CANADIAN ELECTION

Southland Times, Issue 22758, 7 December 1935, Page 4

CANADIAN ELECTION

NEW WOMAN MEMBER. PTQNF.FR. OF KLONDYKE. Vancouver, November 6. When gold was discovered in the Klondyke, a young widow and her brother left their home in Chicago and joined the rush, following the “Trail of ’9B” over the Chilkoot Pass. At the same time a young Canadian, who had just been admitted to the Bar, left his native New Brunswick for the Yukon. They met and married. In later years, the husband, Mr George Black, represented the Yukon in the Canadian Parliament and became Speaker of the House of Commons. His wife has now been elected to occupy the seat he vacated recently, owing to ill-health. Mrs Black was the daughter of a wealthy Chicago inventor. Her “sourdough” husband did not, like many others, make a fortune, but he took out enough gold to set himself up in a law practice in Dawson City, where he prospered. During his first two years in the North he saw prospectors, who had come in penniless, leave within a year or less with fortunes Tuning into six figures. In the year 1900 twenty million dollars worth of gold was taken out of claims near Dawson City. Three times elected to the Territorial Council, Mr Black was appointed Commissioner to, the Yukon in 1912, and with his wife took up his abode in Government House. When war broke out he organized the Yukon Company, and went overseas as its commander. With him went Mrs Black and her son by her earlier marriage. When she applied for an embarkation permit, the general asked her if she wanted to be the only woman on a transport with three thousand men. She replied she had been the only woman in Dawson City with ten times that number. She got the permit. During the war, Mrs Black delivered over 400 lectures in the United Kingdom under the auspices of the Canadian Government, the Y.M.C.A., and the Y.W.C.A. Her husband and her son were awarded the Military Cross, the younger man at the age of 20. Looking back on her early days living in a one-room log cabin,, during which, like the men, she underwent severe hardship, she recalls. “I got on well in the Yukon because I was a good cook, and had the capacity to mother hundreds of young men, who were so far from home. I am an American by birth, but when I married George Black, I became immediately a Canadian, an Imperialist, an Anglican —all three at once.”