Yukon who is who

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Aaro Emil Aho (1925 – 1977)

Aaro Aho was born in Ladysmith, British Columbia to pioneer Finish parents. He was brought up on the family farm and was an ardent outdoorsman. Aho first came to the Yukon in 1946 when he worked in the Klondike goldfields. In 1949 [1948] he was an assistant to Dr. Hugh Bostock on a Geological Survey of Canada field trip.((Department of Geological Sciences, University of British Columbia, “Memorial to Aaro Emil Aho, 1925 – 1977.” //The Geological Society of America,// December 1978.) Aaro and Bostock explored Boulder Creek in the Mayo Mining District. They panned for galena and Aaro wrote his thesis on the minerology. He found monazite in several creeks and so was the first to find this mineral in the Yukon.((H.S. Bostock, //Pack Horse Tracks – recollections of a geologists life in British Columbia and the Yukon 1924 – 1954.// Yukon Geoscience Forum, 1990: 244.))\\

Aho graduated from the University of British Columbia with Bachelor and Master degrees before receiving his PhD in geology in 1954 from the University of California at Berkeley. His dissertation covered the petrology and ore deposition of an area near Hope, British Columbia and the work, published in two papers in 1956 and 1957, guided underground exploration in the Giant Mascot Mine over the next two decades.((Department of Geological Sciences, University of British Columbia, “Memorial to Aaro Emil Aho, 1925 – 1977.” //The Geological Society of America,// December 1978.))\\

From 1953 to 1957 Aho was the exploration manager for a subsidiary of the White Pass & Yukon Railway Corporation. In 1957, he became an independent consulting geological engineer and worked for seven years for syndicates and companies, many of whom he established. He focused on the Keno Hill area. In 1964, he and colleague geologist Gordon Davis, prospector Alan Kulan, and financier/promoter Ronald Markham formed Dynasty Explorations Ltd. to search for ore in the Anvil Range. They found a major ore body in 1965. By 1969 Dynasty and Cyprus Mines, through their joint subsidiary Anvil Mining Company, with Aho as vice-president, had brought the deposit into production as an open-pit operation. Anvil Mine was the Yukon’s largest individual source of income, grossing $750 million up to 1977.((Department of Geological Sciences, University of British Columbia, “Memorial to Aaro Emil Aho, 1925 – 1977.” //The Geological Society of America,// December 1978.))\\

Aho was elected as an alumni member of the Senate of the University of British Columbia and set out to improve the quality of instruction in geology at the university. He led a fund-raising committee and raised $1.97 million for a new building. This was matched with funds from the University Capitol Funds and a $3.3 million building was opened in 1972. In 1972 Aho and prospector Ted Skonseng located a high-grade silver-bearing float and then a lode, the Plata deposit. In 1973 and 1974 Aaro re-examined an old prospect southeast of the Anvil Mine, the Grum deposit. Aho also made a significant discovery of copper in Chile and operated the Mina Quetena for a short period. At the time of his death he was the head of a syndicate exploring south of Chuquicamata, Chile. Aaro Aho was killed in a fall from a tractor at his home in Ladysmith, British Columbia.((Department of Geological Sciences, University of British Columbia, “Memorial to Aaro Emil Aho, 1925 – 1977.” //The Geological Society of America,// December 1978.))

See also: Aaro E. Aho, //Hills of Silver: The Yukon’s Mighty Keno Hill Mine.// Harbour Publishing, 2006.