John Flynn (b. 1955)
John Flynn was born in Dawson, a citizen of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2012 for his achievements as a Coach/Builder for Boxing, Snowshoe Biathlon, and Hockey. Flynn was introduced to boxing by Art Fry and was a member of the Boxing Club. He was the third boxer from the club to be inducted into the Sport Yukon Hall of Fame, joining Joe Mason and Chester Kelly. Flynn was even more successful in hockey and snowshoe biathlon. He played on the Yukon’s silver-medal-winning hockey team in the 1974 Arctic Winter Games in Anchorage, Alaska. At the same games he won 13 medals, including nine gold, in snowshoe biathlon. He coached both sports helping a peewee boys team from Dawson win gold at a Yukon Hockey Championships. In 1997, Flynn was instrumental in the re-creation of the 1905 Dawson City Nuggets game against the Ottawa Hockey Club (aka the Silver Seven) for the Stanley Cup. Flynn was the captain of the Nuggets in 1997 and in 2011 when, as part of Hockey Day in Canada in Whitehorse, the Nuggets and Ottawa Senators alumni staged two games in the Yukon – one in Whitehorse and one in Dawson. Ottawa won both games but Flynn scored a goal against the Senators in Dawson.1)
Dawson’s Municipal Council designated December 28th as John Flynn Day, recognizing his talent as an athlete and sports coach and as an amazing role model for the community. John picked his grandson’s birthday as the day to be proclaimed and asked that there be free skating at the rink on that day.2)
John Flynn was the manager of Hawk Mining in 2010, a Sixtymile River mining operation. A night shift worker dug into the permafrost mud with an excavator and uncovered the massive skull, with two tusks, of a woolly mammoth. The miners drove the skull to Dawson and handed it over to Yukon palaeontologists for preparation as a public display.3)