The Klondike Gold Rush, Skagway, and the Chilkoot Pass are names firmly etched into the annals of frontier history of the Pacific Northwest. In the mid and late 1800s prospectors from near and far poured into BC and the Yukon seeking their fame and fortune in gold. A few got rich. Most went broke. In the 1940s the dream was still alive as one man arrived in the northern wilderness searching for the mother lode. Such a man was Yukon Joe. He lived in harmony with nature and called the forest wilderness his home. Roaming along mountain streams with his trail dogs he panned for gold, painted, and kept a diary. Yukon, the fabled land of gold, seemed to hold him like a spell, but first his early beginnings.
Paul Joseph was the firstborn of Lukean and Anna Prokopchuk on December 15, 1905, place unknown. In 1911 his Ukrainian parents homesteaded in the Watson Creek district six miles south of Arran, where his two sisters were born. They were named Olga and Nellie. His mother died in 1916 at age twenty-five. Paul was only eleven. That same year his father met Barbara Yacyshyn, married again, and continued to work on the land, and in his spare time as a blacksmith in Arran. In later years it became his permanent trade. Together they raised eight more children.
Young Paul was a loner. He enjoyed exploring the creeks, tramping the woods, and trapping wild animals in season. His non-compliant lifestyle at home and at school resulted in him leaving at sixteen. On his first job as a farmhand near the village of Bowsman he learned to work with tools, milk cows, make hay, harvest grain and operate a steam engine. He drifted about, occasionally working for farmers, never staying long. He took an interest in oil painting and learned the basic skills from an elderly lady artist. His youthful age and adventurous style caused him to loaf around, suffer, strain, stumble, and starve, but he struggled on. A friendly sort of fellow in Moose Jaw in 1923 felt sorry for Paul and allowed him to sleep in his deluxe automobile in return for guarding it at night. It was the notorious Chicago gangster Al Capone doing some routine business in the illicit liquor industry. Moose Jaw was then the sin capital of the prairies with its illegal gambling, prostitution and Chinese opium dens. At the age of eighteen Paul headed for the mountain railways and sawmills of British Columbia never to be seen again by his parents or step-family. He abandoned the name Paul and preferred to be called Joe.
Joe's experience with steam power got him work as a fireman on the Kettle Valley run out of Trail in the Kootenays. The railroad was built to serve mining camps. It was there that Joe first saw gold. Two years stoking coal and he became restless, packed his knapsack in 1926, and left Trail to work as a lumberjack in Castlegar. By 1930 the depression was on and Joe was back on the tracks, not as train crew, but riding the rails.
Ten years of no employment saw Joe living in hobo jungles and moving from place to place. He was able to grub-stake himself with income from trapping fur-bearing animals; the sport he developed on the Watson Creek farm. Whenever he couldn't earn meals working on the odd job, he went without and often lived on dandelion leaves, mushrooms, wild fruit, willow bark tea, and whatever else he could find. With much idle time to spare, he practiced oil painting that he took a liking to in the days when he worked on the fields near Bowsman.
Joe joined the armed forces in 1939 and served his country during World War II, except when confined to cold and cramped creature comforts in the cooler. His rebellious streak occasionally provoked serious conflicts with the strictly regimented military system. At war's end Joe moved aimlessly from job to job which included the shipyards on Vancouver Island. He painted landscapes of coastal scenery wherever he camped in the summer of 1945, and sold his art-works to supplement his income. The paintings were signed "Joe". Whether it stemmed from an ancient wrong, or from his fascination for the freshness, freedom and farness of the wilderness, Joe turned away from civilization and began life as a prospector. He had learned a lot about gold mining from old prospectors while riding freight trains in the Kootenays. He continued to paint, and identified his works of art by location. Many of his paintings were simply titled "Yukon" with his signature Joe below the title. And so he became known as Yukon Joe.
Early accounts of Yukon Joe's exploits were provided by the effusive Ma Murray, editor of the Gold River - Lilooet News who was well-known for her down-to-earth reporting and barbed editorials that typically ended "and that's fer damshur". Irish lassie Margaret (Ma) Lally had left school at an early age, and worked in a Kansas saddlery where she slipped notes in with the saddles being sent to Canada in the hopes of meeting cowboys that might reply. Her imaginative novel approach took her to the Caribou ranchlands and foothills of the Canadian Rockies in 1912, where she married and settled into a lifelong newspaper business.
A special painting in 1961 by Yukon Joe for a young boy who was looking for a Mother's Day gift. He payed $15 for it with tips earned by carrying out groceries at Safeway's in Prince George, BC.
Yukon Joe and his pack-dogs on the way to visit Sam McGee's cabin at Pelly Ross YT, 1960.
The creeks and rivers from north of Anchorage in Alaska down to the headwaters of the Bridge River in Lillooet country were prospected by Joe. If he found traces of gold he would camp there for a few days and then move on. His equipment and supplies were limited to the load that he and his dogs could carry in their back-packs. Nature provided most of the food. He spent the summers prospecting and the winters "trapping fers".
Yukon Joe kept a diary on pocket ledgers and workman's time-books. There were thirteen in all from 1946 to 1961, hand-stitched and glued with a paste of flour and water into an olive-green cloth-bound hard cover kept closed by a wrist-watch strap. From time-to-time the whereabouts of this 600-page collection was unknown and presumed lost, but it re-surfaced worn and water-marked, and is preserved at the BC Archives on Belleville Street in Victoria, File E/D/P94. The mesmerizing tales, on pages some that are stuck together not having been turned since first written, grip your eyes and quicken your pulse as you sense his thrill not of having gold but of finding it. He was driven by a hunger, though not of the belly kind, that took him to the limits of human survival out in the great alone. He became a legend in his own lifetime.
