Andrew S. Grant
Andrew Grant was born in Toronto, Ontario.1) He became a missionary and a doctor.2) Reverend Grant and Reverend A.J. Sinclair arrived in Skagway together in 1898 just before Soapy Smith and Frank Reid were killed. Sinclair waited and conducted the funeral before going to Bennett to erect the church there. Grant and Reverend W.R. Dicky, a graduate of Manitoba College in Winnipeg, went on to Dawson.3) Grant built the first Presbyterian Church in Dawson and could be found twenty-two hours a day sawing logs and packing moss until the church was finished. The log building had a thatched roof topped with moss. The interior was the same logs with the bark removed. The glass windows and comfortable benches were a luxury. There was a painted floor, a table for an altar, a large stove, and the interior was lit by coal oil lamps.4) The log church, now known as St. Andrew's Church Hall, was erected with a large room in the rear that served as a manse.5)
Grant also built the Good Samaritan Hospital soon after he arrived.6) It was financed by fees and donations plus a per-diem allowance from the territorial council for indigent patients.7)
After seven years in the Yukon, Doctor and Mrs. Grant left for the winter in September 1905. Reverend John Pringle took his place during Grant’s absence.8) Grant left the Yukon permanently in the summer of 1908. Under his leadership, a fine church with a pipe organ was built to seat six hundred people.9) St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church was built in 1901 by architect Robert Moncrieff under Grant’s direction.10)
Rev. Dr. Grant continued to have large property interests in Dawson and he visited the territory from Toronto in July 1939. The Whitehorse newspaper called him one of Yukon’s heaviest capitalists.11)