Yukon who is who

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Clifford Sifton (1861 – 1929)

Clifford Sifton was a descendant of Anglo-Irish gentry who settled in Upper Canada in 1818 and 1819. He was named attorney general of Manitoba and the provincial lands commissioner in 1891 and became the minister of education in 1892. In 1896 he became minister of the interior and superintendent general of Indian affairs in Laurier’s federal cabinet. The portfolio included responsibility for immigration and the settlement of the western prairies. His department aggressively sold western Canada and favored American settlers and successful farmers from central and eastern Europe. Urban dwellers, blacks and Orientals were actively discouraged. The Geological Survey of Canada was diverted from academic science to locating mineral deposits and encouraging their development. National parks were developed for tourism and mining. He was responsible in 1899 for approving arrangements for Treaty 8 resulting in the surrender of large tracts of the north to allow for the safe passage of Klondike prospectors. Sifton had the greatest responsibility for administering the Yukon during the Klondike gold rush, and he was involved in negotiations over disputed territory in the panhandle. In 1903 Laurier appointed him the agent preparing the British case for the Alaska Boundary Tribunal. The British had the weaker case and lost in all of the crucial decisions.¹⁾

During the Klondike gold rush, the federal Department of the Interior’s main concerns for the Yukon involved maintaining Canadian sovereignty, protecting the stampeders on their journey, and collecting revenues in taxes to pay for the northern administration. Minister Clifford Sifton set up a hastily assembled group of administrators and accompanied them north as far as the summit of the White Pass.²⁾ Of the four Yukon commissioners Sifton selected before 1905 (Walsh, Ogilvie, Ross, and Congdon), only Ross was considered a success and his term was ended when he had a stroke. Under pressure from the Yukon, Sifton frequently changed mining regulations and thought large-scale mining would bring stability to the territory.³⁾