Henry “Shorty” Roiles (1880 – 1965)

Shorty Roiles was a resident of the Yukon for more than fifty years. He enlisted for service in the First World War and fought with the 67th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He returned to the Yukon after the war and never left again. For years he operated machinery around the Whitehorse docks and then he worked for Taylor and Drury as a night watchman.¹⁾ Roiles was an early resident of Whisky Flats in Whitehorse. He owned a cabin, garden, and greenhouse and sold vegetables in town.²⁾ Honest and polite, he lived independently on a small pension. He was never known to take any of the T&D woodpile near his cabin. Shorty Roiles died in the Whitehorse hospital a week after he had been brutally beaten in his little shack.³⁾