Phillip Collins (1909 - 1996)
	
Phil Collins was born in Spokane, Washington and arrived in the Yukon in 1929 at the age of 20. He worked as a longshoreman for the British Yukon Navigation Co. at Stewart Island on the Yukon River.((Dianne Green, “Growing Up Yukon: The Story of Penny Sippel.” //The Yukoner Magazine,// Issue No. 26, January 2004: 19.)) The wage was one dollar per hour, but they sometimes had to work thirty-seven hours straight to load ore on the boats. The handcarts took five bags of 200 pounds each. The work only lasted four months and so Phil spent the winters trapping. The first winter he made $2,000. After he and Martha Burian married in 1937, her brother sold Martha his interest in the Roadhouse and Phil and Martha took over the operation. They moved into Dawson in 1943, first to a cabin eighteen miles above Dawson where Phil trapped. He built a forty-foot tunnel boat with a thirty-three-horsepower inboard and had plenty of business when the highway was being built. He also delivered supplies from Dawson to the Snag trading post on the White River. Freighting was no longer profitable after a spur road connected Snag to the highway in 1944.(("Pioneer Profiles: Couple recalls ghost town with fond memories." //The Yukon News// (Whitehorse), 7 February 1983.)) 

Phil piloted Dawson’s //George Black// ferry with Ed Whitehouse for a few summers but preferred trapping. In 1949, Phil started working on the Alaska Highway with the Canadian Army. He was in Swift River, Watson Lake, and Whitehorse with various highway jobs. Martha and the children moved to Dawson Creek before the family settled in Whitehorse in 1951. Phil worked for the Army for seventeen weeks as a carpenter foreman on the Takhini housing, Watson Lake/Lower Post school, and F.H. Collins School. They moved to Beaver Creek in 1957 and back to Dawson in 1966 where he trapped on the Sixtymile River. They both worked for the RCMP as jail guards. Phil and Martha retired to Whitehorse and then moved to Keremeos in the British Columbian Okanagan.((Dianne Green, “Growing Up Yukon: The Story of Penny Sippel.” //The Yukoner Magazine,// Issue No. 26, January 2004: 20-28.))