Bittersweet Infamy - #134 - The Mad Trapper of Rat River

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

Trick-or-Treat Infamy! Taylor tells Josie about Albert Johnson (not his real name), the mysterious stranger who led Mounties on an explosive and deadly winter manhunt through Canada's Yukon and Northwest Territories. Plus: unpacking Taylor's trip to the Yukon, including the community of Carcross, population: 300, where the ghosts of Bessie Gideon and her parrot haunt the century-old Caribou Hotel.

Welcome to Bittersweetin. I'm Taylor Basso. And I'm Joe C. Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on on and in me. The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the sweet. Josie, do you hear those chains clanking? Clank, ghackack.

Josie, do you hear those wolves howling? Josey, do you hear those ghosts moaning? Whoa. That was, um. Lucille Ball, maybe? I heard that. I heard that. I heard that one. It was a little weird. Well, if it's Lucille Ball, then it must be scary, Lucy, because Josie, this is trick or treat infamy.

Welcome. Trick or treat infamy. For the fifth time. I know. How exciting. What is the moment in the year, in the autumn, where it becomes apparent to you that spooky season is upon us? That's a good one. Houston, the weather isn't quite changing.

It won't be the weather that helps you, no. It won't be the weather. It will be, I guess, the Halloween decor, like my neighbors start to put stuff up. And about what time is that? Because we know famously Christmas comes earlier every year and all this. When does spooky season? When does the decor start to? When do the jack-o-lantern start to adorn the front steps and the witches, the cute cartoon which is adorn the windows?

It's probably late September. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And to be fair, Houston can't handle carved pumpkins on the front stoop because... We've talked about this. They emulsify it. Yes. And so they're either full pumpkins or they are plastic. So the plastic and the full pumpkins have appeared like probably in the last two weeks. So yeah, end of September, I'd say, yeah. What about for Vancouver? I mean, there is a weather shift in Vancouver. You're wearing a hoodie. I'm feeling the weather shift lately It's been It's moved into rain The few kind of deciduous trees are starting

The colors are starting to shift You definitely start to feel that kind of bite of the air Probably around October Because September in Vancouver Sort of functions as a late summer month, I would say Yeah, yeah And then October is when they're like No motherfuckers

Construction paper bats You know What kind of Halloween decor do you have in your life? None. Okay. So I actually don't really frequently decorate for Halloween. Every so often, I'll participate in a pumpkin and certainly I like to have costumes. But when it comes to like putting things up, I don't. But my friend Johnny Mulder, this is the queen of Halloween. He has like a cute black cat, a big spooky, you know, and we have similar tastes in Halloween decor. He likes like spooky things in the way that I like spooky things. He actually did a really good one Halloween, he did a really good murder mystery party where I was the butler and I didn't do it, but I solved it, of course.

I like that. I know, I prefer that kind of cutesy, the cutesy look. It's like, I just like more than the like motion detecting spider that drops and like freaks you out and stuff like that. Like I don't need a jump scare. It's okay. I don't need a jump ski either. As a matter of fact, I guess perhaps to mark the beginning of spooky season, I was just watching the Blair Witch project last night with someone. This is sort of a very classic, very infamous horror movie with a very infamous story behind it.

We should cover it sometime somewhere. The person who was with me, a guy named Christopher, kept being like, please tell me there's no jump scares in this. And I was like, don't worry. There's the infamously, there's no jump scares in this. Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a movie where like it almost caught a bit of flack for being boring due to its lack of jump scares.

We've been socialized to expect jump scares, you know? This is true. This is true. It's a good thing that we're. We're nice and ready to tackle spooky season because what was the longest road trip ever. We almost didn't make it. Well, yeah, it was long, but so enjoyable. Eight days in real time, but we kept you hanging on for a couple of months there.

Thank you, everyone, so much for your patience. Wasn't it worth it? It was. It really was. Speaking on behalf of everyone, I like it. Speaking on behalf of everyone, it was. So we were finishing up the road trip, and you had like one day, of downtime before you got on a plane and continued the adventure up north to the Yukon. Mm-hmm. An air trip of sorts. A big skukum Yukon air trip. It's true. It sounds like you're in a

blimp when you put it that way. If only, bring back dirigible. We'll work on that. Season six. That's how we advertise for season six. Just big blips. Season six, entirely filmed on location, in a dirigible, slowly going around Vancouver. That'll work. Do you think there's only something like 11 blimps left in the world? Some really, really small number. They're endangered. Endangered indeed.

I've seen them mainly, like, above stadiums for advertising. But maybe... They're mainly, like, advertising, corporate-owned, that kind of thing now. Yeah, yeah. But are those even considered the same? Like, they're not really passenger ones, so... You didn't go to the Yukon. a blimp. You went in an airplane and you got off that airplane. Where did you fly into?

I want to say, first of all, that I'm about to do a big plug for Air North, which is a great airline that I really, really enjoyed. Not a blimp company. That's a real. Not a blimp company yet. It's a plane. A series of planes, more than one. But before I kind of dive into the air travel of it all, I should give you maybe a little bit of geographic context around the Yukon, especially for those who aren't located in this part of the world or who don't know much about Canada's kind of northern areas. The Yukon is a territory as opposed to a province. What is the difference? Great question. I have notes and they're quite brief because the answers are quite like I wanted to come in with a really like banger synthesized answer. But the answer is they're to do with things like

their representation at a federal level in politics and sort of similarly to how Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States. And that comes with like different rights and responsibilities and certain governmental systems and things like that. It's sort of a similar thought with Canada's three territories, which we have in addition to our 10 provinces, and our three territories are Yukon, which is the westernmost, and it's the one that's right above British Columbia, the one that I went to, and it's immediately to the east of Alaska. Alaska's kind of land border with Canada. And then to the east of the Yukon are the northwest territories, which are the largest and includes several islands, kind of in the Arctic.

and then to the east of that is Nunavut, which is our newest territory, came into formation in about 1999 when I was in the sixth grade. Dude, I didn't know who was that recent. Did you guys have a big celebration day at school? Like, how do you... The two big, like, Canada changing things

that I remember happening when I was in elementary school was when I was in, I think, first or second grade, we got the tunie. And I remember that being a big deal because all of our little plastic money sets got refreshed.

Ooh. Two dollar bills were in its place was the tuning, you know? I've never seen a Canadian two dollar bill. That's kind of exciting. The tunie got him. Motherfucker, the tunie got him. Although I don't remember if we had bills back then or if we just had to stack loonies. Either way, problems of the past. In sixth grade, we got none of it, which was the new easternmost territory. I actually don't entirely know the specifics of why it was

aggregated in that particular way. But it suffice to say, we had two territories. Now we have three. Well done. Thank you. And they're kind of known for being Canada's north, relatively little populated, populated largely by First Nations and Inuit folks, military personnel who have various obligations up there. Oh, right. Okay. Remote, known for being remote and known for being maybe even a bit more rugged than the rest of Canada. You think about the BC wilderness or, you know, northern Ontario, northern Quebec. Yeah. You know, northern Manitoba, northern anywhere, really. Well, and those territories are on the Arctic Circle.

They go that far north. Like, it's intense up there. You're talking planetary vibes, you know? And so, yeah, I ended up choosing to take a trip to the Yukon, which you may remember. The original idea of the big Skook and BC road trip was that we would kind of travel north, kiss the Yukon, and then come back. And we sort of realized that we couldn't do anything that we really super wanted to do up there in that time and that we would spend a lot of.

of our road trip time kind of in northern BC where there was a lot of beauty and ruggedness, but not a tremendous amount to do. And so we ended up rerouting East. The thing that set me off on this adventure was back in episode 116

for my minfamous, I covered the story of this bar in Dawson City, Yukon, where you can drink a shot of alcohol with a severed toe in it. Disgusting.

The Sour Toe Cocktail. Amazing. And that... And you fell in love. And you were like, I must go. This place is calling me. I fell in intrigue. The toe had some sort of pull to it, certainly.

