The re-publication of Early Days on the Yukon and the Story of its Gold Finds by William Ogilvie, DLS, FRGS, is an important addition to rare and honest
Gold Rush literature. Ogilvie was an accomplished explorer and surveyor, and was charged with the administration of the Klondike from 1898 to 1901. This article documents
some of the aspects of his exciting life which were not covered by the book.
William Ogilvie was born April 7, 1846 in Gloucester, in the central foothold of Irish and Scottish settlers of Upper Canada. Their tradition was one of calculated risk-taking in the progress and development of a young country with much to offer. His parents and grandparents had settled the Glen Ogilvie estate and farm in 1842, from Kilwaughter, Northern Ireland.
James and Margaret Halladay had eight boys and three girls, and encouraged William in pursuing science and mathematics training at Ottawa College (now the University of Ottawa). He was mostly self-taught with geology, botany and other interests. He read about subjects and thereby learned what would later allow him to interpret the land he was traversing with accuracy, noticing important details.
At the time, Ottawa families were often acquainted and supported each other in social and economic ventures. The Ogilvies, of the Ogilvie Flower Mills fame in Winnipeg, were close to such pioneers as the Sparks. William articles under his future wife’s brother, Robert Sparks, PLS (Ontario).
To give an idea of the level of fitness these gentlemen enjoyed, Sparks beat the then world speed walking champion Fred Pace, the pride of England. The heel-and-toe match between the two ran from Arnprior to Ottawa, a distance of 68 km. Starting at 4:24 a.m., Sparks covered the distance in 8 hours and 17 minutes while Pace collapsed 21 miles from the finish line.
When Ogilvie starts working independently, he surveys boundaries of private properties in Southern Ontario, in Cumberland Co. This provides him with knowledge of cadastral or legal surveys depicting exact locations of boundaries, to a high degree of accuracy. He receives his Provincial Surveyor commission in 1872 and establishes township boundaries in Ontario.
Throughout his work, Ogilvie performs astronomic calculations to identify global positioning of a particular point on the earth. This is later an important factor to his being sent to the north to perform the first mapping and descriptive efforts.
In 1876, he is hired by Canada’s Department of the Interior as a surveyor and mapper to establish the 6th Baseline (Township surveys) in Manitoba. He surveyed the Blackfoot Indian Reserve 146 in Alberta in 1878. He managed this task with tact and intelligence and avoided any dissatisfaction with Chief Crowfoot and his people, numbering 700 or so. He explained his work to dispel a preceding miscreant’s rumours, and was left to carry out the survey undisturbed. He describes the old Chief as "a very sensible old gentleman, amenable to reason."
He then works on correction lines for longitudinal convergence in Saskatchewan in 1880. In 1881, he is in Alberta locating the 4th Meridian and establishes boundaries of townships. He is constantly occupied at azimuth observations or "star shots".
In 1882 and 1883, he continues with meridian surveys and township boundaries in Alberta, some in the Peace River region. He establishes prime meridians to which all other surveys are tied and based on. This is how the term "baseline" came into being. These were surveyed by using star shots to determine exact latitude and longitude positions on the globe.
His first important expedition was along the Athabasca River, down the Peace and to Lake Athabasca in 1884. On this expedition, he discovers the Athabasca tar sands and is quick to realize their potential as an energy resource.
In 1885 and 1886, Ogilvie is occupied at locating the Canadian Pacific Railway through the B.C. mountain ranges and taking longitudinal observations. It is not known whether he developed a love for the mountains or whether he simply grins and bears his way through life in harsh mountain conditions. It may all just have been part of the job.
The railway belt was a strip of land 100 miles wide across Canada’s prairies and through the Cordillera to the Coast. The Canadian Pacific Railway had certain compensatory land rights for building a transcontinental railroad. Again, these surveys depicted legal boundaries and limited ownership to the most developable area.
Ogilvie’s task was to establish the baselines on which all subsequent surveys would be based. He did this by taking angles of the position of the moon or stars at certain times, using chronometers, and would then calculate his location based on known and published values.
Another famous surveyor who followed Ogilvie in the Selkirks was Arthur O. Wheeler, DLS who founded the Alpine Club of Canada in1906. He had become a true mountaineer by necessity, and surveyed the range with minimal equipment and personal gear. He took magnificent photos, taught by Edouard Deville, Surveyor General, as part of the topographic mapping techniques he established. Wheeler used Ogilvie’s work to locate his own surveys. The world was indeed very small for early surveyors.
The same principles are used today, only the instruments are different. Now some instruments do most of the calculations in the field. Satellites, radio waves and aerial photography from planes replace stars, theodolites, sextants and bulky cameras with glass plates of the past. Human error is minimized, yet never eliminated. One striking thing about Ogilvie’s work was his consistent accuracy over large areas and distances.
"How Ogilvie finds his way to the Yukon in 1887"
GOLD! Late in 1886, on Fortymile Creek, two prospectors discover the first
coarse gold in a tributary of the Yukon River. The timing of the winter discovery did not allow
a rush of the few miners in the country at that time. Howard Franklin and Henry Madison return
to the mouth of the Stewart River with the news of their find but the resident miners choose to
wait till spring to stampede to the new gold prospects.
Arthur Harper, pioneer trader, notifies his partner Jack McQuesten by letter
to order more supplies in anticipation of the imminent rush of miners into the country. The
story of Tom Williams' arduous trip to Dyea in the company of a Native named "Bob" can be found
in
Gold at Fortymile Creek by Michael Gates. The news reaches Juneau via John J. Healy,
who was trading at Dyea with his partner, Wilson. It is not clear whether McQuesten received the message
in San Francisco.
