Prisoners of the North Read Online Free
Author: Pierre Berton
giving up smoking next,” his cellmate retorted. But in that moment Boyle had made up his mind.
“A good idea,” he told his companion and handed him his expensive cigar holder. “Keep it,” he said. “I’ll have no further use for it.” For the rest of his life he was a non-smoker as well as an active temperance advocate.
Mildred might have been a frivolous spendthrift (her detractors called her “Minky” because of her love for costly furs), but she went through six pregnancies for him (two of which were miscarriages) in the nine years of their marriage. Boyle, now engaged in a lucrative feed and grain shipping business in New York, had little time for her. He was far too busy trying to get backing for a grandiose scheme to establish a national chain of grain elevators. His plans collapsed and so did his marriage.
In the divorce that followed, the couple divided custody of their surviving children. Mildred’s son Bill by her earlier marriage went with her along with the youngest of Boyle’s progeny, Susan and another daughter yet unborn to be named Charlotte. The two older children, Flora and Joe, Jr., went with Boyle. Boyle’s relationship with the younger girls, who remained with Mildred, was virtually non-existent after the divorce. It was as if he had erased them from his memory. With Flora and Joe it could best be described as distant. He shrugged them off and saw them sporadically during his various ventures, but it was never an intimate relationship. He had other concerns, other ambitions, and he put these first.
Flora Boyle remembered the first of many partings after the divorce when Boyle brought his two children home to their grandparents in Woodstock. “We were taken to the railroad station where, after kissing us goodbye and telling us he would be back soon, father stepped on a train and was whisked away into the darkness. We must have made a forlorn picture, Joe and I, standing on that old station platform, waving our little handkerchiefs to our handsome young father, who was just thirty. Fortunately, we were too young to realize that he was off on another great adventure, without the faintest idea when we would meet again. I think we were too stunned to cry, our poor little minds could not grasp the situation entirely.… We were living in a new strange world and our greatest feeling was one of awe and loneliness.”
Joe Boyle in 1900 with his daughter Flora, who worshipped him from afar .
Boyle was off on an exhibition tour with Frank Slavin, the “Sydney Cornstalk,” who had ambitions to become a heavyweight-boxing champion. When the pair reached Victoria and heard whispers of a great gold strike in the Yukon, they lost no time in heading north, first to Juneau, Alaska, and then on to Skagway. By mid-July 1897, when the news of the great find burst upon the world, they had already reached the foot of the White Pass. A pack trail of sorts had just been opened to the summit. Boyle and Slavin hooked up to a party of fifteen men and a pack train of twenty-five horses, but the going was so tough that half the company turned back. The others elected Boyle captain to go on past the summit to blaze a trail through thirty miles of wilderness for the party to follow. At Bennett Lake, the headwaters of the Yukon, a growing number of tenderfeet were already sawing lumber for boats to take them downriver to Dawson. Here Boyle’s foresight paid off. In the tons of goods he had packed over the trail was a twenty-four-foot collapsible boat he had purchased to take Slavin and himself through the headwater lakes and onto the great river, all the way to the city of gold.
Down the hissing Yukon they floated, propelled by a stiff current, drifting through a land of lonely prospectors panning for wages in the sandbars at the mouths of nameless creeks. This was the Cordilleran spine of the Americas, and everywhere, it seemed, were flickers of gold for those patient enough to seek it. Within that backbone of
“A good idea,” he told his companion and handed him his expensive cigar holder. “Keep it,” he said. “I’ll have no further use for it.” For the rest of his life he was a non-smoker as well as an active temperance advocate.
Mildred might have been a frivolous spendthrift (her detractors called her “Minky” because of her love for costly furs), but she went through six pregnancies for him (two of which were miscarriages) in the nine years of their marriage. Boyle, now engaged in a lucrative feed and grain shipping business in New York, had little time for her. He was far too busy trying to get backing for a grandiose scheme to establish a national chain of grain elevators. His plans collapsed and so did his marriage.
In the divorce that followed, the couple divided custody of their surviving children. Mildred’s son Bill by her earlier marriage went with her along with the youngest of Boyle’s progeny, Susan and another daughter yet unborn to be named Charlotte. The two older children, Flora and Joe, Jr., went with Boyle. Boyle’s relationship with the younger girls, who remained with Mildred, was virtually non-existent after the divorce. It was as if he had erased them from his memory. With Flora and Joe it could best be described as distant. He shrugged them off and saw them sporadically during his various ventures, but it was never an intimate relationship. He had other concerns, other ambitions, and he put these first.
Flora Boyle remembered the first of many partings after the divorce when Boyle brought his two children home to their grandparents in Woodstock. “We were taken to the railroad station where, after kissing us goodbye and telling us he would be back soon, father stepped on a train and was whisked away into the darkness. We must have made a forlorn picture, Joe and I, standing on that old station platform, waving our little handkerchiefs to our handsome young father, who was just thirty. Fortunately, we were too young to realize that he was off on another great adventure, without the faintest idea when we would meet again. I think we were too stunned to cry, our poor little minds could not grasp the situation entirely.… We were living in a new strange world and our greatest feeling was one of awe and loneliness.”
Joe Boyle in 1900 with his daughter Flora, who worshipped him from afar .
Boyle was off on an exhibition tour with Frank Slavin, the “Sydney Cornstalk,” who had ambitions to become a heavyweight-boxing champion. When the pair reached Victoria and heard whispers of a great gold strike in the Yukon, they lost no time in heading north, first to Juneau, Alaska, and then on to Skagway. By mid-July 1897, when the news of the great find burst upon the world, they had already reached the foot of the White Pass. A pack trail of sorts had just been opened to the summit. Boyle and Slavin hooked up to a party of fifteen men and a pack train of twenty-five horses, but the going was so tough that half the company turned back. The others elected Boyle captain to go on past the summit to blaze a trail through thirty miles of wilderness for the party to follow. At Bennett Lake, the headwaters of the Yukon, a growing number of tenderfeet were already sawing lumber for boats to take them downriver to Dawson. Here Boyle’s foresight paid off. In the tons of goods he had packed over the trail was a twenty-four-foot collapsible boat he had purchased to take Slavin and himself through the headwater lakes and onto the great river, all the way to the city of gold.
Down the hissing Yukon they floated, propelled by a stiff current, drifting through a land of lonely prospectors panning for wages in the sandbars at the mouths of nameless creeks. This was the Cordilleran spine of the Americas, and everywhere, it seemed, were flickers of gold for those patient enough to seek it. Within that backbone of
Readers choose
Tawny Taylor
S.A. Hunter
John Masters
Louise Spiegler
P. S. Power
Mary McDonough
Candace Calvert
Marilu Mann
Samuel Fuller
Anastasia Maltezos