Henry Godkin “Harry” Dickson (1864 - 1941)

Harry Dickson was born in Petawawa, Ontario. In 1870, the family was living in Massachusetts where Harry’s father was working on the railroad. By 1879, the family was back in Canada and living near Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 1888, Harry was living in Selkirk, Manitoba when he was commissioned as a Provincial Land Surveyor and where he became a Dominion Land Surveyor in 1889. In 1890, he was one of twenty land surveyors in Manitoba. He and James Brownlee formed a partnership in Brandon that lasted a few years. In 1893, Dickson was a city engineer for the City of Brandon and in 1894 he produced a large map of the city. His brother, Thomas Albert Dickson, became a Manitoba Provincial Land Surveyor that year. Thomas was a civil engineer. Thomas and Henry came north in early 1898. James Brownlee had come up in 1897 and settled in Atlin, and Harry arrived in March 1899 and started working for Brownlee. He surveyed the Taku Tramway for John Irving and did some survey work on the White Pass & Yukon Route rail line. He was still living in Atlin when he completed the first survey of White Horse in October 1899. The name had just been changed from Closeleigh and the town was twenty large lots between Hawkins Street and the north end of the Marwell industrial area. Dickson also surveyed the railway right-of-way and a 97-acre maintenance yard at the south end of town.¹⁾

Harry Dickson moved to White Horse in 1900 and set up a residence and business on Main Street. Thomas was living with Harry in the early 1900s. In 1901, there were twelve land surveyors in the Yukon and Harry was the only one in White Horse. In 1905, there were eight Yukon land surveyors and in 1910 there were four. Around 1918, A.H. Hawkins’s job of Director of Surveys for the Yukon was terminated, and Dickson became the sole Yukon land surveyor from then until he retired in 1938. He relocated to Dawson in 1920 but much of the work he and Thomas did over the next eighteen years was in the Mayo region. In 1922, their business was a partnership. In 1931, the Yukon Government appointed Harry as the Survey Engineer on a small salary, probably as an incentive for him to stay in the territory. In 1932, there were no surveys done.²⁾

Among many other important surveys over his career, Henry G. Dickson surveyed the Kluane Wagon Road in 1913 and 1915. In November 1913, he did the 22.5 section from Kluane (Silver City) to the Jarvis River. In August and September 1915, he surveyed the 100 miles from the Overland Trail to the Jarvis River to join the 1913 survey. The area was experiencing more traffic with the 1913 Chisana gold rush. The survey followed the route as it was used at the time, so it traced all the twists and turns. The 1915 plan is on eleven sheets of two-foot-wide paper and is hand-drawn. The scale was 1 inch to 500 feet. The 88.5 miles of road took up 80 linear feet of paper.³⁾

Harry Dickson worked for about forty years surveying in the Yukon and for many of those years he worked with his brother Thomas.⁴⁾ Harry died at St. Mary’s Hospital in Dawson. ⁵⁾ He left his estate, $561.32, to his brother Arthur Dickson who lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He never became rich but his contribution to the Yukon remains priceless.⁶⁾