The gravitational force of that toe. Absolutely. The inertia of the toe brought me north. The thing I think that really stayed with me was that at that time, it was also the episode in which we discussed the Canada America stuff that was just newly brewing with Trump talking about tariffs in the 51st state and all that shit at the time. I was really choked about it. And it was right around that time that I was getting the idea that I'd love to do something this summer locally in order to support local stuff, local businesses, local government, local me. and then also see what beautiful Canada has to offer

because as I realized when I was reading about this toe thing, there's stories everywhere you go. Amen. And I wanted to see what stories we had around here and I thought about the Yukon, which was sort of this, I like a sort of off the beaten path vacation. Yeah. I don't want to go where everyone is going necessarily.

And I thought about the Yukon and its reputation for interesting rugged beauty and... A.k.a. the tow. And I also happened to have a friend in Dawson City, Elaine, and so I was like, oh, I might have a guide around Tootown. This is Fab. And while I didn't end up being able to go to Dawson City, although I will be going in the future, stay too, not in any particular organized way, but like, I'll be going back to the Yukon for sure. Too will happen. It will happen. I thought, what an interesting place that is so inaccessible to everyone but us, because we, we'll be going back to the Yukon for sure. To will happen. It will happen. I thought, what an interesting place that is so inaccessible to everyone but us, because we live right here. Yeah. Yeah. And Rui really wanted to go to. Rui at this point had to New Zealand very shortly afterwards. And so this was sort of a let's smoke a moly Goddum see him while we're here. And so we ended up taking, I shall say now, Air North up to Whitehorse to check out what the Yukon was all about. So this episode is sponsored by Air North. Is that? If Air North wants to

sponsor me, there's a great opportunity for an organic and very honest sponsorship here because I I fucking loved Air North. And I've never said that about an airline, not since I flew, I think Air New Zealand back when I was eight and they let us sleep on the ground. And there was room to do it. Air North is, I had already seen really good things about them because they had won a trip advisor award, I think just last year for best specialty airline, like best airline that gives service to a particular place. Oh, okay. Yeah, like regional airline almost or something like that. the flight attendants were kind

Love it The leg room was ample The leg room that you would get on some shitty flight In our Canada Plus a little bit more So at no point did I ever feel that feeling of claustrophobia You sometimes get At no point did I feel like my knees were bumping against the seat behind me

As you might imagine for flights to The Yukon, the Northwest Territories in Nunavit Which is where they serve Yeah The flights were pretty semi-populated Well, I think an important thing to note, too, especially with those areas, is this is a huge distance. Those three territories cover a huge swath of the earth. Most of Canada, probably.

And you have to travel by air to get across it in any type of, like, modern time frame. Oh, yeah. Air, there's one road that kind of goes around everything. And at the time that that road doesn't go around everything, you got to take the ice road. Yeah. Oh, God. No, you don't. Yeah.

A boat. The ice road is scary. Yeah. I might avoid the ice road. A boat, a small plane often, a lot of these kind of especially more remote communities are only accessible by small planes. Yeah. Yeah. So air travel is really a vital link for these communities in this area.

So that's very cool that as an airline, they do it well. You love to hear it. From Vancouver to Whitehorse, which is the capital of the Yukon, this ended up being like a little over 200 Canadian each way. So like 400 something Canadian both ways. not bad that's not bad that's not bad very affordable and get this free bag check oh so you can bring a bag which by the way we didn't which was really fucking stupid because we ended up needing to re-buy all our camping gear again when we got there oh no and i'll tell you all about it we

should have just packed all our shit but we ended up being able to pack all that camping gear that new tent air mattress shit back we were a little bit late leaving white horse on her way back to Vancouver and specifically we were too late to check all this camping shit that we brought in our big bag so they bumped us to the next flight which was like two hours later for free very cool that's very cool free meal free snack free drinks free warm chocolate chip cookie with melty chocolate chips oh fuck yeah that's some real northern hospitality right there Your own hospitality. That's nice.

Can I tell you, in 2025, to have an air travel experience that you enjoyed, not tolerated, not endured, but enjoyed. Yes. Wow. Thank you, Air North. Sponsor us. Air North, you've done it. You done the impossible.

So my friend Elaine, who I know through the creative writing program at UBC, nice chick, she straight up told me, she's like, listen, you're going to land in Whitehorse. It's going to look like nothing but big box stores. you're going to think you've made a terrible mistake drive 20 minutes out of town you'll be in the most anywhere in any direction and you'll be in the most beautiful place you've ever seen in your life.

Okay, okay, okay. This is no shit on Whitehorse, but that was kind of the vibe when we landed. You don't go for the urban landscapes when you go to Whitehorse. Although I'm sure, you know what? I enjoyed the time that I spent in Whitehorse proper, at least the time that wasn't spent

rebuying the camping equipment because by the way, we came in foolishly thinking we'd be able to like go to Fraser Way or whatever and get a fucking RV just on the spot. Oh, yeah. We ended up having a look around. We got, like, the last rental F-150 from a car dealership,

and we were apparently lucky to get it, or so they claim. I'm sure they tell everyone that. But, like, we got the last one for six months. Oh, dang. Okay, yeah. And so you're supposed to, like, book six months out, apparently. So if you're ever going up north to the Yukon in kind of these summer months, especially the camping months, be warned, book your shit, your vehicle rental

well in advance. That's when the tourism is, yeah, it's peak season. That makes sense. But it was one of those big kind of jacked up F-150. So Rue was instantly feeling the, like, you know, aggressive bro truck nuts get out of my way energy. It happens. Yeah, I really, yeah, I've rented a truck before. We went to Oklahoma and I rented a truck.

And I was like, what is happening? My hands are tingling. Why do I want to run over that old man? Yeah. I get it, Roy. To offset my criticism of Whitehorse as sort of seen from above, still had fun there. Lots of interesting things to do. One of the things that.

I was most insistent that we go and do, and one of the things that I'm really happy that we ended up doing, is we went to the Yukon-Baryngia Interpretive Center. Beringia? Great question, Josie. And the question is, Beringia? Yes, exactly. This is one of the things when I was doing my research for Skukum, and I thought we were going up north.

This is one of the things I was excited about doing in Whitehorse. and it's a museum that is specifically dedicated to the period like 10,000 plus years back when the land bridge between East Asia and Western North America was active. Humans didn't so much enter into it. We're talking creatures like giant sloths that can walk around on two legs. Mammoths with giant tusks, which are on display at the Beringia Interpretive. Center, which has like a great selection of both real fossils and very convincing models, really goes through, and it's five bucks.

Two tunis and a loony. That's all you need. Two tunis and a loony, and you can go next door to the Yukon Transportation Museum if you got the time, which we didn't, but I'd love to on a repeat visit. And they've also got at the Brinji Museum a little free guided tour and a short film that shows you kind of what this area must have been like, which components of that era have survived to even the modern day that you can see evidence of around Yukon. It's really, really interesting.

So this is what I was taught as the Bering land straight. Yeah. As in Beringia. As in Beringia. Okay, I hear. Yeah. B-E-R-I-N-G-I-A. It's Beringia, right?

And then that doesn't sound right. Berengea. Berengea. That's very cool. Oh, that's rad. Really recommended if you're there, probably like, you know, two-hour-long activity. if you're a one and a half, like at least 90 minute long activity, if you watch the movie and you look around the collections and you take a little tour, it's, they have like a free tour every, you know,

so often. I recommend it. Really, really, really good. Very cool. Another highlight of Whitehorse proper was called the Millennium Trail. And this is just like, I guess like a 5KM loop around this area that is, I think it's a dammed off river. But either way, it's like a beautiful flowing, flowing, flowing dammed off body of water all around it is just like the nature you know what i mean capital capital in nature and it was really great to experience with ruy specifically my partner because they're like a um like a nature expert right because we talked a little bit back in the skukum road trip about a lot actually about berries and eating berries and how much berries are local here yeah the yukon is fucking berry heaven especially for

you go in kind of late July, which is when we went, all the berries were out. Oh, my gosh. Just parading down the street, all the berries. Yeah. Nice and juicy and succulent. We're teasing you, tempting you with their succulent little round shapes. There's Nagoon berries. Nagoon.

There's moose berries, buffalo berries, wild strawberries, which are just tiny little strawberries that are super fucking sweet and delicious. Pumpkin berries, also known as basket. toad flax. Oh, well, I like pumpkin berry better. Kinnikinik, juniper. One of those is poisonous. It might be the toad flax.

