Moving Rocks And Rocking Minds

At 412 Main St. in Whitehorse, there is a regal two-storey log house called the Taylor House, after its original owners (of the famed goldrush Taylor and Drury stores). It was lovingly restored by the Yukon government and, during the tenure of Commissioner Doug Phillips, it became the Office of the Commissioner of Yukon, currently the office of Madam Commissioner Adeline Kh’ayàdê Webber. 

Built in 1934, it was a family residence until 1969 when it became the offices of the Yukon Chamber of Mines (YCM), which is a non-profit fellowship of mining and support industries and of business, geology and prospector types who are in favour of (and hands-on supportive of) responsible mining in the Yukon. 

The following bit of history I am about to share occurred at the Taylor House around 1999, when I was working as the office manager at the YCM. The executive director was Dennis Ouellette; and the president was Dr. Lee Pigage, both of whom I gained a great deal of respect for as they were unfailingly wise and knowledgeable advocates for responsible mining.

It is a lovely log house on a double lot. The house was built long ago using materials from the 1930s, such as two-wire electrical and single-pane glass windows. I brought my concerns to the board, on occasion, as I often got shocks from turning on the lights, or I watched the lights dim and shimmer when the coffee pot was turned on. 

With uncharacteristic haste, the board voted to sell the building and lot to the Yukon government at market rates, buy another building on Third Avenue and Strickland Street, and then they all went to the bush for their prospecting, staking, developing, surveying and general rock-busting activities. I got them to agree to a $600 petty-cash contingency fund with which, somehow, I would get 30 years of accumulated rocks carried up from the basement and brought over to the new building. 

Of course, nobody would expect that every rock in the basement would be brought over to the new place. I went to the basement with Al Doherty, one of the directors, and asked him to identify which rocks we needed to keep, and then I would leave the rest there in the basement for the government to deal with. He looked genuinely shocked and told me, in no uncertain terms, that every single rock was too valuable to leave behind and that they should all be packed up and moved.

I was more than a little shocked when I jokingly muttered, “Good thing I didn’t ask you about the rocks in the back yard.”

“I nearly forgot about those ones!” he exclaimed and marched up the stairs and out the back door where he proclaimed, with a sweep of his arm, “All these rocks in the yard have to be brought to the new location as well!” Then off to the bush he went.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I recalled a friend of mine complaining that her son was given community-service hours but there was no place for him to serve. I had nothing to lose so I called up the youth probation office and asked if youth could serve their hours working for a non-profit association. When they said ”Yes,” my enthusiasm kicked into full throttle.

I told her she could send all her big, brawny boys with outstanding community-service hours, to the YCM, along with their paperwork, and I would help them burn off those hours by packing rocks. She agreed to this plan and the very next day boys started to show up with their sheets for logging hours, and they began packing rocks out of the basement in Dairyland crates. 

The boys worked hard, hour after hour, hauling rocks up from the basement and putting those heavy crates into the back of Joe Lindsay’s truck. Joe was a member of the Chamber; a real easygoing guy who worked great with the kids. He came back to the Chamber one day, after dropping off a load of rocks with the kids. I noticed that one kid had a bit of mustard on the corner of his mouth. Later, after the kids left, I asked Joe if he had taken them out for burgers. He confessed that he had and I heaved a sigh of relief. 

“Joe,” I said, “I’ve got a budget of six hundred dollars cash to spend on this project, and we don’t have any expenses. It’ll look bad for me. How about you bring me receipts for any food you buy for the lads. And I also want to see lots of gas receipts too!”

Joe was already donating his truck, his time and his patience and kindness with the lads. And this way I got to spend nearly the whole budget. Those kids were working really hard and I felt we should at least replace the calories they were burning up by packing all those rocks.

Some crates of rocks went to Indian Affairs, in their yard. Most went to the new Chamber building. And every day those big, burly boys would stroll up Main Street to come pack more rocks. I told them, “Lads, if I come down these stairs, you better be either packing rocks or studying rocks.” Then I picked up a rock and talked about its geology, its name, where it could be mined and what the mineral was used for. They got the hint. I went back upstairs and the rock packing continued, truckload after truckload.

While they worked, each one would come across a rock they wanted to learn more about, so they set it aside. Each time I walked down the stairs to the basement, the lads all stopped packing rocks, walked quickly over to retrieve their chosen rock and studied it intently. Then I would go into the geology of each sample and talk about the qualities, like crystals or striations, its strength, its origins and its uses. Pretty soon all those guys could pick up a rock and be able to identify some of its minerals and features. 

Every day, those lads came and worked off dozens of hours. One day, two lads were walking up the road to the Chamber building while I was in the yard out front. One kid (a regular) said, “He wants to pack rocks. Can he pack rocks?” 

“Sure!” I said. “Just give me your paperwork and I’ll make sure you get credit for these hours.”

The kid shuffled a bit and shyly replied, “I don’t have any paperwork. I don’t have any community-service hours to serve. I just want to pack rocks.”

By Patty O’Brien

Patty O’Brien has worked on and off at the Yukon Chamber of Mines, for many years. She sent this in as a reader submission.