Tommy McGinty (b. 1919)
Tommy McGinty was born at ABC Creek on the Yukon River below Fort Selkirk. His parents were Chief Peter and Susie McGinty. Tommy’s sister Ellen was four years older and brother Harry was three or four years younger. The family lived at Fort Selkirk but trapped downriver. Around 1931, the family moved up the Pelly River to McGinty Island near Cody Creek. They built a small cabin called Stable Cabin and lived there for five years, hunting and trapping. Tommy's grandfather was Old Chief Na-Sa-Cha. He was chief of the Selkirk Band and when he died, Tommy's father became chief. Chief Peter McGinty died in the 1960s and Tommy became chief but, because he had little little education, he gave up the role after three years.1)
Tommy cut wood along the Yukon River for Happy LePage at Carmacks and Yukon Crossing and then cut wood at Minto for Walter Isreal. They were both good men to work for and paid $3.50 a cord. It was hard work with a cross-cut saw. Swede saws came on the market in 1939 and made the job easier. Tommy could cut three to four cords of wood a day. By the time the steamers stopped running in the 1950s, Water Isreal and his wife Leta had started a small trading post and coffee shop at Minto. When Walter was short of groceries, Tommy and some of the boys would hitch up the dogs and go down the Yukon River to Fort Selkirk to bring back some groceries for Walter's Trading Post.2)
Tommy and Annie Joe were married in 1953 in the Minto Anglican church by Bishop Greenwood. Annie's father, Ben Joe, had moved his large family to Fort Selkirk from Russel Creek by way of the Macmillan River in 1944 or ‘45. Tommy and Annie had five children: three daughters and two sons. Tommy had a cabin at Minto and a trap line up Big Creek where he has been trapping for over forty years. Tommy and his brother were two of the best hunters around Pelly Crossing.3)
After the steamers stopped running, everyone moved to Minto and then as the road was put through from Whitehorse to Mayo Landing, everyone moved to Pelly Crossing. Tommy worked on the ferry barge at Pelly Crossing for a short time and then got a job cutting lagging for the mines. He would go back to Minto in the winter and work on his trap line. He was well known as a craftsman of snowshoes, toboggans, sleighs, carved wooden spoons, drums, and birchbark baskets, and spoons shaped out of sheep horn. He sold the drums and baskets and Annie sold her beaded slippers, mukluks and mitts.(Kathleen Thorpe, “Tommy McGinty” In Their Honor,Ye Sa To Communications Society, 1989: 16-19.))
After he and his family moved to Pelly Crossing he and others in the village Jack Nelson's beer parlour as a gathering place and soon Toomy had a problem with alcohol. But he managed to get straight, and in 1988 was involved at Fort Selkirk teaching youth how to make bows and arrows and telling stories about the old days.(Kathleen Thorpe, “Tommy McGinty” In Their Honor,Ye Sa To Communications Society, 1989: 16-19.))
One of h Tommy's stories in published in Dominique Legros, Tommy McGinty’s Northern Tutchone Story of Crow: A First Nation Elder Recounts the Creation of the World. Hull: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 1999.