Yukon who is who

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Harry Versluce (1909 - 2002)
	
Harry Versluce immigrated to Canada from Holland in the mid-1930s. He worked as a farmhand before he turned to mining and was certified as a powderman. He became a successful mineral prospector and businessman. Harry Versluce, his brother Pete, and another adventurer came to the Yukon in 1940. They started at Fort St. James, near Prince George, in central British Columbia, and walked for eighteen months to get to Whitehorse. Harry was thirty-six when he enlisted for service in the Second World War with the 4th Battalion, the Canadian Scottish Regiment. He fought overseas and earned the Canadian Voluntary Service Medal and Clasp.((Jane Gaffin, “Prospectors found fortune in their own back yard.” 2005 website: http://north-land.com/ypa/VersluceGibbons.html)) 

In the 1960s, the Versluce brothers and partner Chuck Gibbons were prospecting behind their Porter Creek home in the Whitehorse Copper belt. They located [staked] a parcel that included the original Little Chief, Middle Chief, Big Chief, Peter, and Oro quartz claims and optioned it to New Imperial Mines. In 1967, New Imperial owned a package of 700 copper claims including those of the prospectors and they were open pit mining at Little Chief. Over the next years, various orebodies were mined along the copper belt to feed the mills The operation closed in 1971 when copper prices fell. In 1972, Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting and Anglo America Corporation reorganized New Imperial into Whitehorse Copper Mines and started mining underground. The mine ran successfully for ten years until the ore was exhausted in 1982. Prices were low and Yukon mining crashed taking White Pass & Yukon Route railway with it. The mine injected a lot of money into the community over its life.((Jane Gaffin, “Prospectors found fortune in their own back yard.” 2005 website: http://north-land.com/ypa/VersluceGibbons.html))

The Vesluce brothers were also credited with prospecting work that led to the development of the Canalask Nickel and Canol Mines. The brothers were generous with their money and quietly donated to individuals and causes they deemed worthy. Long after he gave up prospecting, Harry still attended the annual Geoscience mining conferences. Harry Vesluce was named Prospector of the Year for 1988.((Jane Gaffin, “Prospectors found fortune in their own back yard.” 2005 website: http://north-land.com/ypa/VersluceGibbons.html))