Peter C. Risby (1931 - 2011)
Pete Risby was born in Abeline, Kansas to a black father and a white mother. The Ku Klux Klan was active in the United States and Pete was kept hidden in a chicken coop until the was about three years old. His father met a Catholic priest who offered him twenty-five acres of land and a job at the mission school in Desmarais, northern Alberta. The family fled to Canada and lived in the Cree community. When Pete’s mother’s father learned about her marriage, he disowned his own wife and their six children. Pete’s father supported the whole family until Pete’s aunts were old enough to get wartime jobs. Pete grew up with Cree friends, speaking Cree and hunting, fishing and gathering.1)
Pete went to residential school until he escaped at the age of seven. His grandmother taught him to read and write.2) Risby fought in the Korean War.3) He then worked as a heavy equipment operator at Cassiar, British Columbia. He had a roommate who was studying geology and Pete joined him to go prospecting on their days off. He developed a love and a talent for finding valuable rocks and minerals and came to the Yukon in 1957.4)
Pete Risby is connected with the development of 80-plus mining prospects that were optioned to major companies. In 1964, he sold his first Yukon claims to Johns Manville Co., then the world’s largest producer of asbestos.5) In 1965 he staked the Pay property in the Pelly Lakes area and optioned it to Al Kulan. He worked for Kulan during the development of the Faro Mine from 1965 to 1977.6) In the early 1970s he was a partner and chief prospector with Welcome North Mines.7)
Risby tells a story about moving staking crews from Ross to Godland Lake in the NWT, along the Canol Road. Pete and the pilot flew ahead in a Bell helicopter to locate a landing site for a following Single Otter with the staking crew and supplies. They were going to stay at an old Canol camp a few km away. The Otter was to make three flights to get all the men and equipment to the site. When the first flight landed, Pete noticed they were one man short. The pilot saw the man on his third flight in. He was walking up the river, having fallen out of the first plane into a snow drift. He and the other passengers had overindulged before the flight. He got out before the plane landed and none of the others noticed.8)
Risby started placer mining in the Indian River area in 1981.9) He was instrumental in the development of the Indian River placer mines, showing that the large, low-grade placers south of Dawson could be profitably mined.10)
Pete Risby has worked in Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. In later years he worked in Alaska, Yukon, NWT, BC and Alberta.11) He taught courses to First Nation prospectors and was one of the first to hire women on his exploration programs. He was inducted in the Yukon Prospectors Hall of Fame in 1996 for his technical achievements, contributions to the economy, and as a trail-blazing advocate for diversity and Indigenous inclusion in Canada’s minerals industry. Pete Risby was inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame in 2022.12)