes.

In the winter of 1901/02, Ned and Kate owned, or managed, Takhini Roadhouse near Whitehorse on a winter-only road which crossed the frozen rivers. The stages could have stayed overnight and perhaps changed horses there, using four-horse teams. The drivers, or ‘skinners’ as they were called, were very hardy men, wore fur hats with ear flaps, and had heavy fur coats to keep out the cold. Some of them around Dawson in later years were often visitors at the Hoggan house. I remember my mother [Kate] telling how one of the skinners had, to his horror, fo