George Black (1873 – 1965)
George Black was born in Woodstock, New Brunswick and his family moved to Richibucto when he was young. He studied law in Fredericton and left home in early 1898 to travel to the Klondike.1) He travelled with a group of New Brunswick men who originally planned to take the Stikine River all-Canadian route. No doubt the beneficiaries of some helpful advice, they changed their minds and continued on to Skagway. They hauled their supplies, which included a boat engine, over the White Pass to Bennett. They built two boats in the spring of 1898 and headed down the Yukon River. Hearing that all the good Klondike ground was staked, they decided to try prospecting on the Hootalinqua, now called the Teslin River. In late summer they met Joe Arthur who told them of a mythical lost mine on the Nisutlin River. Black and Elmer Middlecoff travelled to San Francisco where they were to meet the owner of the lost mine, and there they found themselves to be the victims of a con. Black headed back north and spent the winter prospecting in the Atlin district. He went from there to Dawson and was admitted to the Yukon bar in July 1899. He quickly returned to the Yukon River basin.2)
Black was travelling in a party of about twelve men. George Dawson’s geological report said there was gold found on the Big Salmon and the men split up to explore the main stream and the North Fork. George and an older experienced prospector travelled up Mendocina Creek, over the ridge and into the upper Livingstone Creek where they panned out course gold and nuggets. They gathered up the others in the party and whipsawed lumber for sluice boxes. They mined until the onset of winter when Black travelled to Dawson with $12,000 in gold. This story was told by George Black when he was Speaker of the House of Commons.3)
On August 12, Black and Sam Lough staked discovery claims on a tributary of the Big Salmon River. Black named Livingstone Creek after a Whitehorse lawyer. He brought out enough gold to travel back to New Brunswick to find some backers to develop the claims. Black returned to the Yukon in the spring of 1900 with ten New Brunswickers. When they were ready to sluice their accumulated pay dirt in August, a flood washed out their dam and sluice boxes, leaving Black with no means to pay his miners. He raised the money by cutting firewood for the riverboats. That fall, he turned away from mining and moved to Dawson to start his law practice.4)
Black worked on a sternwheeler to get down the Yukon River to Dawson. The owners did not pay the crew and Black successfully represented his mates in Admiralty Court to recover some wages. He entered a law practice with C.M. Woodworth, and then with his uncle John Black, and became a successful criminal lawyer. He participated in mass meetings to call for democratic reforms and helped organize the Citizen’s Yukon Party.5) He and Martha Louise Purdy were married in 1904.6)
Black campaigned for Alfred Thompson in the 1904 federal election.7) He was elected to the Yukon Territorial Council in 1905 and served for three years. He first ran for the Canadian House of Commons in 1908 but was defeated. He was H.H. Stevens’ campaign manager in the 1911 federal election.8)
Prime Minister Bordon appointed George Black as Commissioner of the Yukon, and he held the office between February 1912 and April 1918. Many of Back’s conservative friends took positions previously held by old-guard Liberals who left the Yukon in the spring of 1912. Black was not known as a team player and was embroiled in several controversies in the next few years. His partisanship and favouritism undermined positive change in improving Yukon’s constitutional standing.9)
During the First World War, Black recruited a regiment of Yukoners and became the Captain. He was wounded during the fighting.10) While he was away from the Yukon, Yukon councillor George Williams was appointed as the Yukon Administrator. Black retained his position as Commissioner on half salary while he was at the front. In 1918 the Canadian government faced huge debts, so they reduced Yukon grants by forty percent and cut the Commissioner and Administrator positions. When he returned from the war the Blacks moved to Vancouver where George set up a law practice. His name was in the newspaper in 1920 when he defended Canadian soldiers charged with mutiny during a food riot. He argued for reduced sentences and the men were released in the same year.11) In 1919 he was unsuccessful in running for a seat in the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia.12)
In 1921, Black was elected as Yukon’s Member of Parliament in the Conservative Party, defeating F.T. Congdon.13) He introduced legislation to give Yukoners the right to a trial by jury, and legislation to protect mining titles. The Tories won the 1930 election, and the government of R. B. Bennett nominated Black as the Speaker of the House of Commons. He was a known eccentric who kept a .22 calibre pistol in his desk that he used to shoot rabbits on Parliament Hill.14) He had a well-known disdain for the party leader, and violently attacked the Prime Minister in the halls.15)
Black resigned from parliament in January 1935 after he was committed to the Westminster Veterans Hospital in London, Ontario for six months. His wife, Martha, ran and won in the 1936 election as an independent Conservative. After Black was released from the hospital he moved to Vancouver, and then ran and won the Yukon seat in the 1940 election.16)
In 1944, George Black stated his protest against the Government's policy of putting a ceiling on the wages of Yukon Canadian wage earners and prohibiting their employment by American employers at the high wages paid American workmen for the same work.17) The Blacks moved their residence from Dawson to Whitehorse in the fall of 1944.18)
In the 1945 election, the Liberals were worried that Communist union organizer Tom McEwen of the Labour-Progressive Party would win on a platform of collective bargaining, family allowance, old age pensions, workers’ compensation, and equality for Canadian Indigenous peoples, and did not run a Yukon candidate , and instead supported the Conservative candidate George Black. Black campaigned on a platform of collective bargaining, minimum wages, maximum-hour and minimum-age laws, paid holidays, unemployment insurance, and labour representation on government boards. He won by 162 votes.19)
Black did not run in the 1949 election.20) The Yukon riding was abolished that year to be replaced by a new Mackenzie-Yukon seat. The Blacks returned to the Yukon and George opened a law practice in Dawson before relocating to Whitehorse when the capitol moved to that community. Black was honoured in 1951 with a lifetime appointment to the Privy Council. Black ran unsuccessfully for the House of Commons in the 1953 election but was defeated by Liberal Aubrey Simmons. Martha died in 1957. George remarried to second wife Sadie in 1958, and they moved to Vancouver.21)