Julian Lawrence Alan Kula Kulan (1921 - 1977)
Al Kulan was born in Winnipeg to Lawrence and Katherine Kula. Kulan’s mother died in childbirth and his father sent the six children to live with relatives. Al grew up in Toronto where he changed his name to Kulan. He joined the Army when he turned eighteen in 1939. From 1941 to 1945 he served in Italy, Sicily, Belgium, France, and Germany and became a sergeant in the tank corps. He was with the troops who liberated the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen in 1945. Back in Canada, he spent nine months in the Northwest Territories and then, in 1947, he went to prospect in the Cassiar country and around Lower Post.1) Kulan was an early graduate from the prospecting courses given in the Yukon by Dick Campbell.2) He went to Watson Lake as a grader operator working on the highway for the Canadian Army. He met Winnifred [Wynne] Camsell when she was waitressing in Lower Post, British Columbia and they married in 1950. 3)
When Al, his wife, and young son stopped at Bert Law's Silver Dollar Lodge near Johnson's Crossing, Bert invited them to live at the Lodge and use it as a base of operations. Al insisted on a full partnership and an equal share of the any profits. The Kulans moved in for nearly a year and Al organized prospecting parties. Al was fairly incompetent, and Bert Law knew less, but they created a homemade strategy and five-year plan that included Ross River First Nation trappers.4) Law continued to grubstake and at one time was supporting up to ten First Nation families whose dogs were used for transportation. Bert supplied groceries to the families so the men were free to go prospecting. The First Nations men pointed out mineralized showings they had known about for years. Art John spoke fairly good English. He was born in Livingstone and his family died in an early 1920s flu epidemic, so he went to live with his grandmother in Ross River. He had trapped and hunted in the Ross River area for twenty years and was one of the original surveyors of the Canol Road for the US Army. John passed on mineral identification skills from Kulan to his First Nation companions who proved to be good at identifying minerals.5)
Law had bills over $4,000 by this time and warned Al of an approaching end to the money. Al remembered turning down investment money from John MacIsaac of MacIsaac Construction. That company had been contracted to build the Cassiar Road in 1952 and MacIsaac often stopped at the Silver Dollar Lodge in his travels. In mid-June 1952, Al told MacIsaac that Joe Ladue had supplied a lead to an interesting Little Salmon mineralized zone. MacIsaac grubstaked Al to look at the prospect and MacIsaac paid for the airfare for a 10% interest. The partnership dissolved at the end of August when Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting rejected an option on the Kulan and Tosella lead-zinc claims.6)
Al and Joe Etzel were to look at the Little Salmon area in early September, but they were weathered out. Al organized a trip up the Canol Road in late September but weather interfered again. Bert Law refused to support a 1953 expedition and relinquished interest in the Porcupine property. Al made a new verbal agreement with MacIsaac who, for a 20% interest, paid one-way airfare for Al and Chinery Sterriah to re-examine the nickel-copper showing. They prospected for 11 days, staked claims and then walked the 150 miles home. In May, Al and Art John drove William Smitheringale (geologist for Conwest Exploration) to the Porcupine property on the North Canol, but it was too low grade.7)
Al and Art John then were guests on a Con west flight into Little Salmon Lake's west end to a copper prospect. Smitheringale, Law, and Joe Ladue travelled on to a lead-zinc discovery for which an option agreement was signed but the prospectors never received any payments. By June, Al and Bert were broke and MacIsaac had failed to keep up his part in the agreement.8)
Al went on one last trip to look for radioactive material in the Anvil Range. An unpaying guest at the Silver Dollar, Peter Thompson, replaced Law in the field and the crew included Jack Ladue, brothers Robert and Joe Etzel, and Art John, whose boat they used. Ten days later they were short of food and turned back. Al had never believed the First Nation's stories about gold at Vangorda Creek but they stopped at the mouth, about 30 miles downstream from Ross River. They split into two parties, Peter headed for the ridge and Al moved downstream. Al was looking for large sheets of mica called “white man's windows” by his informants. Paul Sterriah, a man afflicted with polio, was unable to travel on his own in the bush but was sometimes piggybacked by his associates on prospecting adventures. His greatest contribution was telling stories. Sterriah had described a rusty gossan to Al who located the great brown stain and a mineral discovery of galena and spahalerite.9)
