Yukon who is who

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John Scribner Segers (b. 1834)
	
John Segers was born in Bangor, Maine. He emigrated from Henderson, Minnesota to the Red River in Canada in 1853. In 1875, he was the captain of the river steamer //International.// There was stiff competition for the river trade between the Red River Transportation Company (RRTC) and the Merchant’s International Steamboat Line MISL). The RRTC’s //International// was just nine miles south of Winnipeg when it collided with the MISL’s //Manitoba,// captained by Jerry Webber. Both captains claimed to be in the right.((Gordon Errett Tolton, //Prairie Warships: River Navigation in the Northwest Rebellion.// Heritage House Publishing Co., 2007: 27, 59, 62-63, 67-68, 86.))

In 1883, Segers was hired away from the Red River to captain the Hudson’s Bay Company’s (HBC) //Lily// between Prince Albert and Medicine Hat. The boat sunk in shallow water on the return trip with fifty tons of bacon on board. No one drowned and the cargo was saved but the boat was a loss.  In 1884, Segers was at the helm of the //Northcote// when a late season and other problems permanently docked the boat at Medicine Hat. The days of the sternwheelers were all but over and employees sought work in other places.((Gordon Errett Tolton, //Prairie Warships: River Navigation in the Northwest Rebellion.// Heritage House Publishing Co., 2007: 27, 59, 62-63, 67-68, 86.))

At that time in the Sudan, the British Governor General was all but a hostage to the Muslin leader Muhammad Ahmed, better known as the Mahdi. The British mounted a rescue attempt and needed eight good river men for service on the Nile. The Western river boat captains included Jerry Webber and John Segers. They left Winnipeg in October 1884 and initially shared the helm of the //Water Lily// as they went a thousand miles up the Nile River. At Wadi Halfa they did relay duty between there and Assouan to keep the lines of supply and communication open. Segers then took another sternwheeler, the //Lotus,// to Dongola through seven cataracts. They were too late to rescue Gordon and the captains were recalled to Canada. They spent a month getting back and the British paid all their expenses plus wages. They returned to a country in the midst of the Riel Rebellion. Segers and James Sheet were charged with getting the //Northcote// back in the water of the Saskatchewan River in service to the North-West Mounted Police.((Gordon Errett Tolton, //Prairie Warships: River Navigation in the Northwest Rebellion.// Heritage House Publishing Co., 2007: 27, 59, 62-63, 67-68, 86.))
	
In 1897, John Segers was in the employ of the Hudson’s Bay Co. (HBC) and was captain of the //S.S. Athabasca.// He declined to renew his contract with the HBC and became the leader of a ten-man party of prospectors bound for the Klondike. They chose the overland route from Edmonton via the Mackenzie River and left Athabasca Landing on 2 December 1897. About 775 stampeders tried this 2,000-mile trek to the north. At least 35 died along the way, commonly of drowning or scurvy, and perhaps 160 reached Dawson sometimes as late as 1899. All the rest turned back or were rescued. The most difficult part was a fifty-mile trek through the Richardson Mountains. The overland route ended at Fort Yukon, Alaska where one could get passage on a Yukon River steamer south-east to Dawson.((“To the Klondike via Athabasca Landing.” Athabasca Historical Society, 2019 website: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/eppp-archive/100/200/301/ic/can_digital_collections/athabasca/html/klondike/index.htm))
	
F. A. Hardisty was in a party, headed by Captain Segers, that left Edmonton in August 1897, bound for Dawson, by way of the Peel River. They travelled from Fort Simpson to Fort McPherson in eight days. The whole trip from Edmonton took five weeks and four days of which twenty-nine days were spent in travelling. The HBC officials were very good to them along the way and they were housed at Fort McPherson by Mr. Firth for free. Their accommodations had an organ and a kettle drum. F. M. Robertson was also in the party and he wrote from LaPierre House on 4 February. The party had reached the mouth of the Red River on 29 September when winter set in. They hauled their outfit to Fort McPherson by dog team. Robertson, W. D. Matheson and his son Mel Matheson, and Murdoch Sutherland decided to cross the divide in the winter, and they took nine dog teams from Peel River on 20 November and reached LaPierre House, on the Bell branch of the Porcupine, on 24 November, a distance of sixty to eighty miles. The remaining party was Captain Segers, Dr. Macdonald, Sam McNeill, Fred Taylor, A. Adamson, and F. A. Hardisty. Dr. Macdonald, of the Segers party, made a trip from Fort McPherson to the arctic coast during the winter. He heard there were whaling ships and that sixteen men had been lost in the same storm that affected the Seger's party.(("From Porcupine River" and "From Herschel Island." //Edmonton Bulletin// (Edmonton), 7 July 1898.))