Yukon who is who

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Joseph Crandle Brewer
	
Joseph Brewer was a miner in the Livingstone area. Around 1910, he and William Geary obtained a grubstake in Whitehorse and established a mink farm at 100 Mile Creek on the Teslin River. They may have taken over after the previous occupant, Jasper Jeffries, died. They were very successful.((Gus Karpes, //The Teslin River: Johnson's Crossing to Hootalinqua Yukon, Canada.// Whitehorse: Kugh Enterprises. 1995: 30-34.)) Brewer applied for a 160-acre homestead in 1914.9(Mike Rourke. //Rivers of the Yukon Territory: Teslin River.// Faro: Rivers North Publications. 1983: 7.)) The homestead took in Dave Creek, just upstream.((Gus Karpes, //The Teslin River: Johnson's Crossing to Hootalinqua Yukon, Canada.// Whitehorse: Kugh Enterprises. 1995: 30-34.)) In June 1915, the farm was reported to have two cross fox and forty mink.((Yukon Archives, Gov 1963. YRG 1 Series 5 Vol. 17 file 936.)) 
	
Brewer prospected in the nearby hills and had a trapline that ran east from the river along Thompson Creek. He built himself a cabin at the head of the creek on what has become Brewer Lake. One spring, he visited the trading post at Teslin and on the return trip had an accident that lost him an eye. That fall, the Irvine family moved into Dave Creek and young Dave was a frequent visitor to the mink farm. Geary became ill with a self-diagnosed prostrate infection and killed himself. He is buried at the site. Brewer stayed at the farm for a year or two after his partner died but his eyesight was deteriorating. Many blamed his incessant reading by candlelight. The mink farm declined and last operated in 1915-16. Crandle left the north in 1918, intending to return, but never did. He spent his remaining years in New Westminster, British Columbia. Joe Brewer composed a farewell poem to his friends in the Yukon in 1929, at which time he was totally blind.((Gus Karpes, //The Teslin River: Johnson's Crossing to Hootalinqua Yukon, Canada.// Whitehorse: Kugh Enterprises. 1995: 30-34.))