Hang tight. There's also death puffball mushrooms, death cap mushrooms. Those are fucking poisonous. I remember we were talking about these. Yeah. Yes. So you're going to want to be careful as you go around,

but thankfully the Millennium Trail has great signage that lets you know, here's the berries, here's what they look like. Here's which ones are poisonous, et cetera. Very accessible. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to want to stay away from those poisonous baneation. Bain berries. That's what you're going to want to stay away from.

The bane of your existence. That's what they are. The bane of my existence. If you either red, they're waxy, and they look a lot like some of the other berries, too. Oh, fuck. Getting out a white horse a bit. We'll be back a little bit later on, but to quickly get out a white horse, we ended up going camping at this place called Marsh Lake. Okay. Marsh Lake Park. It's a territorial campsite, sort of in the vein that we went to a lot of provincial campsites on the Skookham Road trip. We went to this place called Marsh Lake. Really nice. Camping in the Yukon, by the way. In general, you should know about 18 bucks and they give you as much firewood as you want and it's right there

on site. That's good. How are the bugs? I imagine the bugs are just so big and scary. I heard a lot of shit about the mosquitoes in the Yukon, especially summer and a summer kind of time we were going. Present, big. Not as scary as I expected.

I think I got one bite while I was there maybe. Definitely aggressive. Definitely you're going to want to bring bug spray. But I've been in areas. where it's literally like a cloud of mosquitoes and like you can hear them all the time and they're in your face and in your mouth and shit. Yeah.

This wasn't, we weren't in like a mangrove swamp. You know what I mean? This wasn't that. Okay. Let me tell you about two of my favorite natural wonders of the Yukon. Ooh. The first is that it really came through

once we started camping in Marsh Lake Park on night one. It was the midnight sun, baby. Oh, fuck yeah. So to put that into perspective, up until probably about 6 p.m., it looks like it's noon. Oh, shit. 6 p.m. until about a little after 11, that's golden hour, baby. It's so drawn out. I guess, yeah, that makes sense, yeah. From about 11 until a little after midnight, that's kind of sunset proper.

Uh-huh. Midnight until probably 3.45 a.m. at start. Probably about 3.45 a.m. It starts to get a little bit light again. By about 5.6 a.m. We're kind of morning light. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. That, yeah. That's a trip. So probably about like three hours. I would say like midnight to 4 a.m. is the hours where if you got out of your tent it would look like night. Yeah. But like there were several times when I was drawing. Like the notes that I'm, referring to here, I took in broad daylight being able to see them like it was a clear, bright, view, beautiful day and I needed no visual assistance whatsoever at about 10.45 p.m. Whoa. Crazy stuff. Did it make you tired? Were you? I loved it. Rui hated it. Interesting. Do we have two perspectives here? Two perspectives? It started to, I think, fuck with Rui. They were feeling a little

unseated in time. Yeah. For me, it contributes. to this feeling of they're always feeling like there was more time in the day. We'd be leaving Whitehorse, for example, or leaving like a major parentheses by Yukon standards down to go somewhere more remote. And it would be like 9.30 p.m. But I would feel like we were leaving town at like 3.30. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.

Because that was the ambiance. Knowing our schedule on the big Scrookum BC road trip, we always a little late, a little late. So having that extra daylight is really nice when you're traveling like that. Of course, the trade-off is you going January and you never see the sun, so. No, but you get the northern lights. There's a trade-off, right? Did you- We didn't get any, no, no, no, no, no, we didn't get anything.

Okay. It was barely every fucking nighttime. That's fair. That's fair. You saw northern lights. It was just the sun. That's what you saw. That was the northern light. Oh, I should say, if you're going up north then, get a sleeping mask.

Rui and I both had them, and it was probably pretty helpful as far as tent sleeping goes. That makes sense. the other thing that I really loved and that was part of the trade-off when it comes to going in the summer versus coming in the winter and I wouldn't trade it for the world is at the time of year that we went late July everything everything everywhere was covered in fireweed which is this beautiful bright purple flower and I should say the general like landscape and vibe and color palette of the Yukon are like it's sort of like you're in a dream about Northern BC, where you recognize some of the forms, but like the trees are slightly different and the colors are slightly off. I would say in general, the time that I went, the kind of white horse-ish area has a more muted color palette, and I don't mean that in any way disrespectfully, but it has these almost watercolor-y, like blues and grays and greens. And then you get this fireweed, which is this plant that grows in the wake of forest

fires when all the soil is really rich and new and it's fucking everywhere and it's bright bright bright fuchsia and it's amazing it was my favorite part of the trip i would say was the fact that this fucking everywhere you went in general this is wild flower heaven of all shape sizes and colors but this fireweed man holy shit that's so cool something special something special the fireweed so we had a kind of great first day at marsh lake second day we went to what's called this is like kind of a three-full-day trip. We went to the South Lakes region, which is sort of just above the northern border of BC.

And this is a really great area with its own kind of really beautiful things. There's this lake called Emerald Lake that has been made beautiful and bright green by biological factors in the lake, sort of similar to Spotted Lake, which we saw in the road trip. Yeah. This is like, I guess, a biologically significant lake. It's called the Yukon's most photographed lake. It's beautiful and bright green.

Ooh. Then you get to the car cross-ed. desert, which is called the world's smallest desert. Yes. And the vibe of the Yukon is basically someone dropped one big road through the trees. You know how in like BC the trees would be like a little bit further in the distance and then the land close to the road would be like agricultural or you know, whatever. Yeah.

Here it's all fucking right there. And then in the middle of that, imagine someone like dumped a square kilometer or two of desert. That's so, so like sand dunes kind of desert? Big, big sand dunes. It's the world's smallest desert had me ready. for something less impressive than we got. I was like, okay, it's probably a sand dune next to a tree.

Yeah. But you could rip around and tire tracks indicated that people do rip around in these dunes in a dune buggy and have a good time. I would imagine that if you had to walk the border of it, it would take probably, you know, between an hour and two hours kind of thing. Okay, so those ways quite small,

but not super duper small, yeah. It's small enough that if you get to a high point, you can see where the desert begins and ends. And it just turns back into the Yukon Wilderness. and this is the byproduct of a glacier that had once been here and has since retreated kind of thing. I see. I see. Did you do any sandboarding? I didn't do any sandboarding, but I went into, I really enjoyed this. It's a very cool, very pretty spot, very surreal, little piece of nature that I really enjoyed.

That's how Mitchell fucked up his arm, sandboarding accident. He died doing what he loved. Yeah, it's true. The nerves in his left arm died doing what they loved. Oh, I'm sorry, man. As we say, you live by the board, you die by this. Yeah, it's so true. Oh, that must be such a wild sight to see, yeah, where the desert ends and where Yukon, like, it's not just, like, shrubbery, it's like full-on evergreen.

It's crazy. So the Carcross Desert gets its name, I would assume, from nearby Carcross, which is a small town that used to be called Caribou Crossing, and then there was another caribou crossing, so they shortened it to Carcross, probably for mailing pretty, you know, makes everything easier on everyone. I read that, that it was mailing issues because there's a car cross in Alaska and a car cross in BC. You did your research. It came around. It came through. So there was an enterprising bishop in Carcross who wrote the letters did the work and was like, we got to change the name. Good work. Bishop Carcross of the Carcross Empire, go pods. Yeah. You know.

