Yukon who is who

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Joe “Zeke” Suits (1946 – 2006)
	
Joe Suits was born in a little log cabin near the Alaska Highway at Marsh Lake. He attended grade school in Fort St. John and lived with the Holway family. He lived and worked for Alex Van Bibber and the Chambers as a horse wrangler and guide at Champagne. In Champagne he was known as Zeke and the nickname followed him everywhere he went. His trapping partner was Johnnie Gatey and they shared a trap line at Hutchi during the early 1970s. He spent some time in the Cariboo Country and made a visit to Calgary but spent most of his life in the Yukon.((Joan Viksten, written eulogy for her brother, 2006.))

Al Kulan employed Joe at a drilling and exploration camp in the early 1960s. When the camp was out of meat, Joe took off with a rifle and a prospector's pick. He crossed Anvil Creek and spotted a shiny rock that proved to be a major ore body. This was the discovery of the silver zinc deposits at what became Dynasty Mine (Faro).((Joan Viksten, written eulogy for her brother, 2006.)) In over twenty-five years of looking, he uncovered dozens of new occurrences. He once said that he just looked in the gopher holes and followed the sheep trails. He was well known for heading into the bush with a box of groceries, a 22 and a blanket. Joe Suits was Prospector of the Year in 1992.((Glen Harris, "Mining Prospector of the Year, 1992.” //Northern Journal,// Vol. 12, Issue #104, 1993: 18.))
 
Joe Suits and Glen Harries were the first to take a cat across the Boswell River. They had to build a continuation of the Amoco road to the Boswell River and then find a decent place to cross. They remodelled an old cabin and put on a new roof. They did the work with plywood they brought in with a D4 cat and 4X4 truck on the winter trail. They built about seven miles of road on the north side of the Boswell on ground they staked for a company, but nothing happened. The Boswell River was Joe's stomping ground. The family raised a couple of bear cubs and this is probably where Little Bear Creek got its name.  CBC came out one time to make a movie of grass roots prospecting of Glen and Joe. They were at the top of a mountain at Amoco.((Glen Harris, "Mining Prospector of the Year, 1992.” //Northern Journal,// Vol. 12, Issue #104, 1993: 18.))