Captain John Irving, the staker of the Arctic Chief Mine, was said to be as skilled at river navigation as he was eccentric in personality; handling his steamer as if it were a “spirited mare and he an accomplished rider”. Nothing seemed to give the flamboyant and energetic Irving more pleasure than to charge at full speed at some object in the river and then just in the nick of time crank the wheel in an extremely accurate measure of avoidance.
In 1898, Irving made the best time ever recorded for the St. Michael-to-Dawson run when he performed the 1500 mile up-river journey in 24 days. Apparently the delivery of the cargo was of utmost urgency, consisting mostly of wines and spirits and a passenger list composed almost entirely of theatrical people, dance hall girls and gamblers!
John Irving was born in Portland, Oregon in 1854, the son of steamboat captain Willie Irving. During the 1860s, Irving came north with his father to New Westminster on the Fraser River where they operated a steamer catering to the miners in the Caribou gold fields. Here they conducted a series of “rate wars” with other transportation companies, always coming out on top. Upon his father’s death in 1872, Irving at the age of 18 took over the company (Pioneer Lines) and within a few years he was already well known for his skill and daring at the helm. When the Cassiar Goldfields were discovered, Irving relocated to the Stikine River where he operated the steamer Onward, soon dominating trade on that stream.
Irving’s charismatic no-nonsense style, won him many friends and supporters and in 1894 he was elected to represent the Cassiar District in provincial parliament in Victoria. The riding was huge, encompassing almost the entire northern portion of the province.
Always where the action was, Irving relocated to Bennett during the Klondike gold rush of 1897-98. Here one of his companies, the John Irving Transportation Company, built two stern-wheelers, the Gleaner and the Reaper, which subsequently operated on Bennett and Tagish Lakes. At the same time he had the steamer Scotia built at Atlin to serve the transportation void there. And to connect the two lake systems, he had the 2-mile long railway, the Scotia Express built. The line operated for quite a few years shuttling tourists between the two lakes in the cute little locomotive the Duchess which today is a tourist attraction in Carcross.
By the early 1900s Irving was highly interested and involved in the mining scene, particularly in the Southern Yukon and Northwestern B.C. and along with his Arctic Chief Mine, he also had mining investments in the Kluane and Livingstone goldfields, as well as in the Windy Arm gold-silver district where his steamer Gleaner was instrumental in the regions supply and development.
In his later years Irving settled into comfortable retirement at Victoria, B.C. however, it appears the mining bug got him good, as he would often return north for leisurely prospecting trips with his old comrades. The last one he made was a fly trip to the Mack Pass in 1932 with his old friend Robert Henderson of Klondike fame. Both of the old sourdoughs now in their late 70s vowed to return and stake the rich pitchblende deposit (Pitchblende, a radioactive mineral was highly sought after to feed the new nuclear age). But it would not be, Henderson died the following year and Irving died two years later.
