Yukon who is who

Joseph Whiteside Boyle (1867 – 1923)

Joe Boyle was born in Toronto, the youngest of four children, to Charles and Martha (Bain) Boyle. The family moved to Woodstock when Joe was very young. Charles Boyle was a racehorse trainer who became a successful cattle breeder. He trained thoroughbreds who won the Queen’s Plate in 1862, 1883, 1897, and 1898. Joe was educated at Woodstock College, a school with a Baptist tradition. He travelled with his father to race meets, and on a trip to New York he ran off to sea for three years.¹⁾

Boyle and Emile Josephine Raynor were married in New York City in 1889 and he started a successful feed and freighting business. In 1896 the couple had five children, including Emile’s son from a previous marriage, and a third daughter was on the way. The marriage failed that year, and Boyle started to manage and spar with an Australian heavyweight, Francis (Frank) Patrick Slavin. Slavin was well-known in England and was once a contender for a world championship. He and Boyle started an exhibition tour that included Juneau, Alaska. Hearing about the Klondike gold strike in July 1897, they joined the first party to reach Dawson via the White Pass.²⁾

Boyle recognized the potential for hydraulic mining in the Klondike and went to Ottawa in September to petition the federal government for a mining concession. Slavin stayed in Dawson as Boyle’s partner, and on December 1 applied for a lease on the Klondike River. Boyle bought out Slavin’s interest in 1899. He continued to lobby Clifford Sifton, the minister of the interior, and was granted a lease of 40 square miles in the Klondike Valley between Bonanza and Hunker creeks in November 1900. In 1904-5 he financed a hockey team to travel to Ottawa to play in the Stanley Cup. The Nuggets played the Ottawa Silver Seven but lost. He and Elma Louise Humphries were married in or near Detroit around 1908.³⁾

Boyle fought opposition and numerous lawsuits to gain control of the Canadian Klondyke Mining Company in 1909. He had financial backing from England including Granville Mining with Arthur Newton Christie Treadgold as managing director. He consolidated control of the company in 1911-12. His company owned four dredges and a power plant to operate them and supply Dawson with electricity.⁴⁾

Boyle was too old to enlist in the First World War, but he recruited and financed a 50-man machine gun company and was awarded the honorary rank of lieutenant-colonel by the federal minister of militia and defence. His company suffered and he met with his shareholders in England in 1916. While there, he undertook a mission for the American Committee of Engineers in London to reorganize the Russian railway system. He reached Russia in July 1917 and was instrumental in organizing rail traffic in the military zone from Petrograd (St Petersburg) to Odessa (Odesa, Ukraine). His leadership worked to clear a knot of abandoned rolling stock that was blocking traffic. He was successful in negotiations to have the Romanian archives and paper currency returned to Romania from Russia where they were kept in safekeeping. In February 1918 he was the principal intermediary for the Romanian government and effected a ceasefire with revolutionary forces in Bessarabia. Between March and April, he rescued about 50 high-ranking Romanians held by revolutionaries in Odessa and became a Romanian hero and a powerful man in the royal court. He was instrumental in obtaining a $25 million credit for Romania from the Canadian government at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. He was rumoured to be Queen Marie’s lover with no substantial evidence to confirm. Boyle worked with Captain George Alexander Hill of the British secret service to carry out clandestine operations against German and Bolshevik forces in Bessarabia and southwestern Russia. He spoke only English and insisted on wearing his Canadian uniform to the dismay of Canadian and British authorities. He received eight decorations from Great Britain, France, Romania and Russia. He suffered a stroke in 1918 from which he never fully recovered.⁵⁾

When Boyle returned to England in 1919, his Klondike company was in receivership. He tried and failed to secure an oil concession in the Caucasus for Royal Dutch Shell. After he died, he was descripted by the London Times as a man with indomitable will and a somewhat turbulent disposition. His remains were returned to Canada in 1983 and reinterred in Woodstock, Ontario.⁶⁾