John D. “Jack” Watt (1881 - 1915)

Jack Watt was born in Setton, Surrey, England. He was in India and China, serving with the British Army for twelve years as a gunner with the Royal Garrison Artillery before coming to the Yukon.1) A Dawson newspaper listed him as a miner who fought in the Boer War [1899 – 1902].2)

Watt worked as a lineman for the Yukon Gold Company before he enlisted for service in the First World War. He was too late to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force so he booked passage for England and joined Lord Strathcona’s Horse in November 1915. He fought as an infantryman in the battles of Festubert and Givenchy before being killed in action at Veerstraat. He was one of the first Yukoners to die during the war.3)

News reached Dawson in October 1915 of the deaths of Charley Phillips and Jack Watt, reported as the first Yukoners to die in WWI. Jack Watt's service was in France.4) His name is listed on the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in Ypres, Belgium.5)

1) , 3)
D. Blair Neatby and Michael Gates, The Yukon Fallen of World War I. Whitehorse Legion Branch 254, 2018: 110.
2)
P. D. Bushe, “Yukoners at the front in the great war.” Dawson Daily News (Dawson), August 17, 1915.
4)
Peter Kikkert and P. Whitney Lackenbauer, “The index to a Man’s principles: Dawson and the Canadian Yukon Patriotic Fund, 1914-1920” in The Northern Review, 44/2017: 52.
5)
Michael Gates, “Paying Homage to the Yukon fallen of World War I.” Yukon News (Whitehorse), 14 September 2018.