Klondike Joe Boyle used some of his gold fortune to assemble Boyle’s Mounted Machine Gun Detachment, later to become the Yukon Motor Machine Gun Battery. (Wikipedia)

Klondike Joe and the Yukon Motor Machine Gun Battery

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

They called him Klondike Joe Boyle and, true to his name, he was an adventurer, an entrepreneur, a passionate Canadian and, by his own description, a fighting Irishman born in Toronto.

By times sailor, prizefighter, sourdough, spy and royal confidant, the son of Irish immigrants was among the first to employ large-scale mining techniques in the gold fields of Canada’s Yukon Territory.

No friends to the environment, Boyle and others swept in on the heels of the Klondike Gold Rush, replacing prospectors’ sluices and pans with enormous electric-powered dredges, taking millions of ounces of gold from the creeks and waterways while wreaking devastation on the virgin landscape.

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Lieutenant Harry Colebourn and Winnie, 1914. (Wikipedia)

When Harry met Winnie: The WW I story behind a classic children’s book

STORY BY ALEX BOWERS

On Aug. 21, 1921, a one-year-old Christopher Robin Milne—son of British writer A.A. Milne—received a particularly special birthday present.

The teddy bear, gifted to him by his parents, became a beloved companion called Edward. Its name, however, was destined to change in 1924 when the boy, aged around four, saw the real thing at London Zoo with his father.

There, he met Winnie, a tame female black bear long accustomed to human contact since her earliest days in the Canadian wilderness. Inspired and enamoured, Christopher Robin rechristened his Teddy in her honour.

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