Harry Gleaves
In 1929, Harry Gleaves donated to the creation and installation of a large stained-glass window in the Canadian Memorial in Vancouver dedicated to Yukon soldiers killed in WWI.1)
Harry Gleaves was the long-time owner of the Orpheum Theatre and Arcade Café in Dawson when they burned in May 1940. The theatre had an elaborate arch on the tip of the façade and it boasted two tiers of comfortable seats, a balcony, and a stage. The fire burned the Yukonia Hotel and several other buildings nearby and was deemed to be arson. Gleaves sent his theatre manger to Vancouver to buy new equipment and hired Bert Bratsberg to supervise a rebuilding project. The Dawson News reported that Gleaves hauled the charred remains of the building to a sluice run and recovered several nuggets and plenty of gold flakes. Klondike Kate Matson was in town at the time and she panned the area of the stage where she had performed forty years before. The Orpheum opened at the end of the summer in 1940 and screened The Prisoner of Zenda. Gleaves operated the theatre until the early 1950s.2)
Harry Gleaves ran the Royal Alexander Hotel and Arcade Café in Dawson. He put out special menus for the tourists advertising sheep, bear, caribou, and moose meat but half the time it would all be moose with different spices.3)
Gleaves was running the Arcade Restaurant in Dawson in 1948.4) Pierre Burton was in his old home town that summer and visited the Arcade Café (House of) Good Eats with Harry Gleaves proprietor. The eatery occupied half of the lower floor of the Royal Alexander Hotel. The old mahogany bar was part of the Arcade’s counter and the gold lettered “Flora Dora” sign stood over the archway into the kitchen, once the dance hall. He also noted that Gleaves had built a white-painted Orpheum movie house where the old Orpheum Theatre had burned to the ground.5)