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House Hansard - 178

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 17, 2023 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 178 - Apr/17/23
Mr. Brendan Hanley (Yukon, Lib.)
  • Apr/17/23 2:05:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, born in the year that Canada became a nation, Joe Boyle is Yukon's version of Indiana Jones, with a touch of James Bond. Joseph Boyle came north from Ontario in 1897, found gold and struck it rich. A gold-rush millionaire, “Klondike Joe” went on to launch industrial-scale gold mining in the Yukon. In 1905, he sponsored the legendary Dawson City Nuggets hockey team in their journey by dog sled, bicycle, ship and train to challenge the Ottawa Silver Sevens for the Stanley Cup. When war broke out in 1914, Boyle recruited a 50-man machine gun battery of Yukon gold miners to fight for the Canadian Expeditionary Force. In the years to follow, Boyle reorganized allied Russia's military supply system, ran a network of spies for the British secret service, rescued Romanian royals from newly Bolshevik Russia and helped rebuild Romania after the war. In later years, he became an intimate friend, perhaps a lover, of Queen Marie of Romania. His early death 100 years ago makes us wonder what more he might have done. Joe Boyle, the man with the heart of a Viking, dreamed and lived big: another Yukoner who made his mark on the world.
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