Thomas Edward Bee
Tom Bee served with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Kluane Lake around 1900 and was later posted to Carmacks where he left the Force. He became partners with Frank Back to prospect and mine in the Nansen Creek area.1) Bee had a general store in Carmacks from 1915 to 1921 and trading posts in Ross River and Big Salmon village. He and Lois Austin Back married in 1913 and they had three children; the eldest was Austin (b. 1914).2) Austin and his sister Shirley were born at the hospital in Whitehorse.3) Mr. Lamb was a storekeeper for Bee’s trading post at Big Salmon circa 1915.4) In 1917, a small steamer called the Flying barged supplies up to Bee’s post at Ross River.5)
Oil was discovered at Norman Wells in the summer of 1920 and that winter Tom Bee, Fred Guder, Frank Etzel, Joe Ladue, and others stampeded over the Selwyn and Mackenzie mountains, and mushed up the old Fort Norman trail to the oilfields in twenty-two days. They staked claims and returned to the Yukon and then to Edmonton by way of Skagway to file.6) A series of photographs document the trip.7) Ten of the men who staked oil claims in Norman Wells were photographed as they were ready to board a train to Edmonton. Identified in the photo are Victor Bullock, McDonald, John Olson, Tucker (agent), Houle Mackenzie, Tom Bee, Joe Ladue, Fred Gruder, Pat Pelly, and Frank Etzel.8)
The Bee family left the Yukon in 1921.9) Austin Bee returned to Carmacks around 1933 to prospect and help his grandmother run the fox farm after his grandfather, Frank Back, died. Austin staked some claims on Mount Freegold in the winter of 1933/34, and he and his father, Tom Bee, prospected there in the summer of 1934.10) They flew in supplies from Skagway to Whitehorse and then to Wolf Lakes near Mt. Freegold, and dog team freighted to Freegold from there.11) Tom, Austin, and Fred Jennings were prospecting claims staked on Emmons Hill by Austin in 1933. They built a cabin and a cookhouse. The claims were staked on the advice of Fritz Guder who had found promising float there.12) The men returned in 1935/36 to continue their work on the Emmons Hill claim.13) The camp grew to include a crew and a camp cook.14) George Fairclough and one of the Van Bibbers were freighting goods into the Freegold area at that time.15)