I was born in Lakeville, New Brunswick in 1929. At 18, I left home as I always had the wanderlust. I was a cowboy in Alberta for a while then worked in a hardrock gold mine. I always wound up in a logging camp at least once a year.

I arrived in Whitehorse, Yukon, in May of 1956. I worked for construction outfits and as a truck driver for White Pass Freight Company.

In 1960, I inherited $19,000.00 and built a sports fishing camp on Aishihik Lake and lost it in three years. I had good fishing and everything I needed to operate it. I just lacked that one main ingredient--customers.

I then got on with the game department as predator control officer, poisoning wolves. I did this for five winters and was public camp ground attendant in the summer. The spring of 1967 I got on with the Department of Fisheries and was sent up north to Dawson City as Federal Fisheries Guardian looking after the commercial fishermen fishing for salmon in the Yukon River.

I made a poor fish warden. I am too easy going. I hated to lay charges on anyone. I did have to once. There were a couple of characters running nets on a stretch of river closed to gill nets. I warned them five times; then had to bust them or lose my job. I did it in such a way that when they came out of court after the judge had fined them, we adjourned to the nearest bar and got happily inebriated together.

In 1968, the person taking out the local river tour moved back to the USA. Here was my chance to be my own boss. I fixed up my 24 foot river boat with seats and bent birch poles up in an arch and put canvas on it to keep out the rain. Named it Gussie Lamour after one of the dance girls of 1898. It carried six passengers. I bought a 40 foot river boat that summer and fixed it up with a top deck to keep the rain out, a dummy pilot house, a paddle wheel on the stern that just free wheeled. I ran it with a forty horse power outboard, lots of ginger bread (fret work) and named it "Klondike Kate" after the famous star of the Palace Grand Theatre when Arizona Charlie Meadows owned it in 1898 and the early nineteen hundreds. I ran that for two years. Then I got a barge 40 feet long, 10 feet wide and converted it to a little 40 passenger paddle wheel tour boat. I then got an island and built a 40 x 30 dining hall, kitchen, storage house, smoke house, black smith shop and one small cabin. I experimented on the best way to lightly smoke and barbeque salmon. I had it ready to go in 1978.

Then fortunately I realized that I was smart enough to know that I wasn't smart enough to run a business; I was too easy going to boss a crew of three people on the island.

I sold the whole operation to a friend of mine. He wouldn't buy it unless I went with it. So I am seven years later still Captain of the Yukon Lou.

It was lack of promotion and not being known that I lost my fishing camp. So I started to be a publicity hound when I started the river tours. I pulled off the first nude beauty contest north of the 60th parallel. I managed to get three minutes in a 30 minute documentary film that was shown across Europe for 5 winters. With the help of the film and the world famous "Sour Toe Cocktail," the media started contacting me.

I took out a midnight booze cruise on the Yukon Lou and on the way back bombed the government ferry with bottles and broken glass was flying all over their steel deck. I almost went to jail over that. The next evening I took a bottle of rum to the ferry crew and they got drunk and I caught flack for that too.

Then I pulled off the first snow ball fight in history on June 21, the longest day of the year. I went over on the Top of the World Highway (the road from Dawson to Alaska) where there was a snowdrift that still hadn't melted and preceded to fill the back of my pick-up. I hired a driver that had to stay sober. Myself and some of my friends rode in the back, charged into every bar and cafe and peppered the patrons with snowballs. Then up to the Midnight Dome, a mountain overlooking Dawson where they have a party every year on June 21st, where we continued the fun.

I had over 300 people involved in a snowball fight. We still had snow left so everybody was using the back of my truck to cool their beer and wine. Naturally the fee was we drink free. It was 3 pm the next day before we got back to Dawson.

There was a TV crew in so I got all the Can Can girls from Diamond Tooth Gerties Gambling Hall (the only legally licensed one in Canada). They did the can can on the top deck of the Yukon Lou and the TV crew filmed it from a helicopter.

My favorite write up was by my friend, Dan Sawatsky, an author and free lance writer from Whitehorse.

In that article, he billed me as the modern day Swift Water Gates, the most flamboyant of the Klondike Kings of the Days of 1898.

The Klondike Kings of '98 had millions of dollars to play with. Myself and the Klondike Kings in this book have done it on a shoe string.

There is one thing I haven't done yet but came close last fall when I had a Finland couple seriously considering getting a placer claim from me. The price was his girlfriend had to stay the winter with me.

This story is documented in the history books. A Klondike King offered a dance hall girl her weight in gold if she would stay the winter with him in his cabin. They even named the creek after her--Little Blanch. She sat on a large gold scale and he loaded the other side with gold until the scale balanced.

The gold was put in trust and she collected her gold the next spring--138 pounds of it at $15.50 per ounce.

I unfortunately haven't got 138 pounds of gold, but I do have a claim on a side creek on Upper Bonanza. It is a 1,500 foot long discovery claim. The creek above and the two below are producers of gold. I have never gotten the claim opened up but it has a good potential.

My offer to the ladies: this claim for one summer June 1 to September 15 with me. This offer goes out to ladies 20 years to 35 years old: send a picture and resume to:

Capt. Dick Stevenson
Box 1
Dawson City, Yukon
CANADA
YOB 1G0