Dick North (1929 - 2013)
Dick North was born in New Jersey and grew up in Long Island, West Virginia, and New Hampshire. He served in Italy during the Second World War and then earned degrees at George Washington University and at the University of California Berkeley. He wrote some articles for the Territorial Enterprise of Virginia City and was hired by the Las Vegas Review Journal. He transferred to the Daily Alaska Empire in Juneau, another newspaper in the same chain.1)
In 1964, North visited Rudy and Yvonne Burian at Stewart Island on the Yukon River. They told him the Jack London’s story To Build a Fire was a retelling of an actual event that predated London’s tenancy on a nearby Henderson Creek mining claim.2) North worked with Joe and Victor Henry, Robin and Yvonne Burian, Eleanor Millard, Russ Kingman, and actor Eddie Albert to compile evidence about the location of London’s cabin on Henderson Creek. London’s cabin was found, disassembled, and rebuilt into two cabins – one was shipped to Oakland, and the other was installed in Dawson at the future home of the Jack London Centre.3)
North’s collection of memorabilia was the inspiration for the Jack London museum located next to the cabin. The Klondike Visitors Association (KVA) gave the idea of a museum a trial run in the Klondike Thawing Machine building owned by Parks Canada. It was a modest success and the association built a large log cabin for the collection and interpretation. Much of North’s last book, Sailor on Snowshoes, was drafted on a manual typewriter that he donated to the Dawson Museum, and which now sits in the Jack London Centre. A significant number of visitors to the site come because they have read North’s books.4)
In the 1980s and 1990s, North was the curator of the Jack London museum at the site. Over the years North wrote many books about the north including The Mad Trapper of Rat River, Trackdown, The Lost Patrol, Arctic Exodus, The Man who Didn’t Fit (fiction), and Sailor on Snowshoes (Autobiography).5)
In 2003, Dick North received a Commissioner’s Award for Public Service.6) In 2004, Dawson named a street in the Dome Division to honour him. In 2007, North was appointed as a member of the Order of Canada to recognize his lifetime of service to a community and field of interest.7)