John Charles Hawksley (1862 – 1942)
John Hawksley was sent from England in 1887 by the Church Missionary Society and stationed on the Liard River.1) On July 20, 1889, Hawksley, Archdeacon Reeve, Mr. Camsell, and the inspecting officer for the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) Northern Department, Mr. Hardisty, arrived at Fort MacPherson on the HBC steamer Wrigley. Mr. Hawksley preached a service for the Anglican congregation on the next night’s evening prayers.2)
Hawksley worked as a carpenter for Archdeacon Robert McDonald, the minister in charge at the post. On 26 September, Hawksley was repairing the chimney and finishing the mudding on his own cabin when snow began to fall. On 1 October, Hawksley received 50 pounds of dried meat from the HBC store, the first since he arrived. The post trader, Mr. Hodgson, had promised to supply venison rations to a carpenter for the mission but stores had been too low up to that point. Hawksley and Miss Mary Ann Saunders were married at Fort MacPherson on 13 July 1890, the day after Bishop Bompas accompanied Miss. Saunders north.3)
Hawksley was ordained in 1891 at Fort Norman. He was moved from Liard to Fort Yukon, Alaska in 1897.4) In 1898, the Hawksleys moved from Fort Yukon to the Buxton Mission at Forty Mile. When Bishop and Mrs. Bompas moved from Forty Mile to Carcross in 1900, they left Reverend Hawksley and his family in charge.5)
In the early days of Whitehorse, the Kwanlin Dün were often relocated to various undesirable locations near the town. Around 1900, Rev Hawksley requested a reserve north of town, and six years later a 282.3-acre site was set aside in a flood plain in what is now the Marwell Industrial area.6)
Bishop Bompas relocated his diocesan headquarters from Forty Mile to Carcross in 1901 and he transferred his students to a foster home and school there. When Bompas died in 1906, Hawksley was the resident minister at Carcross and he took over responsibility for the school.7) Hawksley was still in Carcross in in 1907.8) Hawksley represented Fort Selkirk at the 2011 synod.9)
Hawksley succeeded Reverend Crarey in Dawson in 1912.10) In 1913, he was the minister at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Dawson when he gathered about twenty-five girls, aged ten to twelve, and named himself Guidemaster. The Dawson company was not registered at National Headquarters until 1916. This was the beginning of a long history of the Girl Guides in the Yukon.11) Hawskley organized the Scouting (1913) and Guiding (1914) movements in the Yukon.12)
On March 31, 1914 Reverend Hawksley resigned his position as rector at Dawson to take up new duties as the Indian Agent for the Yukon Territory. He was known as the best Gwich’in scholar since Archbishop McDonald.13) He retained his clerical license to minister.14)
In the 1930s, there was increased hunting and trapping and greater government supervision along the border between Yukon and British Columbia. Harper Reed, the Indian agent in the Stikine agency, was determined to prevent encroachment of BC traplines by non-native trappers and to allow out of province First Nation hunters access to BC resources. Hawksley pointed out that Yukon regulations required fees from out-of-territory hunters and trappers. Reed proposed special protection for First Nation harvesters inside the Yukon. The First Nations generally agreed, and BC then allowed Yukon First Nations to register traplines in BC. The boundary question was effectively settled through negotiations between Reed and Hawksley.15)
John Hawksley is buried in Dawson in the Yukon Order of Pioneers Cemetery.