Louis Irvine (1907 – 1994)
Louis Irvine was born in Idaho. His father and a partner had been in the north during the Klondike gold rush and had some success in mining and freighting around Atlin, British Columbia. Louis brought his family in through St. Michael, Alaska and they moved to Whitehorse in 1911. They moved back south in 1916 and then returned to the Yukon in 1918. The lived in a cabin near Teslin, trapping and prospecting, and then moved back to Atlin for a year. In 1922, father and son started working at a mine near Dease Lake, British Columbia and they stayed there for four years. They moved to Missouri to farm but were soon back in the Yukon, and Louis settled at Lake Laberge.1)
From 1933 to 1938 he worked for Klondike Airways Ltd. who had the contract for the Dawson/Whitehorse overland mail and freight service. They used trucks converted into snowmobiles and caterpillars to transport the freight. Louis’ first job was to transport freight between Yukon Crossing and the 'Junction' Roadhouse for a wage of $135.00 per month.2) He took mail and freight to Stewart Roadhouse and met the mail carriers from Mayo and Dawson. In the spring they would sometimes take fifty or sixty passengers on sleds pulled by three cats [tracked vehicles] all the way to Dawson. In the spring and fall they had to pull the freight across the rivers by hand when the ice was too thin for the cats. Louis hauled the mail in the spring and fall of 1936 on the small riverboat Shamrock before the larger boats started for the summer and after they stopped in the fall. Frank Slim was his pilot.3) Louis and his wife Polly (Pauline) trapped in the Ibex River area when he was not driving.4)
One winter it was extremely cold in December, but the stage came through as usual. Stan Dickenson and Louis Irving left Pelly for Whitehorse and showed up four days later not having stopped or slept, except for what they snatched on top of the load. They had travelled from Pelly Crossing to a point beyond Braeburn where they met another rig coming out. They transferred loads and turned around to return on the same route.5)
In 1938, Irvine started working for White Pass & Yukon Route, and stayed for thirty years doing a variety of jobs but initially working as a road foreman near Whitehorse. He worked on the Mount Freegold road and then the Aishihik, Snag, and Whitehorse airports. Irving retired to the Porter Creek area of Whitehorse.6)
Louis Irvine donated his photographs to the Yukon Archives in 1982. They include images of his family near Teslin in 1919, sternwheelers and other boats, and images of the Klondike Airways freight crew and transportation vehicles in 1936 and 1937.7) Louis Irvine was inducted into the Yukon Transportation Hall of Fame in 1997 as a Transportation Pioneer.