Charles Irvain Tennant (1864 – 1959)
Charles Tennant was a North-West Mounted Police constable under Colonel Steele at Tagish in 1898. He paid his way out of the service and went to work in the Dawson Gold Commissioner’s office.1) He left Dawson enroute to Ottawa to join the second Canadian contingent commissioned for active duty in the Transvaal during the Boer War.2) He was also a veteran of the First World War.3)
Tennant bought the Straight's Second Hand store from Yoneda Okada in April 1931.4) In 1937, Tennant was acting as past president of the Yukon Order of Pioneers.5) He never failed to turn out for the pioneer meetings and was always on hand to help when work needs to be done.6)
By 1947, Tennant was Dawson’s largest individual property owner.7)The Charles Tennant fonds at the Yukon Archives includes correspondence, business records and photographs. The records were removed from Tennant's cabin by the Glenbow Foundation in 1959. The final clearing of papers from his cabin was done with shovels, as the papers had become pressed to the floor over the years. The records were transferred to the Yukon Archives in 1995.8)