Yukon’s oldest prospector keeps active

Prospector Gordon Dickson, 78, pulls a slightly yellowed document from a folder. The date at the top reads 1946. It’s one of Dickson’s first agreements to sell mineral claims at Mount Nansen; the recipient is mining legend Karl Springer. Forty-five years later, Dickson is still out working his claims each summer in the Mount Nansen area of the central Yukon.

“The story about Mount Nansen and the story about me is the same story,” Dickson explains in an interview at his Whitehorse home.

Named Prospector of the Year in 1989 by the Yukon Prospectors Association, Dickson is the oldest active prospector in the territory.

Dickson first travelled into the Mount Nansen region by foot to hunt for gold in 1946, the year he arrived in the Yukon from Vancouver.

In the next two decades, Dickson optioned properties to the likes of Conwest, Charlie Coleman, Skyline Resources and Asbestos Corp.

Dickson formed the Mount Nansen Syndicate in 1962 with six of the biggest mining companies in Canada, including Noranda Mines, Kerr Addison Mines and Rio Tinto Canadian Exploration.

By 1964, Dickson was successful enough to buy control of the Brown McDade property from Springer. Dickson later turned over control to Peso Silver Mines.

At one point Dickson even had the huge lead-zinc deposit at Faro staked through his Dickson Yukon Syndicate, but Dickson says the compa-ny directors dropped the 32 key claims before they knew what they had.

More recently, Dickson has optioned claims to the likes of Welcome North Resources (VSE), Chevron Minerals and Prochem. The old Brown McDade property now belongs to B.Y.G. Natural Resources (TSE), which is trying to find financing for more exploration. But B.Y.G. isn’t the only company still interested in the area.

“I think that there’s something brewing in Mount Nansen right now that will make a pretty good story by the end of next year,” Dickson says, adding that he can’t reveal which companies are involved.

Over the years Dickson has come to know many of Canada’s mining legends. Geologist Al Doherty, past president of the Yukon Chamber of Mines, says, “You can run into senior senior people in the mining industry and they’ll say, ‘Qis Gordon still around?’ He definitely made a lot of contacts and is well known in the industry.”

Among the legends Dickson worked for was Thayer Lindsley. He went to Mauritania for Lindsley in the 1960s, prospecting in the desert for eight months for copper.

He also spent a year in Costa Rica in 1975 for the late Don Cannon of Asamera Oil Corp.

And last year Dickson attended Karl Springer’s 90th birthday party in Vancouver.

Dickson taught himself to fly so that he could reach remote areas of the Yukon. He first used a Fleet Canuck and then a Cessna 170 on floats.

Such is his devotion to prospecting that he would not give up his work even while undergoing chemotherapy for cancer until 15 months ago.

“I’d come into town and take the shots and walk around in a stupor for a few days, and go out to work again,” he said.

Dickson lives with his wife Janet in what was once a blacksmith’s shop. In 1923 the log structure was moved across the Yukon River to its present location, overlooking the river and a handful of squatters’ cabins known as the Shipyards. Dickson bought the cabin in 1956.

But the Dicksons are also at home in the bush.

“You go to get a prospecting story, they’ll tell you all the treacherous things that happened to them . . . well, that’s because you didn’t know how to take care of yourself.”

Dickson learned how to survive in the bush as a child in northern Ontario. He staked claims near Watson Lake one December in 50-below weather with a crew of 11.

“No tent or stove or anything, just tarp,” Dickson says. “We used to cut four cords of wood in the day and burn it all at night sleeping around the fires. But that’s the way you done things in those years.”

Dickson has seen major changes in the Yukon in his time. When he arrived, there was no road to Dawson City yet.

One difference between prospecting 40 years ago and today, Dickson says, is the arrival of the junior exploration company.

“You get a better chance of making a deal now than you did have,” he says.

Dickson has also added a bulldozer and track vehicle to the backpack and hiking boots.

He laments, “You don’t even get exercise anymore.”

Some of Dickson’s experiences have been recounted in the book Yukoners by H. Gordon-Cooper, and in Pack Dogs to Helicopters by Pat Callison. And B.Y.G. President Thornton Donaldson has gathered Dickson around the campfire at Mount Nansen with a tape recorder and a bottle of Scotch.

Dickson says sometimes when he tells stories to geologists in the bush, two days later they’ll say “who was that?”

“And I’ll say, ‘I’m talking about people before they were born.'”