Edward James Keenan (1919 - 2011)
Edward James Keenan was born in Randelstown, Northern Ireland and came to Canada as an infant. The family settled in southern British Columbia and moved several times during the depression to look for work. Ed apprenticed as a shoemaker but soon found work as an underground miner for the Polaris Taku Mine in north-western British Columbia. He moved onto Whitehorse and later worked at the Whitehorse Inn Hotel. During the construction of the Alaska Highway, he purchased a portable sawmill and was awarded a contract to supply lumber to the United States military for constructing bridges. After the highway was completed, Ed drove trucks and buses for the British Yukon Navigation (BYN) Company on the Alaska Highway and the North Canol Road. In the 1950s he worked as a civilian at the U.S. Army McIntyre Creek pump station, and he built a small house there for his family. While there, he became the Labatt’s sales representative for the Yukon. He left the pumping station to lease and then purchase the Whitehorse Inn Hotel which he operated for many years. After the sale of the hotel in 1977, he and wife Kathy and daughter Jennifer retired to the lower mainland where he died in 2011. He was survived by his first wife Gloria and son Bill and missed by his second wife Kathy, son Edward (Debbie) of Whitehorse, two daughters in Alberta and two brothers in British Columbia.1)