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Daniel Van Bibber (1913 - 2002)
Dan Van Bibber was born in a tent at the west end of Tatlman Lake where Mica Creek flows out to Taata Lake and then on to the Pelly River. His parents were Eliza and Ira Van Bibber and they had fifteen children. Leta, May and Abe were older than Dan. Younger than Dan (by age) were Archie, Alex, Helen (d.1933), John James (JJ), Pat, Kathleen, George (d. 1977), Lucy, Linch, a baby(died at birth), and Theodore (Dode). Dan's birth place was a favourite camp for generations of Tutchone who gaffed fish and shot ducks at the camp. His mother was raised at the mouth of the McQuesten River. His father came north from West Virginia during the gold rush.1)
Dan was an accomplished man in the bush, and no one worried about him when he went out alone. He was a guide for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police a number of times. Dan was the first of the Van Bibber boys to enlist for service in the Second World War. Archie and Alex went east for basic training in the summer. Most of the boys joined the service when the war was almost over. Dan was the only one to see active service and he went right into Germany. They made him a sniper because he had been shooting guns all his life. In 1945, Dan had a six-week furlough and snowshoed about two hundred miles from Dawson to the Nation and Charlie creeks area where brothers Pat and JJ were trapping. He did about forty to fifty miles a day, pulling some food and his eiderdown in his little Ice King toboggan. JJ thought he was toughest man in the Yukon.2)
Having volunteered for services in the Pacific, Dan left Whitehorse in early September 1945 to report for duty in Vancouver.3) He returned to the Yukon after the war.