Fire weed everywhere. We have fire. Woo. This place really has the small tourist town thing down. Perfected, I dare say. Nice. They've got a couple of, as we've discussed, local tourist attractions right outside the Emerald Lake and the Carcross Desert

are both probably like within 20 minutes of car across the town. And you get off the, you know, the train possibly because there's like a train that runs through town that runs through from Alaska to the only reason I didn't get on this train is because I didn't have my passport. But it was a fucking

fancy you look like fancy old timey train that one of the stops is car cross looks like you could have a great time on that but if you come in via a road like Rui and I did you get to town they've got all these like shops set up near each other so

for example they've got like a store where you can get a Yukon Birch syrup which is slightly different from a maple syrup you would expect it to be mapley and it like you can imagine that they're cousins vis-a-vis sugary thing from tree

yeah it's a new taste. Yeah. Oh, that's really cool. And you can do like tastings there. We got a good tasting of all the different, like, here's how they're differently aged and you can taste the difference. And you really can. And then I've also got some fireweed jelly. Yeah. That's so cool. And you can see even from the color that it's that kind of bright, purply pink, right? Fuchs, yeah. I also went to Yukon Soaps, which has locally made soaps, beard oils. I got my mother's, an essential oil blend called Aurora. And I got myself some too. Smells really nice. You can get like Christmas ornaments, postcards nearby. They really make it easy to like kind of do commerce as a tourist, which is

great. And it's all a lot of like locally made type stuff. There's this little place called art host car cross. The thing that brought Carcross onto my radar was that about seven or eight years back, I did a couple of interviews for culture days, which is like a local celebration of National actually Celebration of Culture And I was talking to people Various artists from different places And I talked to Lori Crawford from Art House Carcross

And she was really bigging this place up And that's what led me to look into it When we were here I'm so glad I did, she was right That's so cool Yeah, I went to Our House Carcross hoping that I would run into Lori But it's actually like a really small building

At that moment they were hosting an exhibition On this guy called Skookum Gym A figure in the local folklore Exactly oh that's so cool And apparently like a real guy from the Taggish First Nation, and this is Carcross's Taggish First Nation. Oh, that's so rad. There's a really beautiful beach in the town that you can and should go to.

It's the only place that I went to water that I didn't get in, and I kind of regret that, but there's apparently great fishing there, too. And I should also add that one of the features, Josie, of Carcross, is a haunted hotel. Yeah, baby. And I really wanted to even stay at this haunted hotel, but when I looked into it, they weren't even open for business as like a hotel yet, I don't think. And I wanted to go into their saloon, but the fucking saloon was closed when we got there. So like, no.

My plans to do some sort of like bittersweet infamy type spooky ghost sightseeing were instantly scuttled. And of course I thought of you because you held captive your wedding guests at a notoriously haunted hotel where they do ghost tours. My first instinct was, well, fuck it then. I'm not going to learn about this ghost. Screw you. And then I thought, well, no, she got like a postage stamp.

She seems like maybe important. So I delegated the task of researching the ghost at the Caribou Hotel, Carcross's haunted hotel, to my friend Josie Mitchell. And that's me. So what did you find? I told you keep it short and sweet. What did you find? There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold. The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold.

The northern lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see. was Bessie's ghost with a parrot named Polly on the Caribou Hotel's lone balcony. You write that? No. That's good. Oh, I was so, I'm so sad. I wrote the last bit that's not as good. The balcony part.

The balcony part. Actually, no. Yeah, that wasn't as good. You're right. But it's still good. I liked it. The good part of the poem is written by, Robert Service, Robert W. Service, who is one of Alice's favorite poets, apparently.

Wow, fun. And he's known as the bard of the Yukon. It's a place very worthy of a bard. One of his most famous poems is called The Creation of Sam McGee, and that's the opening and closing lines. Though the last two lines that I switched out, he writes, The Northern Lights have seen queer sites, but the queerest they ever did see was that night on the marge of Lake La Barge. I cremated Sam McGee. It's a really great probably should be.

It's kind of spooky. As the bard of the Yukon, he does capture that, I don't know, the humor and the ruggedness and the, like, the darkness, the dark humor, like all of it. The outlaw vibe, the gold rush vibe that is kind of all over something like the Caribou Hotel, which is sort of this historic hotel. Exactly. Certainly, that's all over a place like Dawson City where I didn't get to go. but that's well known for keeping that sort of gold rush vibe. Yeah, yeah. And it seems like the Caribou Hotel and Carcras are doing that as well.

Because the Caribou Hotel is a historic landmark in the Yukon, but it's also known for the long tenure of its haunting by one of the previous owners, Bessie Gideon. Okay, so she's an owner. Yeah, I really didn't look into her. So at first, the Caribou Hotel was called the Yukon Hotel, and it was originally built and Binet, Yukon, which is not far, but it was transported on a floating scow in 1901. And a scow, I had to look up, it's a barge. It's just a big barge. Again, once again, we come back to homes on barges and barges on rivers, right? It's so true. So in 1901, the then called Yukon Hotel was moved by boat down Lake Bennett to Carcross, what was called Caribou Crossing, but then it got its change.

Then that bishop moved in diagonally and said, I've got an idea. The hotel had numerous owners, and it prospered under all of them. One of the owners was Dawson Charlie, who made a fortune in the Klondike Gold. claims, along with Skookham Jim, who you just mentioned. Our boy, Skookum Jim, Dawson Charlie, I am assuming of Dawson City note, maybe. I believe so. I think both of them were credited with discovering gold in the area. So they brought on the gold rush to that. And all of this wealth, and you mentioned the railroad, any of these towns are built

because of the gold rush in that area. Edwin and Bessie Gideon rented the hotel from Dawson Charlie's estate for Doss and Charlie died when he fell off the rail bridge at Carcross. But he had a lot of money. He had a big estate. And Edwin and Bessie rented the hotel from him. That hotel burned down. Christmas Eve, 1909. Damn. Damn. It's okay. Bessie and Edwin, loyal, loyal proprietors of the Caribou Hotel, rebuilt it on the same exact spot. So don't you worry. Okay. Well, it's such a though, because they could have saved themselves all the time of barging the other one over. I know, right?

Easy cut, which no one can predict the future, you know what I mean? Not even Miss Cleo, as we've learned. But you've seen this hotel in the flesh. What does it look like? It looks like an old-timey saloon kind of hotel, definitely. It looks like something you'd see in like a Red Dead Redemption or a John Wayne movie or something like that. All wood. Wood, baby wood.

Hence, perhaps the burning was not that, not that unsurprising at the end. No, no, no, no. But just a big kind of rectangle of a building, not a box. A box, yeah. This is like, if you're wondering, what is the architecture like in even Whitehorse, a box? Big box. It's a box, small box, a big box. Box, box, box.

Old box, wooden box. There's actually these interesting log cabin skyscrapers, quote unquote. They're like, they're like three-story log cabins. Rui and I looked at them and they're very like, they're small and they're very, clearly just a place that someone lives, but they're very cool construction-wise. Otherwise, a box that looks like it came from a Western movie. Okay. Yeah. They do well in the harsh climate. They do well with all that snow. There's a reason why, at least the one that was rebuilt in 1909 is still there today, and you got to see it. They're pretty scugum situations. That's for sure.

Certainly. Another notable element of the Kerboo Hotel. In 1918, Polly the Parrot moved in. Okay. So the story of Polly the Parrot is that his, Polly, being a boy. Like Polly from the Sopranos? Exactly. Yeah. Spilled differently, but yeah. Yeah.

Whatever. It's 1919, like over your gender norms. I'm sorry. Yeah. It's 1918, actually. Or did I say 19? Sorry, 1918 is pre-woke. I was wrong.

I was wrong. Okay, there we go. His previous owners, Captain James Alexander, was the owner of an engineer mine that was close by. And he asked Edwin and Bessie Gideon to essentially pet sit, Polly, when him and his wife were making the trip to Vancouver on the SS Princess Sophia, which is also known as the Alaskan Titanic. Fuck. You don't like to hear that. Right? So Polly's parents drowned in a notable...

Oh, well, I don't know what I expected. Right. Yes. Nobody on that ship survived, sadly enough. Yeah, oh, I'm sorry to hear that. But the Gideons adopted Polly, and as they continued to operate the hotel, Polly became a fixture of the hotel. Well, yes. Parrots live a long-ass time.

So when Edwin died in 1925, Bessie still ran the hotel and took care of Polly until she died in the hotel on October 27, 1933. October 27th, spooky as shit. okay. Even though Bessie shuffled off this mortal coil, Polly kept on ticking. So this is a lesson, by the way, to be careful what you say in front of parrots because not only will they repeat your secrets, but they live a long time. This is so true. So you're creating a very durable witness in a parrot, and you don't want to have to kill a parrot because that just feels like bad karma all around. So just button your lip. You're going to say, be mindful when you adopt or own a parrot, because

they live long lives and you have to take care of them for a long time. No, no, no, just shut up. Shut up in front of your parrot, because they're narcs and they're old narks. According to a reporter who visited the hotel in the 1970s, Dennis Bell wrote, Jesus. The world famous car cross parrot is probably the oldest, the meanest, the ugliest, and the dirtiest bird north of the 60th parallel. That's a lot of superlatives is what I'm hearing.

