Yukon who is who

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Margaret Vera “Bombay Peggy” Dorval (1892 - 1980)
	
No one knows where Bombay Peggy got her nickname but there are lots of stories. China opened Shanghai to western trade in 1842. By the 1930s, there was a large international community living there. Peggy married a British soldier there, James Perlame Duval [Dorval] and they had a son Norman Maurice. Norman joined the East Surry Regiment just before the start of the Second World War. Peggy escaped from Shanghai after the Japanese attacked the city in 1941 and travelled through India. She was caught in the mass riots that surrounded the arrest of Mahatma Ghandi in 1942 when he opposed the British rule. She went to South Africa and landed in New York the same year. She traveled to Prince Rupert, British Columbia to stay with an aunt, Mrs. Beaveridge. They decided that Peggy would go to Dawson to search for an uncle who went north in 1903. Mrs. Beaveridge paid for the trip in 1943 and also sent an allowance until she died. Peggy would write once or twice a year to say “no luck yet.” Peggy was a big-breasted woman who was 5’10” tall. She wore a tam or ball cap, sometimes dressed like a man, and liked to watch softball games. She owned a beautiful house and had various plans for fixing it up as a fine dining club or an art gallery. She lived there for a couple of years and it was often empty. For a while her tenants were prostitutes but it is unclear if Peggy was involved in the business. There were plenty of single men in town and working on the dredges.  The police gave their tacit approval to the town brothels and a doctor gave the girls regular checkups.((Mifi Purvis, “In Search of Bombay Peggy.” //Up Here Magazine,// July/August 2003.))

For the most part, Peggy lived in a log home on Princess Street with no water or power, and she ran her bootlegging business from there. She would often travel to Keno to look after her silver claims. In the mid-1970s, Peggy left Dawson and moved to the Gresham Hotel in Vancouver. It was a place where many Yukoners stayed on their trips to the city. She wrote letters to Jim Robb who she had looked after when he was young. After Peggy died, her ashes came back to Dawson and were spread in the Pioneer Cemetery. Her picture hangs over the bar in Peggy’s old house in Dawson, now renovated as Bombay Peggy’s Victorian Inn. Peggy Dorval is remembered for her generosity and for doing what she had to do to get by.((Mifi Purvis, “In Search of Bombay Peggy.” //Up Here Magazine,// July/August 2003.))