Ernest Joseph Corp
Ernest Joseph Corp came to the Klondike in 1897/98 overland from the Mackenzie River and Hess River to the Stewart River.1) Corp met Dave Ryan in San Francisco during the Klondike gold rush.2) Corp and Dave Ryan mined together on the Lower Hunker creek claim. They both made $100,000 or more and then spent their money on worthless lode claims on Keno Hill.3) Ryan’s back was broken when he was working in a shaft on one of their claims and Corp looked after him as he couldn’t do any hard work after that.4)
Corp was a member of the Yukon Council for the Mayo district from 1934 to 1939.5) Hugh Bostock met Corp in 1943 and considered him a very capable man as a blacksmith, carpenter, and cook, as well as being an inventor and a published author and poet.6) Corp was the official postmaster in Keno for several years starting in 1946.7) He was acclaimed to the Yukon Territorial Council representing Mayo in 1947.8)
Brodie Hicks met Corp and Ryan in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He thought of them as indistinguishable. After a bit of rum, they could spin a number of tales about the early days in Dawson. One man was Australian and the other American and they unofficially shared the postmaster position. They told Hicks that the Australian could not neither read nor write and the American could not legally hold the government job.9)
Ernest Corp retired to White Rock, British Columbia in the early 1960s.10)