He hates everybody, which is understandable because the damned old buzzard has resided within spitting distance of a beer parlor since 1918 and has had to endure 64 years of beer fumes, drunks who mash soggy crackers through the bars of his cage, and phantom feather pluckers. And that could have been me and Rui if the fucking Caribou Hotel was open, but they weren't. We could have been mashing wet crackers through the bars. Holly did die November 1972, and his funeral was a big to-do in Car Cross. I bet. That's a local icon. According to Sam Holloway of the UConnor magazine, a funeral train loaded with dignitaries rode out from White Horse on the White Pass Railway, which is I believe the railway that you're referring to. Johnny Johns, the famous hunting guide, performed the eulogy and sang some verses of I Love You Truly, one of Polly's favorite songs. while beating on a skin drum. With the service over, almost the entire population of Carcross,

folks from all over the Yukon and elsewhere went to the Caribou Hotel for drinks. Many, many drinks. Well, we have to get fucked up. The parrot died. Exactly. Wow, I'm so glad I asked you to look into this. Given an upstanding funeral, Polly also has a gravestone, which is placed on the outskirts of the cemetery. And on that gravestone is written,

Under this sod lies a sourdough parrot. Its heart was gold, pure 14 carrot. Polly now can spread her wings, leaving behind all earthly things. She ranks in fame as our dear departed, a just reward for being good-hearted. So I'm given to understand this parrot was a boy, one. Yes.

So are we misgendering them? Is this a transition? What's the verdict on, are we dead naming a parrot? Like, what's the verdict here? You know, it may be symbolic. Polly now can spread her wings. You know, I don't know. I don't know.

Like a ship. Like a ship is a woman. Yes. And then my second question is, this eulogy, I get that we always speak well of the dead. This eulogy directly says that this bird was kind, which we know not to be the case. It's true. It's true. I think it's kind of like, in death, we are all better than we were when we were alive.

Yeah. A bet the truth. A bet the truth. Sands off a lot of those flaws. Also, those many drinks helped, I'm sure, to sand those flaws off. That may have been it. Yeah. Yeah. That's where that cadence comes from is all that beer. Right. But what about Bessie? She's dead in haunting the hotel, no? Well, strangely enough, though, the bird had a grand funeral and was buried just outside the town cemetery. A survey of that same cemetery has been unable to find Bessie Gordon's grave. Huh. Perhaps she was buried elsewhere? Who knows?

It might be that she never had a proper burial. And that is why her ghost haunts the hotel. She's in the crawl space. Taylor, walked right into that one. She was buried somewhere else. No, you dump it. She's a ghost. So she's considered neither a friendly spirit nor an unfriendly, but she appears to folks.

We all have different layers. It's true. Unions. Onions. We all an onion. But she does usually appear near a third floor window, and she's known to bang on the floor boards. According to the current owner of the hotel, a woman named Anne Morgan, she says that she didn't know the hotel was haunted when her and her husband bought it. That is terrible.

due diligence. You didn't look into the haunting component. You make horror movie people, you know what I mean? When they're like, oh, let's buy the hotel without knowing it's haunted. And then you've got Annabelle for the next 90 minutes of screen time. It's no good. That's so true. That's very true. And Morgan, she's never had an encounter herself with Bessie's ghost, but she does hear strange noises throughout the house. And many have told her, many from the town of Carcross have told her about seeing strange things. Quote, I've heard of her being on the third floor with a parrot on her shoulder looking out the window.

Wow. That's the common sight. Bessie might be here because she has unfinished business, read the hotel, you know, her remains, something like that. What's the bird's excuse, spite? I think so. I think Polly just, you know. Was maybe Bessie was the only one that he ever wanted to hang out with.

Maybe there were an item. Perhaps that was it. So there's all different types of sightings of Bessie. One that I like the best is they were doing renovations on the hotel and electricity was out for the hotel. Shock this place has electricity. Right. Shock indeed. People were saying that even though it didn't have electricity, they were seeing a light emanating from the third floor and Bessie's silhouette being cast from that third floor.

balcony. Spooky. Yeah. That balcony. Yes. Oh, indeedly. And Bessie is most remembered, though, from her likeness on a Canadian Post stamp. Like the Nanaimo Bar.

In 2015, Canada Post recognized the longstanding ghost story from the Caribou Hotel, and it's part of a series of five stamps called Haunted Canada. Her specific stamp is one of the more good. bullish ones, and it features her skull with a lovely little 1920s bob and a fur coat and a pearl necklace looming over the Caribou Hotel. And apparently it has like a foil underlay so that in certain light it like glows green. Yeah. Yeah. Like Northern Lights. Like the Northern Lights or like the Spooky. Very cool. Yes. Like ectoplasm. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. And that is the story of the Yukon historic site, the Caribou Hotel.

I was expecting like a paragraph and a half. That was good. That was really good, really interesting. Thank you. I even came in with a poem. You did. A collaborative poem. That I stole. That I sampled. Which is legitimate to me. DJed some Robert W. Service. As one does. No, that was wicked. I really enjoyed that. Thank you. And I imagine that kind of once you got to the parrot funeral, you're You're like, okay, well, this will just be a regular length one then. You can't look back. Yeah. Yeah.

So, didn't go there. It seems like it is still under construction. Anne Morgan and her husband have been doing a lot of renovations on it to get it, like, period specific and back up and running and all of it. I looked into staying there and I couldn't get a straight answer, but I got the sense that it wasn't open to stay there. We went there in our minds. In our minds and spirits, we were on that third floor being like, where is that light

coming from is that, you know, Bessie the landlady lighten a smoke and chat with her parrot. Yeah. Squat. Squat. So that's one of the many interesting things that I'd, if I ever go back to Carcross, I'd love to pop in. Even in the context of a saloon, you know, just because I was hoping to even like, I'd love to chat with someone there about this. You know what I mean?

Maybe they have a toe. Or maybe it's like a finger or something, you know? Or a parrot's wing. Ooh, I'd drink that. Yeah. Weirdly, I wouldn't for like vegetarian reasons. But the toe is fine. The toe is conceptual.

I'm able to rationalize the dough. Cannibalism, fine. Parrot wing, I'm vegan. You have a beautiful mind, my dude. I love the way your mind works. Thank you very much. Honestly, kind of near enough to this hotel is this place called the sourdough bakery. And this is where genuinely, if the fire weed was sort of my favorite feature of this place,

my favorite thing that happened and path that it kind of set us on happened in Carcross. Because I think that it really embodies the thing about travel that you can't pay any amount of money for, the promise of travel, that you will be in the right place and the right time to meet an interesting person. And because of that, you will do something interesting that you weren't going to do otherwise. And some manner of connection is made and you feel your human meter go up and you decide that people aren't really so bad, even though everything in the news is telling you otherwise right now, you know? Yeah, the human meter. I like that. And there's a great lesson in the story, I think, to be yourself. because it's very much just me being myself that fucking sets this story off.

Love it. We go to the sourdough bakery, which is this little local bakery, and I think Rui gets like maybe a cup of vegetarian chili or a soup or something, and I got a facacha bread, which was great. And as we go in there, there's three kids there. They're trying to show off for the bakery worker by doing like gymnastics moves. They're like kind of like, look, I can do this, I can do this, I can do a walkover. I can do da-da-da-da.

In the bakery. In the bakery, like right in front of the tell. okay it was only them before we came in and now it's only us them and the person behind the who they're trying to impress okay and kind of just without thinking i'm like i can do a cartwheel and they're like they're like really you can do a cartwheel i was like yeah i can do a good cartwheel like and i can do a good cartwheel for a dude pushing 40 i can do a fucking good cartwheel so then they're like do it and i'm like okay so of course i'm gonna do it i didn't say that i said yes yeah okay yes and that's what you say yes and yes and yes and

let me, there doesn't even need to be an end. Yes, let me blow your mind with my fucking great cartwheel. Oh, my God, what did you break? Oh, I didn't break anything, but when I cartwheeled, I had gotten in Whitehorse, I had gotten like a tube of 10 pre-rolls, pre-roll joints, and they fell out and popped open and all the joints went everywhere. Rui, to cover for me was really quickly like, oh no, your cigarettes. Which was the right move, but also I'm like, you know what? I feel like it should be the other way around it should the cigarettes should be the more shameful one not the cannabis which i also think in the yukon probably like i i gotta think everyone in carcross is smoking weed i hope so yeah why not although i didn't see the in-town dispensary so they might have to go up

into town for it i don't know that's fair that's fair but this also explains why you're doing a cartwheel yeah oh no but even without that i'm so like i'm you've you've fucking seen me it's true you're charming about how'd you get to enderby you know That's the whole fucking gig, right? Amen, amen. Having done these cartwheels, which, by the way, immaculate, minus the joints dropping, everyone uniformly it was agreed from Rui to the chick behind the till to these three kids.