The thousand or so resident miners of Juneau and the Cassiar trickle into the Yukon
valley, destined for Forty Mile or the Stewart River. Ripples reach Ottawa, and interest in the
Yukon District of the North-West Territories is awakened.
Thomas White, then Minister of the Interior, authorizes Dr. George Dawson and
the Geological Survey of Canada, in concert with the International Boundary Commission of the
Surveyor General's Office, to initiate an expedition to explore and report on the country. They
would follow in Frederick Schwatka's footsteps and limited information of 1884. They used
Robert Campbell's and the Hudson Bay Co. records and scant mapping.
Dawson explains the purpose of the 1887 Expedition as "gaining information on
the vast and hitherto almost unknown tract of country which forms the extreme north-westerly
portion of the North-West Territories. Somewhat important deposits of placer gold-mining had of
late been attracting a yearly increasing number of miners and prospectors into a portion of the
district".
Ogilvie's task was to determine the exact location of the 141st Meridian,
agreed to in the 1825 treaty between Russia and Great Britain. The line had never been surveyed,
and would dictate where Customs duties and royalties on gold output could be collected. The
border would also allow the enforcement of Canadian laws within its jurisdiction. There was
much fear that a gold mining camp could generate lawlessness in the tradition of earlier rushes
such as in California and the Cariboo.
Three explorers formed the expedition: Dr. George Mercer Dawson, who ascended
the Stikine River and went overland to Dease Lake and entered the Liard River to Frances River
and Lake. He then followed the Finlayson and Hoole rivers on his way to the Pelly River as far
as Fort Selkirk. He was to meet Ogilvie at that point (they arrived within a few days of each
other, the latter carrying the former's extra provisions). From there, Dawson left the country
by ascending the Yukon River to Chilkoot Pass and Dyea, and returns to Ottawa the same year.
Richard George McConnell, the third explorer, at thirty years of age, stayed
with Dr. Dawson as far as the Liard, but went down the river to the MacKenzie. He descends the
MacKenzie, sends his crew of two home with Hudson Bay Co. men and continues alone to overwinter
in Fort Providence. He continues in the spring of 1888 to Fort McPherson, up the Rat River, down the
Porcupine to Fort Yukon and ascends the Yukon River to leave the country via the Chilkoot Pass and
Dyea.
The only information these gentlemen had on the country they were crossing
were the reports from Schwatka, the Hudson Bay explorers and voyageurs such as
Robert Campbell, or native guides and prospectors who were familiar with parts of the country.
Not mentioned in Ogilvie's book is how he actually went about the survey and
traverse of the Yukon River from the closest geographically coordinated monument placed by the
U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. The micrometer traverse thus started at Pyramid Island near
Haines, Alaska, and progressed up the Lynn Canal to Dyea by Peterborough canoe.
The crew of eight for the two-year trip consisted of Morrison,
Gladman, Sparks and Parker, two more men for the summer of 1887, and Capt. Bill Moore, an old-timer
known from Frisco to Unalaska. He was a Hanoverian by birth, but had knocked about the west
coast ever since he could remember.
A daily routine of the men's progress along the Yukon River is described by
Ogilvie in an article entitled "Down the Yukon and Up the MacKenzie, 3,200 Miles by Foot and
Paddle" in The Canadian Magazine of September and October, 1893.
In Ogilvie's words, Capt. Moore,
"notwithstanding his little failings, has
many excellent qualities and a genuine hearty humor about him that freshened the tired spirits
of the party like a spray from a salt sea-breeze, blowing inland. His dialect and his opinion
of men and things--always expressed with the dogmatism of matured consideration--chased dull
melancholy from many a wet day's camp.
"The captain was an early riser naturally, and now, being anxious to get on
down the river, he developed an abnormal propensity in this direction. About three o'clock in
the morning he would begin to turn over and grunt something about getting up. After a few of
these turnings and gruntings, he would ask what time it was. A sleepy admonition from the tired
bone and muscle of the expedition to "keep quiet" was all the answer he would get.
"After awhile he would sit up boldly and "put the previous question," and when
this became monotonous, he would, gathering fresh courage with every passing minute, endeavour
to rouse the cook by shouting; but, as this particular cook was no exception to the ordinary run
of cooks, rousing him was no easy task. However, the captain persevered, and finally about five
o'clock, with a sleepy yawn, the cook would turn out, and the business of the day would begin.
"By six, or half-past six, breakfast would be over, and I would be on the river
with Morrison and the two basemen continuing the survey from the point where we had left it the
previous evening, leaving the crew of the "Hoodalinka" (the hand-built boat they created at Lake
Lyndemann) to break camp and help the cook with the dishes.
"The time when the boat passed us, generally about ten, or eleven o'clock, was
carefully noted, along with the distance traversed, and it was then an easy matter for Gladman
to estimate the respective rates of travel canoes and the boat, so that when a distance down
stream had been traversed which was likely to be reached by the survey, a convenient spot would
be chosen and the camp pitched.
"Along in the evening, when it was beginning to get too dark to work, on
turning round some bend in the river, the camp-fire would be seen brightly shining ahead, and
I need hardly add that supper was generally a hearty meal.
"After supper there were notes to write out, observations to reduce, the work
of the day to be plotted, and the work of the next day to be planned, so that I considered
myself fortunate when eleven o'clock found me seeking "tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy
sleep" and I sank into unconsciousness, from which even the captain's eternal "Vell, boys, vat
time is it?" had no power to rouse me.
"In this way, day after day, we continued to descend the river."
Early Days on the Yukon at Amazon.com.
Yukon & Alaska Pioneer Biographies
