Solomon Packer with Annie and Myer, after the death
of his wife, Elka, about 1900. Sol sent the children
to live in Duluth. He was a respected citizen and
successful merchant when he died in 1918, Dawson
City, Yukon Territory.
On cemetery ridge overlooking Dawson City in Canada's far
northwest Yukon Territories, "Beth Chaim," the resting place of some
five Jews, was rededicated on August 22, 1998. Canadian Deputy Prime Minister
Herb Gray, who is Jewish, was the keynote speaker and guests from Vancouver to
Toronto joined locals to commemorate the Yukon-led cleanup of this old, nearly
forgotten testament to the wandering Jews of a century ago.
The project got its official start in the American Jewish
World newspaper, on October 24, 1997, when Dr. Norman E. Kagan began to
publicize the need. A group of Whitehorse, Yukon, Jewish citizens heard that
call, incorporated themselves as the "Jewish Historical Society of
Yukon" in February, and successfully petitioned the government for
oversight of the untitled cemetery land.
With the financial support of the Canadian Jewish Congress, they
hired local contractors to build picket fencing and a metal gateway and had it
installed with the help of non-Jewish volunteers in Dawson.
The assistance of Jews from Fairbanks and Minnesota was
declined, and none attended the rededication. However, a future visit to leave a
Lake Superior stone is planned.
In March of 1918, Myer Packer of Duluth took leave from the U.S.
Army Air Corps and returned to Dawson City in the Yukon to see to his father's
affairs. His dad, Solomon (born Aaron Yehudah ben Pekker in 1861 near Odessa in
the Ukraine), had been the last remaining Jewish merchant from the old Klondike
days when as many as 200 Jews had lived in Dawson.
Myer had not seen his father in some time. In 1902, when the
Yukon Jewish population was at its height, Myer and his older sister, Anne, had
attended a year of grade school there, but returned to Minnesota afterwards to
live with the family of their deceased mother, Elka Oreckovsky Packer.
Anne died in her prime at 16 due to an illness, and now Sol had
pased on due to a stroke or heart attack after the exertion of carrying in
firewood. Sol was planning to leave the Yukon for retirement in Minnesota.
After six weeks in Dawson, Myer had completed all the necessary
arrangements. Sol's home and business had been closed, and his body was buried
in "Beth Chaim," the Jewish cemetery overlooking the town. His
business partner, Harry Pinkiert of San Francisco, would return to Dawson one
last time in the summer with a stone marker for his friend, and the Jewish
presence in that far northwestern Canadian town would be forgotten.
This past summer, Jews in Minnesota and Alaska promoted a
cleanup of the overgrown Jewish cemetery as part of the Klondike Gold Rush
Centennial. The theme was taken up by Canadian Jews, and a fine restoration was
made. Some eight Jewish merchants are thought to be buried there, but only five
mounts, side by side, are known and only the one in the middle is marked, the
usual wooden markers placed on the others having rotted away.
And what has become of the dutiful son? Myer Packer became a
clerk in Duluth and stayed there with his wife Luella until 1930. Afterwards, no
one knows. Some say he went to Alaska, or Seattle, or San Francisco. Do you
know? If so, please contact Dr.
Norman E. Kagan.
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