Pete Brady (1890 – 1981)

Pete Brady was born in Ireland. He came to the Yukon in 1908 to join his brother Pat who came up in 1900.¹⁾ Pat was sixteen years older than Pete and built like a bear.²⁾ The brothers mined around Hunker Creek and Mint Gulch, on the right fork of Hunker Creek.³⁾ In 1956, when Otto Blattler was around twenty-one, he worked with Pete Brady all summer on No. 9 Dredge on upper Sulphur Creek. Pete was an oiler and Otto was the stern decker.⁴⁾

Peter Erikson and Pete Brady worked for Neil Cross at the Clinton Creek asbestos mine from 1967 through 1969 during the winter months. They quit their jobs in the spring to mine their own claims. Pete and Pat Brady never missed the Easter [St. Patrick’s Day] parade in New York.⁵⁾ Pete’s proudest moment was marching with the mayor of New York at the head of the St. Patrick’s Day parade a year shortly after the end of the First World War.⁶⁾ The brothers worked on the dredges and in the creeks for more than seventy years. They never married and the “fighting Irishmen” would fight anyone who tried to break up a fight between them. Pat died before Pete.⁷⁾

Pete sold his claims to Peter Erikson who mined them until the 1980s.⁸⁾ Pete Brady retired to live in Whitehorse.⁹⁾ Gerald Ahnert has mined on the Right Fork of Hunker Creek for thirty years in the same area the Brady brothers mined. Over the years he restored Pete Brady's cabin.¹⁰⁾