Yukon who is who

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Fred Blaker (b. 1924)
	
Fred Blaker was born and raised in Whitehorse. His father came to the Yukon in early 1900s and left only once, to get married. He worked for many years for White Pass & Yukon Route, both on the boats and on the railway as an engineer. Fred remembers there were no more than 60 children at the Lambert Street school when he attended. There were three classrooms but only two were used. Jack Hulland was the principal during his early and intermediate school years.  It was a very small town of about 250-300 people in the winter and maybe 400 in the summer. There were tennis courts, baseball diamonds, two sheets of ice for curling, and an outdoor rink where Taylor Chev Olds now sits. They had to make their own ice and sometimes the RCMP would send prisoners to help out. There were no guards because there was nowhere to escape to – no roads and no airports.  Riverdale was a good place to hunt grouse. Blaker left school in grade eleven to work as a clerk in the White Pass freight office. He remembers Whitehorse became a rough town after the military moved in to build the highway, but mostly the military kept the fighting to themselves and didn’t bother the permanent residents. During the Second World War, Blaker joined the Navy when he was twenty and spent two years on the east coast. After the war he returned to his old job for a brief time before joining Cyr’s trucking operation. He hauled everything from water to garbage for a year and then took three months off and hung around the fire hall. In April 1947, Fred became a full-time member of the Whitehorse fire department, working six days a week, twenty-four hours a day, for $225 a month. Three years later he was the fire chief after the head of the department suddenly departed.((Shirley Culpin, “Fire Chief Never Thought Seriously of Leaving the North.” //The Whitehorse Star// (Whitehorse), 7 May 1975.)) 

Fred Blaker’s appointment as fire chief came just several months before Whitehorse was incorporated as a city. He was the second city employee, city clerk Percy Hewitt being the first. Fred had two men working under him, Bert Spence and Dave Clark. The city a pumper truck and only six hydrants, and they only worked during the summer. Fred often called on Laurent Cyr in the middle of the night to bring his water truck to a fire. Whitehorse was full of wooden structures and even the wooden homes the Canadian army built around town were of sub-standard construction. Fred and his men had a good working relationship with the Canadian Army firefighters. They also went into the industrial area and the First Nation village to help the Department of Public Works fight fires there. In 1985, Fred Blaker was three and a half years away from retirement as a Whitehorse fireman.((Jim Butler, “Longest serving worker made $325.” //Whitehorse Daily Star// (Whitehorse), 30 September 1985.))