Jack J. Elliot
Jack Elliot was an artist and a chief engineer on the Yukon River sternwheelers. The steamer crews, especially the engineers, had a lot of monotonous idle time and they took up hobbies. Jack Elliot went on to make a good business out of making and selling mastodon ivory beads and other carved objects. 1) In December 1924, Lady Byng was presented with a necklace of mastodon ivory beads made in Jack Elliots’s modern little factory called Yukon Ivory. 2) Jack’s wife Isa ran the store while Jack was working on the boats, mostly the steamer Whitehorse, during the summer, and he made up the stock in the winters. Their daughter, Evelyn Brunlees, helped to run the store. 3) The Elliots opened a branch of the ivory shop in Carcross in June 1937. 4) Isa ran the Carcross shop and Evelyn ran the Whitehorse store. 5)
Rev. W.J. Lyons drowned in Lake Laberge in 1898, and his grave is on a trail behind the NWMP building at Lower Laberge. The marker was placed on the grave in 1944 by the resident telegraph operator and the marker was made by Jack Elliot, chief engineer on the S.S. Whitehorse. The marker incorrectly marks the date of death as 1902. 6)
In 1947, after Charlie Baxter’s death, Jack Elliot, Ed Barker, Irvine Ray, and Wardie Forest bought the Baxter ranch in Whitehorse for about $45,000. 7) The partners wanted to run an auto court, but Jim Smith convinced them that that would be seasonal, while a grocery would be busy year-round. The store generated money from day one and became a big operation. In 1954, Bruce Sung, who had leased the Tourist Services restaurant and operated as Columbia Caterers, bought out the partners and kept Smith as the general manager. 8)
The Elliots retired to southern British Columbia in 1954 and the Brunlees purchased the ivory business. Howard and Evelyn were shareholders in the company that built the Taku Hotel in the 1960s. They eventually bought out the other partners and then sold the hotel in 1972. The Brunlees sold the Yukon Ivory Shop in 1978 and left the Yukon. Isa Elliot died in 1996. 9)
Jack Elliot was interviewed in 1978 by Cal Waddington for Parks and Historic Sites, Yukon River Aural History Project. (Yukon Archives, Acc # 81/32)