Wow, I have a really good cartwheel. Standing ovation, yeah. Absolutely. And then from there, these kids were just kind of like attached at the hip to Rui and I while we were outside being like, let me tell you about, you know, our family. Let me tell you about my hamster. In town, there's just this little ship that's like some sort of like a little abandoned ship or something. Let us show you around here.

Da-da-da-da-da-da. And what it ends up coming down to. Unkey-Taylor and Uncle Rui. The best part is that their mom happens to be the town librarian. They take us in and their mom happens to be the librarian in the car cross library, which I would say is no bigger than like maybe a couple portables attached together. Like that's kind of the general vibe. Yeah.

But we got the tour of the library from these kids whose mother works there. Who we met and who was real lovely about the fact that her kids were spending time with these like two weird tourists. And we were, I think that we've seemed affable and, you know, small towns were friendly, whatever. Did you do a cartwheel for her? Didn't do a cartwheel for her. I had to save that one. They'd have to tell the legend to her. You know what I mean?

This is how the story propagates. But we got just this tour of this small town library from the perspective of these kids who must have spent an enormous amount of time there and basically lived there. So it was things like, here's the kitchen. here's the little cupboard in the kitchen where my sister and I hide here's you know what I mean here's this room that is like to anyone else it's like a broom closet

but like through the eyes of the child that inhabits and plays in and hides these spaces it's just like full of wonder and interest This is the broom closet that January through March just smells like cheese whatever it is right they were really keen to show us a particular hole under the thing that they

in, but it had been boarded up. We got to have them, saw the convo with the mom. Like, did you get that boarded up? And she was like, yeah. You can't play under a portable. This is fucking dangerous. She didn't say that, but. And it was just the most wonderful way to experience a building in a town that you've

never been in. That's so cool. And a library, too, which is like, it's like a wonderful place. Yeah. A library. Which we love a library. We went to the library in Selma, right? It was so fun, yeah.

And then in talking to the mom, we were like, we kind of gave her a little bit of our backstory. and said, oh, you know, we're here in town from Vancouver. Is there anything nearby that you recommend? And she put us back to Whitehorse. She said, go to a place called Miles Canyon. I got married there. It's beautiful.

Oh. And we go to this place called Miles Canyon back in Whitehorse. And it's another one of these parks that's accessible from White Horse. And true to her word, stunning rivers, these kind of octagonal basaltic columns that reach up from the rivers. Oh, my gosh. Blue, blue, blue waters. Another one of these really rushing, maybe the same really rushing river that cuts through White Horse. stunning. She also recommended this particular overlook to us that we didn't get the chance to do,

but there's a spot that kind of overlooks Whitehorse is supposed to be quite beautiful. So again, this instance of like, not only did we get to have this really cool interaction with these kids and not only did we get to get this kind of fun tour of the library from them, but this put us onto a brand new spot that was as beautiful as anything else we'd see, which is really, really beautiful. That's so nice. And, you know, when your joints fell out of your pocket, they didn't like break or explode. I was just thinking about that. That's pretty cool, too. No, the joints were fine. They were pre-rolled.

Those things are pretty scoogum. They roll them tight. We left Carcross, we did Miles Canyon. Should shut out, we had Mexican in this place called Sanchez Cantina and Whitehorse, and you wouldn't expect the Mexican to be good in the Yukon, but it was good. You do not expect that at all. And we went to next to this place called Haynes Junction, which is the last stop before a place called Cluane. And Cluane is this sort of like, it's Cluane is near the Alaska border, and it is host to a national park that was sort of the center.

piece of our last leg of the trip. Yeah. And Haynes Junction is the last stop before that. So you got to get your groceries, get your gas, all that. One thing I will say about Haynes Junction that I really liked is you know how sometimes in cities they'll have like on the sides of the lampposts, they'll have little banners and it'll be like whatever the museum is showing this month or, you know, here's what month it is whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. They had the photos of that year's graduating class, like the grad photos, which I thought was really cute. Whoa. That's very cool. And we also went here to the Daku Cultural Center, which is, it's a cultural center devoted to the champagne and Ashihic First Nations people. So it's cool in that context and that capacity and a really beautiful building as well as many of the kind of First Nations cultural centers are. So not only does it give you a history of this group of people, Parks Canada operates out of here.

And this is where you get the keys. If you're going to be staying in Cluane National Park, which is a national park as opposed to a territorial park, this is where you can get. get the keys to your authentic. Oh, I love it. We ended up doubling back. So before we got our authentic keys, I should really quickly say, we did spend one night at Desdiash Lake, which is near Cluane, because Cluanei was full, and really beautiful natural environment.

More fireweed than anywhere else on the trip, so lots and lots and lots of purple. And it does more with the color gray than I've ever seen a natural environment. Do all these different shades of gray, dark gray, light gray. sparkly gray metallic gray, gray beach, gray sand beach, all in different shades. Yeah. And then again, you get like a bright red wildflower or a bright yellow wildflower. It's beautiful stuff. It just makes it even sharper.

That's so cool. Yeah. That's also where we were camping when we heard an animal like bolt through the bushes. Like, thankfully, we never saw what it was. Yeah. Good. It worked out. Great. After Desdiash Lake, we doubled back to Haynes Junction, went to the Daku Cultural Center,

and got our authentic key. And what an authentic is, these are very key. cute it's like a hundred bucks a night they're like a park canada exclusive thing and they're like basically like a hut that's made out of like canvas tent material so it's like you're inside in like a little cabin but it has like a tent like roof but it has electricity it has got a fireplace it's got everything and then and then a little fire ring outside how cool it's a great setup lots and lots and lots of fun we only scraped the surface of this place which i wish we would have gotten to spend more time here. It's a huge national park that has like the largest natural

biodiversity of grizzly bears in the world. So watch out. It's got these really beautiful birch forests. And the places that we were kind of able to experience within our limited time there was we did this kind of hike up the mountain called the Devil's Throne, which is really popular, but it gets very steep and very crumble rocky at a certain point. So we just went up to where we had like a really nice viewpoint of the nearby lake, Kathleen Lake. And then we, and then we, went to Kathleen Lake where I went in. You're going to want water shoes because it's really slippery, really round rocks. Oh.

Covered into like algae. And then it was also cold as balls. So it was more of like a ceremonial getting in the lake because there's a lake here and I got to get in. Yeah. I wouldn't say that it was a pleasing experience. And Rui watched from the shore. Yeah.

An ice flange. Ice dunk. I guess two quick things to wrap up the Yukon experience. Because the next day we kind of just headed home back on Air North, another great flying experience. Number one, I would go back again in a heartbeat. I'd love to go back as far north as Dawson City, which is more northerly than anything else we were doing, which is why we missed out on it. And then I, uh, I saw Rui off to the airport to New Zealand amidst a lot of tears. Rui went and did a tour of New Zealand, decided that there was no work there for right now

and went back to Mexico, where they currently are. After all my fucking crying at the airport. I know. After all those tears. They're still not there. They're still not in Vancouver. And so they still left, but there's something about, like, I'll be halfway across the world. And then it's like, no, no, you won't, you bitch. I've been to where you are now. I've met your dogs. But, you know, you got a great trip out of it. A Yukon Adventure.

What a fabulous, fabulous trip. Really, really enjoyed it. Can't recommend it enough. Don't assume you'll get an RV right when you show it. You got to book that shit. Book the shit. Book the shit. So as we have been pulling together the episodes of the big Skookum-B-C road trip,

we really appreciate your patience, and we appreciate your patience when it comes to the Bittersweet Film Club over at our coffee account, K-O-hyphen-Fi.com slash Beersweet Infamy, Josie saying, oh yeah, we've taped an episode about Waterworld. It's in the works. It got stuck in traffic behind the road trip, and it's coming. We really, really appreciate your support. And yeah, and thanks for joining us in the second season of the Bittersweet Film Club, which is almost drawing to a close.

