John William “Johnny” Hoggan (1903 -1983)
	
Johnny Hoggan was born in Whitehorse to parents Ned and Kate Hoggan.((Joann Robertson, //The Yukon: Life Between the Gold Rush and the Alaska Highway.// Vancouver: Granville Island Publishing, 2012.)) When the Hoggan family lived at Hootalinqua, between 1911 and 1914, the winter mail stage went up the trail from Whitehorse to Livingston Creek. Johnny Hoggan and his sister would take dog teams up from Hootalinqua to get the mail at Winter Crossing on the Teslin River. In the summer, when they were twelve and fourteen years old, they would line the boat up the Teslin River and be gone for a week. Johnny went to school for a couple of months in Skagway and during the winter of 1908/09 he went to school in Whitehorse. The youngest girl went outside to Shawnigan Lake and she taught her brothers when she returned. The Hoggan family moved to Dawson in 1914 and Johnny went to Dawson school for several months.((Joyce Yardley, //Yukon Riverboat Days.// Surry B.C.: Hancock House, 1996: 152-6.))
	
When he was 14, Hoggan went to work on the steamer //Dawson// as a deckboy. In 1919, he transferred to the //Casca// with Captain Williams and Frank Murnay. In 1920, he went up the Stewart on the //Hazel B.// to Mayo and a lodge the Barrington brothers built in 1913. In 1921, he was on the //Sybilla// and the //Hazel B.// from Dawson to the lower Yukon and Holy Cross carrying mail to Nenana. He was the pilot and purser and Cam Smith was the engineer.((Yukon Archives, Yukon River Oral History Project, 81/32, tape 6, Johnny Hoggan interview.))
	
During the winters for a number of years, Johnny Hoggan and his brothers carried mail from Coffee Creek to Dawson once a month by dog team. He also did the mail run with Louis Irvine for two years driving a cat from Stewart Junction to Dawson. When White Pass ran the mail, the stage came three times a week, but the next contractor only came every fifteen days. The second-class mail would get stockpiled and came on the first boat.((Joyce Yardley, //Yukon Riverboat Days.// Surry B.C.: Hancock House, 1996: 152-6.)) Hoggan was on the Whitehorse - Dawson mail run for two years, driving cat.  It took 5.5 days from Stewart Jct. to Dawson and back. You could take a truck in early fall as far as Yukon Crossing. This was probably before 1921.((Yukon Archives, Yukon River Oral History Project, 81/32, tape 6, Johnny Hoggan interview.)) 
	
Hoggan got his first job with Yukon Consolidated Gold Corp (YCGC) on old Dredge No.1 on Dominion Creek under dredge master Billie Moore. He became winchman two years later. Hoggan drove the first 'cat' the company purchased. From 1931-35, he was the winchman on Dredge No.2 in the Klondike Valley and was promoted to dredge master in 1936. He left the company's employ in 1943.(("Employees of the Yukon Consolidated Gold Corporation." Dawson City Museum and Historical Society files, 992.8.115.)) 
	
Johnny worked on the dredges at Henderson Creek around 1947. They put a road up Henderson to move the dredge. They only had an axe and a level for tools.((Yukon Archives, Yukon River Oral History Project, 81/32, tape 6, Johnny Hoggan interview.)) In 1954, he drove a small cat with no cabin from Dawson to Mayo and back again. The temperature never made it above -40 and reached -72 between Dawson and Clear Creek. Hoggan said that despite all his winter experiences he never got used to the cold.((“No fun but cold weather taken in stride by old-timers in early days.” //Whitehorse Star// (Whitehorse), 10 February 1960.))
	
Hoggan returned to YCGC in 1959 as Dredge Superintendent. When it was time, Johnny and Gladys Hoggan retired to Haney B.C.(("Employees of the Yukon Consolidated Gold Corporation." Dawson City Museum and Historical Society files, 992.8.115.))