Francis Cunynghame
Francis Cunynghame was assistant secretary in the British-owned North West Corporation, a Klondie dredging company, before he enlisted to serve in the First World War. He was invalided out of the army in 1917 and made secretary in the Granville Mining Company and the North West Corporation. The Granville Mining Company was insolvent, and the North West Corporation and the Canadian Klondyke Mining Company (CKMC) went into receivership. Cunynghame was designated to act as the receiver, and he took over administration of the two companies. Joe Boyle’s CKMC had been professionally managed, and the dredges were in good condition. A.N.C. Treadgold’s North West Corporation had been poorly managed and senior staff had received no pay for many years. They existed by mining their own claims. Cunynghame spent three years, up to 1920, straightening out the paperwork.1)
Cunynghame believed in Treadgold’s dream of consolidating the Klondike dredging companies and they worked together to achieve it. In 1922, Cunynghame had been responsible for all the American side of the Consolidated Gold Fields business for five years and he moved to a vacant New York post at a good salary. He arrived in New York in November and was elected a director and president of the New North West Corporation with the direction to work with Treadgold and make a success of the company. In May 1923, he visited Canada for the first time and registered a new company meant to consolidate all the Klondike dredging interests in the future, the Yukon Consolidated Gold Company (YCGC).2)
The directors of Consolidated Gold Fields had a disagreement with Cunynghame and he resigned his position with the company and directorship on the boards of various associated companies. He remained the president of the New North West Corporation and arranged to move the headquarters from New York to London. He was also appointed president of YCGC at the first board meeting.3) At this point the company had no assets and the working companies were the New North West Corporation and Burrall & Baird. The transfer to YCGC was ready to go in 1924 and in 1925, Cunynghame resigned as president of YCGC in favour of A.N.C. Treadgold. In 1927, Cunynghame separated his business from Treadgold because of broken promises. There was no transfer of a large block of YCGC shares due to Cunynghame for his services nor was he reimbursed for supplying the Toronto offices since 1924. He abandoned the offices and took his secretary and two or three companies with him. In 1931, Treadgold asked Cunynghamme for help when the shareholders tried to control him. Cunynghame remained an affectionate, if not uncritical, friend and told the story of Treadgold’s Klondike business ventures and lost court cases in his 1953 book Lost Trails.4)