James A. McKinnon
James A. McKinnon was a friend and neighbour of George MacKenzie from Malagash, Nova Scotia. They set out in 1897 and attempted the Stikine River and Teslin Trail route north before crossing the mountains on the White Pass or Chilkoot trail. In March 1904, George MacKenzie was hired as a clerk in the assistant Gold Commissioner’s office in Dawson. F.X. Gosslin was let go during a major clean-up of the office and, in 1912, George was appointed Gold Commissioner and crown timber and land agent under Commissioner George Black. James A. MacKinnon filled George’s old job in the office.1)
James McKinnon was living in Dawson and was an active member of the Yukon Rifle Association in 1915.2) He enlisted to serve in the First World War and joined Boyle’s Yukon Battery.3)
The Yukon Battery was amalgamated with Black's 17th Machine Gun Company in 1918. Lieutenant James A. McKinnon, William Kenneth Currie, Ernest Lawrence Peppard, and Aubrey Forrest were the only ones remaining from the Yukon Battery and the forty-nine men who had posed under the “Dawson to Berlin” banner in 1914. The rest had been killed, wounded, taken prisoner, or had been transferred to other units.4)