Yukon who is who

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John Pringle (1852-1935)
	
John Pringle was born in Murray Harbour South, Prince Edward Island the oldest son of George and Mary Pringle. Brothers John and George were missionaries in the Klondike just after the gold rush, and bother James [Jack] was with the North-West Mounted Police.((J. Clinton Morrison, //Chasing a Dream: Prince Edward Islanders in the Klondike.// Summerside, PEI: Crescent Isle Publishers, 2004: 138-142.)) John Pringle received a LL.D from Dalhousie College, Halifax and a DD from Queen’s University in Kingston.((W. R. Hamilton, //The Yukon Story.// Mitchell Press, 1972: 164, 166.))
	
John Pringle was over six-foot-tall and had a commanding personality. He volunteered as a Presbyterian missionary in 1897 and crossed the Glenora Trail from Fort Wrangel to Atlin where he arrived in the winter of 1898-99. He met Katherine Ryan in Glenora in 1898 and persuaded her to go sixty miles up the Stikine where her nursing skills were needed at the Atlin Camp. She spent a horrible winter with Pringle and others before continuing her trip to the Klondike.((J. Clinton Morrison, //Chasing a Dream: Prince Edward Islanders in the Klondike.// Summerside, PEI: Crescent Isle Publishers, 2004: 138-142.))

John stayed in Atlin for two years and established the St. Andrew’s Hospital, the first Presbyterian hospital in Canada. He made a gruelling winter trip to Wrangel and had to eat the webbing on his snowshoes. He achieved tremendous popularity in the Stikine River and Teslin Lake areas but headed to the Klondike in 1901. On the trip, he was in a fight with a teamster who was abusing his animal and his reputation preceded him to Dawson. Kensington’s James “Big Jim” Pendergast first met John Pringle when Jim arrived in Dawson in 1906 and they became fast friends. Jim referred to Pringle as an example of militant Christianity and Pringle became known as the Hobo Preacher because of his shabby attire.((J. Clinton Morrison, //Chasing a Dream: Prince Edward Islanders in the Klondike.// Summerside, PEI: Crescent Isle Publishers, 2004: 138-142.))
	
Pringle was elected to the territorial council in 1903. He complained to Laurier in private letters about dancehalls and prostitutes in Dawson. Not daunted by his lack of success he began talking to the eastern Canadian press about Dawson immorality and charged that local authorities had an interest in laxity. In response, the sale of liquor in dancehalls was prohibited and the last one closed in 1908. The Presbyterian church approved of Pringle's actions and the Conservatives took up the call in Parliament. The territorial council passed a resolution regretting Pringle's action.((Morris Zaslow, //The Opening of the Canadian North, 1870 - 1914.// Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1971: 129, 137.)) Yukon depended on the sale of liquor to bring much-needed revenue to the territorial coffers. In 1906, Rev. Pringle wrote to the Minister of the Interior against the naming of Lithgow as a candidate for Commissioner and started to write open letters to the outside newspapers asking for a clean, sober appointment.((David Morrison, //The Politics of The Yukon Territory, 1898-1909.// Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968: 82-84.))
	
In 1908, Reverend Pringle took the pastorship of St. Andrew’s in Sydney, Nova Scotia. He volunteered his services, at age 62, in the First World War.((J. Clinton Morrison, //Chasing a Dream: Prince Edward Islanders in the Klondike.// Summerside, PEI: Crescent Isle Publishers, 2004: 138-142.)) He served as a chaplain until 1918, was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.((W. R. Hamilton, //The Yukon Story.// Mitchell Press, 1972: 164, 166.)) In 1919, he was elected Moderator of the general Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Canada and in 1927 became pastor emeritus of St. Andrew’s. In retirement and close to his 80th birthday in 1931, the Home Mission Board of the United Church of Canada chose him to serve as a missionary minister to the work crews of the Trans-Canada Highway camps in northern Ontario. He accepted a church mission in Bermuda in January 1935 but took ill there and died in Lowell, Mass where he had gone for treatment.((J. Clinton Morrison, //Chasing a Dream: Prince Edward Islanders in the Klondike.// Summerside, PEI: Crescent Isle Publishers, 2004: 138-142.))