Thomas Cecil “TC” Richards (1892 – 1961)
TC Richards was born in Lester, England. He came from the Cariboo country in 1915 to manage the P.A. Burns meat plant in Whitehorse.1) He met and married Bernadine Piper and their three children were raised in Whitehorse.2)
In 1920, an organization was formed to prevent mosquitos from breeding. T.C. Richards offered to provide 200 gallons of crude at seventeen and a cents per gallon plus $5.00 in cash. Photographer E.J. Hamacher suggested they use sawdust soaked in crude oil and mixed with a small amount of kerosene to spread over swamp land, small pools and potholes.3) [Those were the days.] In 1921, Richards worked with two men on saddle horses and a First Nation guide to take thirty head of cattle from Fort Selkirk to Mayo. The trip took sixteen days and on the second day they lost most of their food when the cattle got into their supplies.4) The herd was slaughtered at Keno Hill and the meat cached in a mine adit until it was needed.5)
In the same year, Richards [with lawyer Willard Phelps] started a winter tractor train between Whitehorse and Dawson and guaranteed a three day trip – two days shorter than the normal five. When people complained about being perched on bales of freight, Richards replied that that was a cost of a faster trip.6)
Richard’s competition on the Overland Trail was the Greenfield and Pickering Royal Mail Service. After the failure of Yukon Airways, the company picked up contracts and, using a leased plane from Treadwell Yukon, began to deliver light freight and mail to northern Yukon communities under the name Klondike Airways. Greenfield and Pickering lost the mail contract and terminated their Overland Trail operations in 1929. On 12 February 1930, the second company of the same name under the directorship of T.C. Richards and W.L. Phelps continued the arrangement initiated by Greenfield and Pickering. The planes were owned by Treadwell Yukon and Phelp's name was used because he was Treadwell Yukon's attorney and resident Yukon Agent.7) Before 1921, only First Class mail was delivered in the winter. After Richards’ Klondike Airways got the contract in 1929, all classes of mail were delivered weekly. If the Overland Trail was impossible, arrangements were made to deliver the mail by plane.8)
During the 1930s, Richards sometimes delivered people and goods on the old Overland Trail himself. Crossing thin ice on the Yukon, Pelly, and Stewart rivers was dangerous. They used small hand sleighs, dogs, canoes and small boats to ferry the freight and passengers across.9) The company ran a weekly service and it was on time, as there was a penalty built into the contract.10) They carried about 110,000 pounds of freight to Dawson each year.11)
Klondike Airways did not have very reliable equipment in small D-2 Caterpillar tractors for most of the work and a couple of larger ones as well. The tractors had no cabs and the drivers were happy with this as they feared getting trapped if the cats went through the river ice. They went five miles per hour when pulling their loads along the flat stretches and this was considered fast.12) Ford trucks were purchased in 1935 and the company fitted them with skis.13) “Slim” Errol Koebke built the vehicle for TC Richards that had three wheels on the back with a track and skis instead of wheels on the front.14) The trip to Dawson was reduced to three days.15)
About 1936, Richards brought in two yellow RD-6 diesels loaded for Mayo.16) The vehicles were purchased to haul fuel from Minto to Mayo before the roads were built. The company also took goods to Champagne and Lloyd Ryder recalls one trip that took over a day to travel the sixty miles through the mud.17) T.C. Richards had the winter mail delivery contract for fourteen years and even after the airplanes took over most of the business, he still ran a cat train until the winter of 1938/39. Besides the mail contract, Richards also had the only butcher shop in Whitehorse. He made sure all the communities got their winter beef.18)
Richards won $20,000 from the owner of the Whitehorse Inn in 1937 and used his winnings as a down-payment to buy the hotel.19) He bought the Whitehorse Inn and City Cafe from owners Ken and Mack Yoshida. The Yoshidas spent seventeen years in business in Whitehorse and were now leaving for Japan. Edward Beard became the manager of the Inn when ownership officially changed on May 1st. In 1941, Richards brought in 8×8 foot sections of a 1914 bunkhouse from the Pueblo Mine as part of the first annex. In 1943, the tavern was moved around from Main Street to 2nd Ave. The Inn was valued at $130,000 in 1944. The second annex was added in 1948. It was built around and over the Main Street Cafe and added up to eighty-five more rooms and a ballroom. After the annex was completed, the whole exterior was covered in imitation brick siding. The hardwood flooring came from the Tita (This Is The Army) Theatre in McCrae, built in 1943. The building went to First and Strickland for a kid's skating arena. The cocktail bar was installed in 1951 and it took over part of the old cafe and barber shop. The bakery was moved to a building that had housed the Army and Navy Club. The laundry was built in 1956 and a bowling alley and basement was built underneath the original Inn building in 1957. Television studios were installed on the 3rd floor in 1958 and they were moved to the basement in 1960. In 1959, a stucco finish was applied to the exterior of the building. In the end, the hotel occupied eight lots - four on Main Street and five on Steele Street.20) The hotel was leased after Richards died. Ownership of the Inn reverted to the Richards' family after it was leased to Bruce Sung for five years. It was worth $35,000 when it was built and was valued at $400,000 in 1965.21)
T.C. Richards was posthumously inducted into the Transportation Hall of Fame as Transportation Pioneer of 1998.22)