Laura Beatrice (Thompson) Berton

Laura Thompson was born in 1878 and taught school in Toronto. In 1908, she was asked to be the new kindergarten directress in Dawson City, Yukon. In Toronto she earned $480 per year, whereas Dawson City offered to pay her $2100 per year.

At 29 years of age, she set out for Dawson City. She travelled to Vancouver and then by ferry to Skagway, Alaska. From there she took the White Pass train over the mountains to Whitehorse. Lastly, she took a steamboat ride down the Yukon River to Dawson. Along the way, she got to know Robert Service, the poet, and in Dawson he settled into a house across the road from the Berton house.

In her book, I Married the Klondike, Laura writes about her new experiences. She tells of the “telephone walls”, which were sheets of canvas; the extent of Dawson American populations; the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the shops; being cut off from the “outside”, being introduced to the Edwardian style of Dawson society, and “Keeping a Day,” which prominent ladies set aside for receiving visitors. The long cold dark and the long summer light were very new to her.

Laura met Frank Berton, who was a stampeder. She joined his French classes, which he was teaching at the time. They were married in 1912. During the first year of their marriage, they lived in a tent in the mining camp of Sourdough Gully. Laura painted and fixed up the tent as best she could. In the fall, Frank was posted to Dawson City as the Mining Recorder so they purchased a hone in Dawson.

When war was declared Frank joined the army. As an engineer, he was posted to the Royal Canadian Engineers Corp based in Vancouver. The Bertons left Dawson city and moved to Vancouver. It would be five years before they returned to Dawson City in 1919.

After eight years of marriage, a son was born whom they named Pierre. Laura was forty-three when her daughter, Lucy, was born.

The children were under six when Laura made a trip across Canada to see the grandparents in Ontario. When they returned, Frank met them in Whitehorse and they all went down the Yukon River in a small boat that Frank had built. They had a wonderful time taking two weeks to do the trip.

After that, Frank built a flat-keeled boat that they called the Blueness. The family used this for many years during the summers when they would travel up the Yukon River, and camp on a small river of islands that dotted the river. The advantage of living on the islands was the lack of mosquitoes; the disadvantage was the lack of shelter. The boat would hold everything the family would need for the summer.

Laura wrote for The Saturday Night Post, The Family Herald and The Dawson News.

When the Great Depression struck, Frank lost his job so the family pulled up stakes and moved permanently out of the Yukon to Vancouver.

In later years in her mid-forties, Laura would write a manuscript about her time in the Klondike. She also co-authored a children’s book with her daughter, Lucy Woodword. The book was titled Johnny in the Klondike. With her son Pierre, the final draft of the manuscript was completed in 1954, nine years after Frank’s death and twenty-two years after leaving the Yukon. The published book was I Married the Klondike and it was later made into a television drama.