Hunker Creek keeps the Goulds coming back

The annual Gold Show in Dawson City is over and John and Madeleine Gould are itching to return to the creeks.

“We’ve (the family) been mining the same property since 1903,” John says, sitting in his home in Dawson City. “We’re the oldest mining family maybe, but we’ve been on the same property the longest.”

John, 71, and Madeleine, 69, aren’t active miners now, but they have kept the family business on Hunker Creek going. While one property is leased, a son and his wife are working some claims nearby. And the Goulds return to the creeks every summer.

John’s father, Robert “Bob” Gould, came to Dawson City in 1901 from Nova Scotia and began placer mining. John’s mother had a sister in Dawson City and arrived there in 1917 from Boston for a visit.

“From the big city of Boston to a little log cabin out on the creek,” John says. “(She) often said it was the happiest time of her life. Raised six kids.”

After John and Madeleine were married in 1945 in Ontario, they came back to that same log cabin on Hunker Creek.

The couple met during the Second World War, at a dance at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto. John, on a weekend pass, was training in St. Catharines, Ont., for the air force; Madeleine worked for a small arms manufacturer in Toronto.

John served as a pilot for 18 months overseas. When he returned to Canada safely, the wedding took place in Madeleine’s home town of Greenfield, Ont. From there it was on to the Yukon, to help John’s father with the family mine. Madeleine lived in a comfortable house during her childhood. She recalls her arrival at Hunker Creek.

“That was quite the place,” she says. “Not only that, I had to walk up the hill to get there, about a mile.

“And then when I saw the cabinwow! Everyone else had to stoop to get into the house except me ’cause I’m so short.”

But she says the change of lifestyle didn’t bother her. And she soon discovered her father-in-law’s sense of humor.

“His father says to me, You gotta make bread.’ I said, Where I come from you go to the store and buy it.’ He said, Well, it’s 15 miles to the nearest store.'”

Madeleine says they also had to draw and haul water, and use a scrubbing board to wash clothes. She also helped with box-tending for the mining operation.

“It’s too bad we didn’t take pictures of some of that,” John says, until Madeleine reminds him that they didn’t have a camera then.

They both recall the blistering cloudless summer day they went to fetch a “dumb horse” to use for work on their mine.

The family took their old car down to Fournier’s farm, near what is now Dawson International Airport, and Madeleine and John took the horse and buggy back to the creek. Madeleine ended up with a bad case of sunstroke. Near the creek where the Goulds worked, there weren’t many independent placer miners — John’s brother and his wife, the Powell family with three or four kids, the Bremner family on Last Chance Creek.

The dredgemaster for Yukon Consolidated Gold Corp. (YCGC), also lived nearby with his wife, John says, and some oldtime miners lived further up Hunker Creek.

The Dawson City of the ’40s and ’50s was a real company town for YCGC, or “the company,” as everyone called it, with a headquarters at Bear Creek and a head office in town.

People paid both light and power to company subsidiaries North Fork Power and Dawson Light and Power. YCGC also owned the telephone syndicate. “Power was 25 cents a kilowatt, but we didn’t use that much really,” John says.

“Well, you sure couldn’t afford an electric stove then anyway,” Madeleine adds. The Goulds used wood or oil.

The company’s dredges were the only machinery being used for placer mining in the region, John says. For small operators like the Goulds, it was still hand-mining.

John says they handled rocks by hand. Madeleine interjects, “And broke rocks with hammers and wheeled them away with wheelbarrows. Oh brother!” The Goulds raised their children out on the creeks in the summers. They say the kids loved it and made their own fun, from sliding down cuts to making their own sluiceboxes.

“And now we have our own grandchildren up there once in a while,” John says. Madeleine is best known in the Yukon in recent years for her bid to join the male-only Yukon Order of Pioneers. John has been a member for 40 years and supports his wife’s efforts.

Madeleine took her case to the Yukon Human Rights Commission four years ago. The Pioneers have fought her all the way and the matter still isn’t settled; in a recent court decision the judge ruled that there were mistakes in the original hearing.

The Yukon placer mining industry, with about 200 operators employing 600 people seasonally, is having tough times because of low gold prices and marginal ground.

However, the Goulds are optimistic. They say there’s lots of good ground to be mined if prices pick up again.

Meanwhile, the Gould family operation remains viable. And John and Madeleine know where their hearts lie come spring thaw — out on the creeks, with their family around them.

“I’m longing to get up there,” Madeleine says.

Correspondent Patti Flather is a resident of Whitehorse, Yukon.