James Beaumont Gaetz (-1922)

By Dick Gaetz

"While thousands tried to reach the Klondike by glaciers, mountain passes, river routes, and swamp, the good merchants of Edmonton, were doing their utmost to convince the world that their city was the gateway to the only practicable trails of '98. In point of fact, as more than two thousand were to learn, these trails were among the most impracticable. Sam Steele of the Mounties thought it "incomprehensible that some men would attempt any of the overland routes from Edmonton."
-- Pierre Berton

James Beaumont Gaetz [our great uncle] must have seen some zany contraptions bound for the gold fields – he and his pal or pals probably used horses. At any rate, Aunt Annie has it that:

"Beau was of an adventuresome nature, and in the gold rush of 1898, he and a companion, Brooks, left Edmonton in an effort to reach the Klondike by an overland route. Finding their way blocked by impossible barriers, they were obliged to turn back. As they had provisions, and a prospecting outfit, they decided to see what the unexplored country of the north had to offer, and for a long time they made their way through this wilderness, where no white man had ventured.

At last they took sick with scurvy and snow blindness and were found by the Indians sick and blind and almost out of provisions, wandering helplessly around. They took them to their camp, nursed them back to health and gave them enough provisions to see them back to civilization. They arrived home three years after they had left, long after they had been given up as dead".

I, L.L.G., stooked oats for Beau in 1922 – he was a kindly boss but the grub he and I ate was chiefly potatoes and onions in a mash heavily lubricated with lard. It did me no harm for the month but Uncle Beau's innards clogged.

One day he and I were clearing a few dead and half-dead poplars. He was a skilled axe man. The force of his blows snapped the top part of his tree, which fell knocking him half senseless to the ground. Groaning, spitting out a tooth or two he cursed himself for carelessness and asked me to get Dr. Parsons in Red Deer on the phone. This I lost no time in doing. He was soon in hospital – but, a willful patient, died of pneumonia.
Sidelights on Beamont and the life he loved:

"Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting,
So much as just finding the gold.”

On September 17, 1897, Beau Gaetz, A. E. Roberts of Red Deer, and J. J. Brooks of Lacombe, with three men from Montana, and 16 Packing horses, left Edmonton for Fort St. John, where they proposed to winter...

Beau & Brooks remained in the Smokey River country hunting, trapping and prospecting for over a year, but an encounter with a bear late in the fall of 1898 almost cost Brooks his life. The Lesser Slave Lake correspondent of the Edmonton Bulletin reported on the episode as follows:

“Two men named Brooks and Gaetz, white bear hunting on the Smokey River recently, separated to cover more ground, Brooks espied a bear just going over a small cut bank. He took quick aim and fired. He is a splendid shot and an old hunter. He hit the bear and it fell Just on top of the bank. He had a small dog with him and it jumped towards the bear with Brooks following. When he reached the bear he poked at it with the end of his rifle. The bear lurched to one side, partly rearing up, and then fell over directly on top of Brooks and bore him to the ground, fastening his teeth in the fleshy part of his thigh.

“Brooks struggled desperately and in the fight that followed, the bear scraped down one side of his head and face cutting deeply. One furrow divided his eyelids and dreadfully lacerated his forehead, face and neck. Brooks still fought him off and the bear tried to fasten on his throat, but he was able to thrust his arm in the bear's mouth which saved his life, as the bear fastened on to it, grinding viciously until shot to death by Gaetz who came upon him none to soon.

“It took five shots to release Brooks, who by this time was more dead than alive. He is doing well, all things considered, and is resting quietly in his shack on the banks of the Smokey."

Beau Gaetz returned to Red Deer in July 1899.