Yukon who is who

William John Duncan “Jack” Dempster (1876 - 1964)

Jack Dempster was born in Wales and immigrated to Canada as a young man.¹⁾ He came to Canada in 1897 and joined the North-West Mounted Police the next year.²⁾ He was posted to the Yukon in 1898. In 1907, he started participating in the annual mid-winter 800km dog sled patrols between Dawson and Fort McPherson. The 1910/11 mail patrol was commanded by Francis Fitzgerald and included constables George Kinney and Richard Taylor, and former constable Samuel Carter as guide. They left Fort McPherson on December 21, 1910 and got lost on the trail. When the patrol failed to arrive by late February 2011, Corporal Dempster was sent to look for it with constables J.F. Fyfe and F. Turner, and First Nation guide Charlie Steward. They left on February 28, soon found abandoned gear and dog carcasses, and then found the bodies of the four men of the patrol on March 22 and 23. They were about 55km from Fort McPherson. Dempster set a new record for travel on his return trip to Dawson in eleven days. In 1912 and 1913, Dempster was tasked with making the patrol safer, and he installed trail markers, caches, and shelters. He led the patrols for several years and established several speed records including a fourteen-day round trip in 1920.³⁾

The Canadian Commissioner of Customs noted in 1913 that more than $35,000 in furs had been taken out of Rampart House region in the last years without paying any duty and the RNWMP agreed to send Corporal Dempster to open a detachment there and serve as a customs agent.⁴⁾ Dempster left Dawson for Rampart House, via Fort McPherson, on 3 January 1914. He arrived at McPherson on 1 February and left there for Rampart House on 21 February to arrive on March 2. He remained there until about mid-summer of 1917 when he returned to Dawson - a little less than three and a half years.⁵⁾ In 1917, Dempster established a trail through the Ogilvie Mountains from the Porcupine River that did not enter the United States.⁶⁾ Dempster visited Mayo in 1921 to assess the impact of the Keno Hill developments. He spent nine years in Mayo, his single longest posting, and was active in the community. In 1926, he married Sarah Catherine Smith of Nova Scotia, who was the matron at the Mayo hospital from 1924 to 1926.⁷⁾ Dempster eventually reached the rank of Inspector and retired in 1934.⁸⁾ A year before his death he was told that the newly constructed road between Dawson and Flat Creek was named the Dempster Highway in his honour.⁹⁾