Brian Edwin “Eddy” Wilkinson (1919 – 1977)
	
Eddy Wilkinson was a long-time Yukon trapper, born and raised on a line. He was a well-qualified woodsman and his near-death encounters were a northern legend. Garret was a watchman for Louis and Delores Brown when they were away on a big hunt. Eddy had so many close calls that the Browns thought he was indestructible. One time he shot a moose across a draw. He worked his way across and thought the moose was dead. He was ready to cut the moose's throat to bleed him when it jumped up and gored him. Eddy was able to climb out of reach of the maddened animal and he had to wait some time until the moose wandered off. He arrived back at the family home with one eye almost put out. One spring, he was trapping spring beaver at the head of Willow Creek. He was returning home with two beaver strapped to his pack board. The game trails were overgrown and suddenly he was charged by a grizzly. Eddy barely had time to get off a shot and the bullet killed the bear instantly. The bear had been eating on a moose kill nearby. Another time, Eddy was packing a Dall sheep off a mountain when a grizzly challenged his right to the kill. Eddy again got the bear with a lucky shot.((Dolores Cline Brown, //Timeless Trails of the Yukon.// Surrey B.C.: Hancock House. 2002: 165-69.))

Eddy and his brother Garret [Jared] moved to the Stewart region from the Pelly River area in 1974. They moved to Lansing in 1975 and licensed a trapline in the area. Garret developed a double hernia and had a hard time getting out in the fall. There were reports of other things not going well also. Two day after Christmas in 1977, the 58-year-old man was trapping out of his Lansing River cabin, 120 miles east of Mayo. His brother, Garret, left the cabin on November 29 and returned two weeks later from his own trapline cabin, about thirty miles down the Stewart River, to find blood and clothing about 200 yards from the Lansing cabin.  The frozen body of a grizzly was found a mile and half beyond. Garret headed for his nearest neighbour, Peter Beattie, nearly thirty miles from Lansing. He asked Beattie to take his dog team into Mayo to inform the RCMP and then Garret returned alone to Lansing. It took Beattie several days to travel 120 miles of rough trail in -50- and -60-degree temperature. It was the norm that Garrett and Eddy set traps for marten about 200 yards from the cabin and when the dogs barked, they would run out and take the marten out of the trap. The tracks indicated that the dogs must have barked and Eddy had run out to check the trap but the dogs were barking at a grizzly. The coroner, Simon Mason-Wood said they found the place where the bear was bedded down close by. The partly starved bear probably smelled food and decided to hang around. Eddy would not have come out unarmed if he knew there was a bear around. He was baking cookies at the time and the book he was reading was open on the table. Eddy's body was never found. The grizzly was probably stabbed as trappers always carry a knife and Eddy would have defended himself with what he had. The wolves had cleaned up the carnage. Eddy was a born woodsman who never said an unkind word about anyone. He was self-reliant and fearless.((Dolores Cline Brown, //Timeless Trails of the Yukon.// Surrey B.C.: Hancock House. 2002: 165-69.))