What's our next film club movie? For our next film club pick, we're going to be watching Almost Dead, which is a fun horror movie that Mitchell sourced starring our girl, the late Shannon Doherty, who we've covered on the show. One of the films that we watched this season of Bitter Sweet Film Club was the 2015 Kate Winslet vehicle, The Drismaker. Yeah. This is a genre of film that we kind of talked about in that discussion is sort of, it's this character of Kate Winslet who comes to a small Australia town, turns life on its ear, upends everything for everyone. and there's almost something magical, supernatural to the way that she does it.

Yeah, yeah, her life experience, yeah. Other movies in this general category, Elvira movie, Tuong Fu. Right. You know, just sort of this idea that characters can kind of come in and change everything. And even when you get to something like a Mary Poppins, right? We're talking like a supernatural coming down the chimney type of thing, right? Yeah. Or up the chimney?

She's doing something with the chimney. The chimney's getting sweeped. We know that. This is probably the first and only time that the subject of today's story has ever been compared to Mary Poppins in any capacity. Because since we're easing into spooky season here, you might imagine that there's a slightly darker tone to the events that unfold. We're not looking at a spoonful of sugar. Oh, shit. We're looking at a cabin full of chaos.

Let me tell you the story of the mad trapper of Rat River. Whoa. Of Rat River? Is that you said? Rat River. Yes. So this R-A-T river. So there is a little bit of laying down of place settings and stuff that I would like to do.

Just to quickly establish. Set the table. If you don't know about the geography of the Yukon. Okay. The general shape of it is to put it into terms of reference for an American, an Idaho shape. Kind of a skinnier panhandle at the top that expands to like a wider flared base at the bottom so it doesn't get stuck inside anywhere. Right. This is also true of the Yukon and then immediately to the east of it is the Northwest Territories.

That's who it shares its eastern border with. Right. Okay. And in the panhandle, the northernmost part of this territory is kind of. of where much of today's story is set. And much of it will take place just across the border in the Northwest Territories, the same kind of northern part. Yeah.

In between the two, in between the Yukon Panhandle and the upper part of the Northwest territories, is a mountain range called the Richardson Mountains. The Richardson Mountains. Okay. Yes. And these are 1,500 meters or 5,000 feet tall. So big, big mountains. Okay.

Damn. While the timeline of today's tale notably begins and ends in the Yukon, much of the story takes place in the Northwest Territories in and around the towns of Aclavik and Fort McPherson. Okay. This is happening in the 1930s, our story today. Ooh, bobs, yes. Specit Bobbs, and really right around that time that you were talking about where Bessie from the Caribou Hotel passes away that kind of like, she passes away in 1933. Bulk of this story is happening in 1931 and 1932. So a similar landscape to the one that we'll be discussing there.

Although, again, that's much further south than we're going to be chatting about here. Right. We're Arctic circling, for sure. We're Arctic circling. We're much further north. And in this story, it's fucking winter. So we're talking harsh. None of this fireweed and it's so pretty.

And the mosquitoes aren't even that bad. We're talking blizzard. Right. Permafrost, you know? Eagle-sized mosquitoes. Gotcha. Oh, yeah. No, well, they're dead.

It's cold. Okay. Oh, okay. Gotcha. So a little bit about Aclavik and Fort McPherson. Both places still exist but are now smaller hamlets. Aclavik used to be the regional administrative capital around the time of this story. It got replaced by a place that they built called Inuvic due to flooding. Some people are still there, though.

Fort McPherson is on the east bank of the Peel River, and it's about 160 to 300 kilometers away from Aclavik by road, depending on whether the ice road is active. Oh, ice road. Two words I hate. Be careful of the ice road. Yeah. Fort McPherson and Aclavik now have populations around 600 and are predominantly composed of the Gwich in First Nations in Fort McPherson and the Umarmute Inuit in Acklevick. We're going to meet our friend, the Mad Trapper of Rat River. Some have called him.

We're going to meet him around the same time that we're going to meet another important character in this story, R.CMP constable, Edgar Millen. So I'll introduce you to our boy, Edgar, first. Okay. And then we'll meet the trapper. his eyes. Constable Edgar Millen was born in Belfast in 1901. In Ireland, there's not like a local one, you know, you got it. I got it, yeah. Well, there's, you know, there's a London in Ontario and it bears making clear. There's some place names that translate, certainly. Oh, yeah. In 1920, Millen joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, where he completed most of his service in the

Northwest Territories. One big component of his work, while he's in the NWT, is doing patrols, broadly, there's two types of patrol, routine patrols and special patrols, which are kind of what they sound like. Yeah. A special patrol is you've been sent out for a specific reason. Yeah.

Routine patrol is, I'm just keeping an eye on things in general. Meet your quotas. Do your thing. Yeah. Know who's in the area because apparently this being the beginning of the Great Depression,

pretty common for guys to run away from that set of responsibilities, seek a new life in the Yukon and you living in the Yukon. Oh. These are very harsh terrains, especially as far north as we're talking, and the Northwest Territories as well, and people die there. So we have to take care. Yeah. You're making me cold. I need a sweater. On a routine patrol to Fort McPherson Northwest Territories in July of 1931,

Millen first encounters the man known as Albert Johnson, who's been in the area since the ninth of the month, and who appeared mysteriously on the Peel River, floating on a crude raft composed of three logs kind of lashed together with a surplus of cash to throw around. This guy's got a deep wallet. Whoa. Like that deep wallet is visible from the banks of the Peel River? From space, which we can't access because it's only 1931. Wow.

Time travel. We know very little about the actual identity of the man known as Albert Johnson. And I'm saying a lot of known as Albert Johnson, from which you can infer that that's a conspicuously bland name. Both names referring to a penis. When you think about it. Thank you. Good points to bring to bear.

Based on eyewitness and photographic evidence, it seems extremely likely that Albert Johnson is the same man as Arthur Nelson, a man who first appeared on August 21, 1927, so four years ago, when he popped into Taylor & Jury's trading store in Ross River Post-Ucon, which is considerably further south than most of the places we'll be discussing today. Okay. But connected via river. In sparsely populated regions, far-strung towns can still have quite a connection.

It's mainly like trading posts at this point. You know what I mean? Nelson slash Johnson is described as being in his early 30s of average height and about 170 pounds. In terms of his personality, he's described as intelligent and highly rational with an aloof and evasive demeanor. I'm seeing small, small glasses. Like those 1930, like small, you know what I mean?

I don't know if we've got glasses, but perhaps a glasses wearer of the soul, of the heart. That's what I mean, yes, thank you. Less charitable evaluations of his personality call him off-putting, oh, antisocial, arrogant, insolent, and standoffish. Okay, subjective descriptions. You can't please everyone.

It's true. Either way, it's very clear that this guy does not want anything to do with anyone else. He answers questions with single words and has big stay the fuck away from me energy. Right. Yeah. Nonetheless, while in the Ross River area, he made an acquaintanceship with a fellow trader, Roy Buddle, said to be the only person Nelson could stand. To Bottle, he claimed that he was raised in the U.S. on a small farm in North Dakota and that he would stay long enough to build a boat. And that is a watercraft and not a bout in a Canadian accent. good catch good good clarification thank you for our international listeners in may 1931

arthur nelson seemed to vanish from ross river and a couple of months later our boy albert johnson pops up in fort macpherson on his log raft and here we are constable millen and arthur johnson have a brief interaction johnson true to character gives away very little but says he wants to head toward rat river country 25 kilometers northwest millin says okay but just i see you you planning on doing some trapping make sure you get a trapping license. That's important. Okay. Okay. So Johnson ends up buying a canoe from one of the local indigenous folks and heads off down the river, up the river. He takes the river. And he's able to navigate the rapids. There's a junction so rocky that it's called Destruction City. And he's

able to navigate this. So we can infer that he's like probably a very, in spite of the kind of slap together nature of his recent watercraft, he's probably a decent river guide type of person. Yeah, yeah. River Rat, if you will. A river rat. And aptly to that, he continues up Rat River. He eventually finds a place to stop and build a small fort-like cabin. These box structures we've been talking about, right? Okay, yes, yes. And there's this real idea mythologically, based on how it plays out that this is something that he's deliberately reinforcing in anticipation for a possible battle. It ends up being quite a skukum cabin, but it's likely that these are just reinforcements from the cold, typical of the, you know. You got to stay warm when you're that. The box, yeah. That far north, yeah. Should also note that as we're kind of inferring things from his actions, a cautious man, possibly a paranoid man, he's worried about a fire in the cabin, so he splits his goods

between the cabin, and then he has a small nearby cash that he makes. Okay, okay. I mean, fire's a real issue, so. Yeah. I get it. On Christmas Day, 1931. Christmas. Again, again, we're spending a couple of Christmases in the Yukon here.

