Klondike Cattle Drive: The Journal of Norman Lee

John Abbott is a professor of history at Laurentian University’s Algoma University College. He is the co-author of The Border at Sault Ste Marie and The History of Fort St. Joseph.

In the spring of 1898, Norman Lee, a rancher and store owner located in
the hamlet of Hanceville, B.C., decided to repair his fortunes by
driving 200 head of cattle north to the Klondike mining district. It was
a venture fraught with risk to his person and his living assets. We know
this because he kept a frank diary of his arduous speculation.

Though Lee and his five men set off “gaily” on May 17, the
misfortunes that were to dog the expedition surfaced almost immediately:
the cook sickened and quit; trails petered out or were choked by
blow-downs; rivers ran high and were dangerous to ford; meadows gave way
to barren verges or to cropped expanses of grass that had been consumed
earlier by the cattle of competing drovers; cattle absent during the
daily count had to be rounded up, if they hadn’t been poisoned by
noxious weeds. North of Hazelton in early August they were up to their
horses’ fetlocks in mud. It wore out the horses, which were abandoned
with their saddles and bridles to die by the side of the trail. Then the
trail wound up into the mountains until the party was traversing
territory just below the snow line. Between September 2 and mid-October,
from the wretched settlement of Telegraph Creek to the butchering corral
at Teslin, the realities of oversupply in the beef market and the onset
of winter drove Lee to the desperate conclusion that the only way he
could sell his beef was to load the carcasses aboard scows he had
hastily hammered together and float it downstream to Dawson. These and
their cargoes of beef (“the best ... not much more than bone”)
foundered in a storm at the outlet of Teslin Lake. Lee’s adventures
continued with an overland trip to Wrangle, Alaska, where he took a ship
to Nanaimo, then to Vancouver.

This is a tale of hardship, misadventure, and financial disaster that
Lee relates with the wryest of humour and a surprising measure of
equanimity. It may be read with pleasure by anyone, but is required
reading for those whose interests encompass literature associated with
the diary, the Yukon, and the trail of 1898.