François-Xavier “Frank” Cantin (1876 - 1958)
Frank Cantin was born at Trois-Rivières in Quebec to a family of seventeen children. In the early 1900s, he was in Mayo with his cousins Joseph, Louis, and Philéas. From 1909 to 1920, he prospected at Haggart and Highet creeks and at Dublin Gulch. They dug a 2-mile ditch to bring water to their property at Dublin Gulch and extracted $50,000 from their claim at Dublin and Haggart when gold was $20.67 per ounce. They were the first to extract and sell tungsten from Highet Creek.1)
Frank sold firewood and whole logs and held timber rights on both sides of the Stewart River from the mouth of the Mayo River to Fraser Falls.2) In the 1930s, there was a need for more firewood and better ways to haul it. Cantin bought a Cleveland H Cat in Quebec and had it hauled to Mayo. Archie Van Bibber was the only person who could operate it. Cantin, Van Bibber and William Profeit put the Cat to work cutting stove wood.3)
Frank Cantin built and rented out several log buildings in Mayo. He owned the log school building on Joe Cantin’s homestead and rented it to the Yukon Government until 1941 when he built a frame schoolhouse. Cantin’s sawmill was located on the Stewart River at the mouth of the Mayo River.4) In December 1941, Frank was awarded a contract to take freight from Dawson over the winter trail to Mayo with his caterpillar tractor.5) The cat was later scheduled to skid logs at the United Keno Hills Mines but never made it. Gunnar Nilsson found the cat abandoned in the forest at Stewart Crossing. He loaned the cat for display at the Yukon Workers Compensation Health and Safety Board building on 4th Ave in Whitehorse. The cat was returned to the family of the late Gunnar Nilsson and his wife, Mickey Lammers in 2006.6)
Frank and Alice Stevenson, widow of William Portlock, were married in 1937. She died in 1955 at the age of seventy-five and Cantin died two years later at the age of eighty-one.7)