Frederick Hasselberg Jr. (~1930 - 2015)
Fred Hasselberg was born and raised with four siblings on the Laird River by their Norwegian father and Kaska mother. Fred’s father arrived in the north in the 1930s and became a woodsman, trapping and hunting in the Cassiar Mountains. His parents were self-sufficient, growing their own vegetables. Fred and his siblings learned to live on the land. Fred had to build a new cabin when the cabin he had lived in since he was a child burned in 2012. The loss of the old cabin put obstacles in Fred’s plan to gain a deed to the land.1)
In 1964, Hasselberg was working at the Granduc copper mine at Stewart, British Columbia where seismic testing was being carried out on the ice field. He volunteered to be lowered eighty feet down to rescue a trapped engineer because he just did things that he saw needed to be done. In 1965, he saw the warning signs of an impending avalanche and hurried down 6,000 feet from Leduc glacier to Portal Camp. He was able to save five out the fourteen men who survived that day, and he went back a week later, in the face of continued slides, to help recover the last of the bodies. He lived in his childhood home on the Liard River until it burned around 2010, and then he built a new cabin in the same place. He was a very intelligent man and wanted to know how everything worked. He built a barge strong enough to carry a small Caterpillar up the river to one of his cabins. He piloted his small plane, a 1946 Aeronca Chief two-seater, without a license. He built a small runway and a hangar at Little Jimmy Lake, and had to put an electric fence around the site to keep the bears away. He believed in self-sustainability and tended his trapline up and down the river for decades.2)
Andy Lutz, also a skilled bushman, helped Hasselberg trap and prospect for gold. They were camped on the Liard River one time when a grizzly attacked Lutz and mauled him. Hasselberg was a few feet away in the tent and he felt around in the dark until he felt the bear and could shoot him. He was afraid of shooting Lutz by mistake. Hasselberg carried the wounded man to his barge and took him downriver to the Watson Lake hospital. This act of bravery won him a medal from Queen Elizabeth. The medal didn’t matter to Hasselberg who didn’t care for the monarchy.3) Hassleberg Lake and Hassleberg Creek in the Watson Lake area are named for the family.