In July, Al and Bert tried without success to interest Ron Price, resident geologist for Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting. MacIsaac promised to take the samples to Alec Berry, a Conwest employee who could assay them in the company's Keno Hill lab. Prospectors Airways heard of the discovery and after Ted Chisholm examined the samples they flew out to the location. Bert and Al staked discovery claims over the visible outcrop that became the Vangorda's focal point, about seven miles up from the mouth of the creek and Prospector's Airways optioned the property.10) MacIsaac had run out of money and was in default on his partnership agreement. In an altered agreement on September 1954, Prospector's Airways decided against making any more payments to the prospectors until an extensive drilling program was carried out. Kulan and Law accepted a 10% reduction in payments and a drop to 12% vendor's share in Vangorda Mines. MacIsaac filed a lawsuit, claiming a 20% interest for his grubstake.11)
The court case took two years before Al and Bert made an out-of-court settlement in order to pay the First Nations prospectors. After the dust settled, little money was left and the First Nation accepted less than their full 40-percent remuneration. The First Nations prospectors had to sue for their portion and Kulan and Law paid off their lawyer. Stock certificates, issued in their names were turned over to the Lawyer but later burned in a fire that destroyed the lawyer's Whitehorse hotel and offices.12)
Kulan established Whitehorse +Dairies with his earnings and had some left over to continue prospecting. Bert was left with only a $25,000 house for his efforts and an additional $15,000 had been spent during the two-year waiting period. He abandoned prospecting, grubstaking, and the Silver Dollar Lodge, and moved to Ross River in 1955. He bought the trading post from T&D and expedited supplies downriver to Vangorda Camp.13) Kulan was based at Vangorda Camp as a Prospectors Airways employee from 1954 to 1956, earning a monthly salary and the usual five-percent prospector bonus for any of his finds. After Prospectors Airways was merged out of existence in 1963, Kulan prospected for Kerr Addison. 14)
In 1964, Kulan and Aaro Aho formed Dynasty Explorations.15) In 1974 Kulan and associate Gunar Penikis found some minerals in the Blow River/Rapid River area of north-eastern Yukon. There were excellent crystal specimens of lazulite, wardite, augelite, arrojadite, several other identified phosphate minerals, and several never-before-seen minerals one of which was named kulanite. Kulan gifted the Yukon with exquisite crystals of lazulite in 1974 and they were displayed in the east side MLA offices in the Yukon Administration Building. In 1976, lazulite was proclaimed as Yukon’s official gemstone. Some of the minerals were donated to the Royal Ontario Museum for identification and display.16)
In early 1977 Al, Wynne and their three children moved from Ross River to Vernon, British Columbia. That summer Kulan was in the Yukon on an exploration trip.17) In September, John “Jack” Rolls Sr. shot and killed Kulan. It happened in a crowded bar, and after the shot Rolls walked away and finished his drink. Rolls testified he had felt persecuted by Kulan.18) Rolls had purchased the Welcome Inn in Ross River from Kulan in 1967 and sold it back to Kulan in 1973. Rolls was dissatisfied with the deal. He was a mentally unstable alcoholic who blamed Kulan for the failures in his life. Rolls was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.19)
Other than mining, Al Kulan is remembered for owning the only Rolls Royce car in the territory at the time, and for his “castle,” a $130,000 home built in Ross River in the early 1960s.20) Al Kulan was posthumously inducted into the Yukon Prospectors’ Association Hall of Fame in 1988, and into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame in Toronto in January 2005.21) In 1989, the Alan Kulan Memorial Lectureship Series was established as a trust fund jointly sponsored by the University of Toronto, the Yukon Chamber of Mines, and the Yukon Geoscience Forum. The lectures alternate annually between Whitehorse and Toronto.22) Mount Kulan, in the Tay River region near Faro, is named in Kulan’s honour.23)