Jack Shaakóon (d. 1920)

Shaakóon was Angela Sidney's grandfather, her mother's father. He married a Tagish Deisheetaan lady, Stóow. 1920 was a bad year for flu. A coal boat landed in Skagway and all the longshoremen quit. White Pass gathered up all the section men on the line and took them to Skagway and the crew got sick. Sam Smith was the first one to get it, then Shaakóon, then everybody. Mrs. Shaakóon lost a baby during the flu epidemic. Shaakóon is buried at Dyea.1)

There are two photographs of Shaakóon. He was a participant in Dawson Charlie’s headstone potlatch in a photo taken by Matthew Watson at Carcross in 1912.2) Marian Fayant identified her grandparents Jack and Jenny Shaakóon in a photo labelled “First Nation couple in a boat.”3)

1)
Angela Sydney, “My Stories Are My Wealth“ in Julie Cruikshank, Life Lived Like a Story. Vancouver: University of Nebraska Press, 1990: 51, 130, 153.
2)
B. C. Provincial Museum, photo PN9650.
3)
Yukon Archives #3961; Identified by Shelby Blackjack. Conversation with Sally Robinson, 5 March 2008.