Yukon who is who

This page is read only. You can view the source, but not change it. Ask your administrator if you think this is wrong.
Golden “Bun” Beloud. (1891 – 1970)
	
Bun Beloud was born in Vancouver and travelled from his family home to the Kluane/Dezadeash area in 1935. The Haines Road went from Whitehorse to Champagne and then up the Dezadeash River to the lake and then the 24 km to the south end. He discovered gold at the mouth of Victoria Creek, later named Beloud Creek, operating a placer mine there in the late 1930s. He improved the twenty-mile road between Dezadeash Lake and Mush Lake, built a barge to take his supplies up Mush Lake and built a winch to get barrels up the steep slopes. Bun was working with his eighteen-year-old son Roland, newly arrived from Vancouver, and another man named Harry Lines when a slide buried Bun and Roland under 2 ½ metres of rock, mud and snow on 25 May 1939. Bun survived but Roland died. Bun quit work on his claim after that.((Merle Lien, “Remembering Bun Beloud.” //Yukon News //(Whitehorse), 9 November 2012. 2019 website:  https://www.yukon-news.com/life/remembering-bun-beloud/)) In 1947, E. Kindle’s geological survey passed by Beloud’s Victoria Creek mine and Alex Van Bibber hauled a 16-km copper nugget from Bun’s mine to the Haines Road. The nugget was shipped to Ottawa and appears in government publication #2508, “Dezadeash Map Area, 1952.”((Merle Lien, “Remembering Bun Beloud.” //Yukon News// (Whitehorse), 9 November 2012.))  
	
When the Haines Road was built in 1945, Bun developed Beloud Post, later Dezadeash Lodge, using army buildings left from the highway construction.((Merle Lien, “Remembering Bun Beloud.” //Yukon News// (Whitehorse), 9 November 2012. 2019 website:  https://www.yukon-news.com/life/remembering-bun-beloud/)) The US Army had a maintenance camp at mile 125 on the Haines Road, close to Dezadeash Lake. The buildings were declared surplus after the war and Bun bought those that he needed from Canadian War Assets. He bought the campground from the territorial government and built a lodge there, installing a gas pump, a garage, and a bunkhouse for the truckers. He and his family ran the Beloud Post lodge for eighteen years.((Joyce Yardley, //Crazy Cooks and Gold Miners.// Surrey BC: Hancock House Publishers Ltd. 1993: 108-9, 111-12.)) Elizabeth Hakkinen of Haines, Alaska remembered a trip to Haines Junction in the mid-1940s. They stayed at Beloud’s in a panel building, of which he had a few. They slept on the floor in their own sleeping bags.((Elizabeth Hakkinen interviewed by Helen Dobrowolsky, 26 September 1991. Yukon Archives, 92/14, SR 131-4.))
	
Bun Beloud was stocky with a tough manner and a twinkle in his eye. He was vocal and opinionated. His wife was a thin woman with a lot of energy. She was an avid reader and was famous for her homemade cake doughnuts, of which she made an unending supply. Bun staked 120 acres of meadow land across the road and a quarter mile south of the lodge and was able to buy it later for a small sum of money. He had a rotary hay-baler but preferred to pile the hay up in the middle of the field and chase away the moose.((Joyce Yardley, //Crazy Cooks and Gold Miners.// Surrey BC: Hancock House Publishers Ltd. 1993: 108-9, 111-12.)) His new hay cutter was photographed in 1947.((Yukon Archives, Dave Beloud fonds 92/29.)) Bun’s wife’s son David and daughter Joan had a residence on the lake nearby.((Merle Lien, “Remembering Bun Beloud.” //Yukon News// (Whitehorse), 9 November 2012.))  
	
1959 was a very dry year and Gordon and Joyce Yardley had to take a flat-decked truck from Ten-Mile 185 miles north to a meadow at Dezadeash Lake where they bought a load of hay from Bun Beloud. In 1960, the Belouds sold the lodge to Joyce and Gordon Yardley.  At that time, the lodge was a long building with a lobby at both ends. The Yardleys immediately replaced the old-fashioned hand-operated gas pump in front of the cafe with a modern one.((Joyce Yardley, //Crazy Cooks and Gold Miners.// Surrey BC: Hancock House Publishers Ltd. 1993: 108-9, 111-12.)) After Bun sold Beloud’s Post and moved to Haines Junction, he built the Blue Mountain Motel and Café and then the Glacier View Lodge.((Merle Lien, “Remembering Bun Beloud.” //Yukon News// (Whitehorse), 9 November 2012.))