Peter and Mary Beattie

Pete and Mary Beattie emigrated from the United States to the Yukon to avoid service during the Vietnam War.¹⁾ They first came to Canada in 1970 and arrived in the Yukon in 1971.²⁾ They lived on the Yukon River above Dawson from 1972 to 1977. Pete worked for Robin Burian placer mining on Barker Creek in 1976 and 1977 and then moved to a trapline on the Stewart River, about 110 miles up from Mayo.³⁾

The family spent some 30 years working various trap lines. Mary travelled over thirty miles a day on her trapline, and Pete travelled double that.⁴⁾ Pete’s story of the bear attack that killed neighbouring trapper Ed Wilkinson in 1977 is published in Manfred Hoef’s Of Man and Beast. At the time, Ed and his brother Jared were living and trapping at Lansing, an abandoned trading post on the Stewart River.⁵⁾