Christmas Day, 1931, a dude named William Neri Sue, local indigenous guy. He reports that Albert Johnson has been tampering with his trap lines. And this is apparently, this might be the first formal report, but there's a lot of talk about. He's either taking or discarding things from trap lines. He's discarding the trap lines themselves and replacing with his own. He's taking things that are in the trap lines. Like, he's not a good neighbor, this guy. That seems like a bad thing to do.

Very naughty. And so Constable Edgar Millen, our guy from before, he sends out two members of his force, Constable's AWK and Joe Bernard, who make the 110 kilometer trip to Rat River being forced to camp out in the 30 below temperatures on Christmas night. Because we're going via dog sled here. Oh, dang. So that's a two-day trip. Let's do that when we go to the Yukon. Let's do dog sledding.

Nope. Fuck, no. Oh, well, I mean, like, for a lark, not as like a primary mode of transportation. if we can help it. Okay, that's fair. They arrive at the cabin on special patrol. We're checking in. We're specifically checking in at 10 a.m. December 26th, boxing day.

They knock and no one answers, but they see a figure kind of twitching the window coverings back. So you see it, he's in there. Someone's in there. Someone's in there. They spend two hours trying to coax him out before deciding to call it a day and report his behavior back to Inspector Alexander Neville Eames. in a clavoc. They meet that wild-ass trip.

Well, if he wasn't going to open up, what the fuck were they going to do? Blast him out. You can't just blast Joe. They don't even have a warrant. I know. This is a patrol, right? Fair, fair, very, so they get a search warrant,

and they return with an expanded party on December 31st, New Year's Eve. I won't go much into the gradual expansion of the party over the course of this story, but take for granted that it's a variety of constables, other RCMP officers, Volunteers, local indigenous folks who are familiar with the area and helping with the efforts, other trappers, et cetera.

Gotcha, okay. For right now, I think it's just the Popizis, but I'm not entirely sure. That's slang for the RCMP. I didn't know what that was, yeah. They arrive on December 31st, Constable A.W. King bangs the door and asks, Are you there, Mr. Johnson? In response, Mr. Johnson fires a rifle through the door and into King's chest. Oh!

Oh, my goodness. The RC&P party returns fire, turns into a big firefight. A shootout. A shoot-in-a-boot out. And they're able to retrieve the injured king. And they make their priority setting off on an overnight dog sled race against time to get King to the hospital in the Clavik. Oh, my gosh. King survives.

Holy shit. In the end, the bullet passed clean through him and came within an inch of his heart. and had he not been bending over and had Johnson not shot him from below ground level so you can imagine that this is like maybe a dugout cabin where he's lying facing up with the gun so probably like a couple inches below ground this is not nice ground to dig in

but blammo kings kneeling down it comes up passes clean through him within an inch of his heart but he survives wow wow Johnson's still locked up in his cabin but obviously this you can't just shoot a cop So we're coming back. Yeah.

On January 2nd, battling temperatures 40 below zero, which I think might be where our things line up. We come together, Celsius and Fahrenheit. It's so chilly. We just give up and get on the same scale. Yeah. We just give up measuring it. Inspector Eam sets out for Johnson's cabin with a party of six men and 42 dogs. The feeding and maintenance of these dogs makes the logistics of this affair very, very complicated, as you can imagine.

Yeah, yeah. inspector eames approaches the cabin while most of the other posse members hide behind nearby trees says one man you never realize how skinny a tree is until you try to hide behind it i okay think eames orders johnson out of the cabin and to the surprise of no one the shots fly fast and furious johnson is seemingly double-fisting a sought-off shotgun and a 22 with a deep arsenal of ammo and other weapons damn okay his cabin is slightly larger or around than a pool table. So he's able to move and navigate it very quickly because it's just a bunker, basically. Yeah, yeah, one room bunker. And he's carved holes in the mud that he used

to set the logs, which he's able to shoot through. The RCMP party hurls dynamite at Johnson's cabin. They're hoping to blow it apart. They land a hit on the smokestack. They're able to blow off the smoke stack, but otherwise the damp dynamite bounces uselessly off the cabin into exterior, never detonating. Oh, no. After 15 hours. of this, the RCMP retreats. Ow, 15 hours. Okay. Wow. In negative 40, hurling dynamite that's not working and getting shot at by a guy in a bunker. And you're like, we just came up to told you to stop stealing from other people's trap lines.

That's all we wanted to say. And now we're in this mess. Jesus. By January 6th, 1932, the Canadian press has covered the original King shooting. Right through the chest, yeah. Yeah. Using phrases like crazed, demented, and cabin fever while describing this man, Albert Johnson. They coined him the mad trapper of a rat river. But even with that nomenclatcher, he earns sympathy from the general public because even then people wanted cops to stay out of their business. Yeah, fair.

Yeah. In the Yukon, especially, I didn't move this far north to be dealt with by cops. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a huge deal in a clavoc with trappers eagerly volunteering their services to pluck the bad apple among them, local First Nations and Inuit getting involved, you know, all of these things that we kind of talked about. Yeah. By the time the Reform Party reaches Johnson's cabin some days later, they realize Johnson has abandoned the cabin.

Yeah. And escaped under the cover of a blizzard. That makes total sense that he would leave. Like, obviously they know where he lives, so why not just leave? It'll solve this. Yeah, and it doesn't have like a roof anymore because they blew it up with dynamite. Right, there's that too. Nonetheless, they set up a base camp, 15 kilometers or nine miles east of the cabin.

Oh. And they're finally able to pick up the tracks of Johnson's unique snow shoes headed west. Did he make them himself? Probably. I mean, they're unique. Yeah. You can't just buy these at Taylor & Jury's trading store. Fuck no.

You're fucking Ross River, Josie. You're right. Got to carve them out of logs. You're right. You're right. Shortly after daybreak on January 30th, 1932, a party led by constable Edgar Millen, who you'll remember that he was the dude with whom we first encountered. Yeah. Albert Johnson back in July of 1931.

His party follows a creek that empties into Rat River until they reach a small grove of trees and rocks. They don't see tracks in or out, but they do hear occasional coughing. Sponsor us, Rikola. What? trekking out during a blizzard, right? Yeah, got to stay warm. While some members of the posse watch from a distance, others, including Millen, approach it directly.

Surprise, that coughing is Johnson. He pops. I don't know if he pops out in my head. He's like, blah. But probably he keeps hidden because he's better at this than I am. He catches the posse by surprise with a shot. The group opens fire back. They plug a bunch of bullets into this thicket.

They're just trying to ventilate this grove of trees and rocks. Oh, man. Two hours go by of this. No further activity from this grove. RC&P cautiously approaches. Okay. Albert Johnson springs again and fires on the group. He and Millen exchange fire.

Millen is shot. Fatally? Or cleanly? He's dead. RIP Constable Millen. Another constable, Carl Gardland, ties Millen's bootlaces together to drag his body back from the gunfight. Whoa.

Like, he's out there and we got to like tie it and then use that. as a drag, you know what I mean? Yeah, totally. The group keeps watch over Johnson's Stakeout spot and Millen's body while one of their number heads to a clavik for backup. Whoa. By early February, the story is the talk of Northern Canada, with the details going national and even international. The RCMP issues radio broadcasts for volunteers and the bordering Yukon RCMP, because again, we're still most of this happening in the Northwest Territories. The Yukon sends over some of their own.

C&P number to the cause. As a result, by this time in early February, the search party has now swelled to 17 men, although Johnson, of course, has snuck off again by now, and the snow has wiped his traces away. Right, yeah, yeah. He's using that weather to his benefit. Inspector Eames also appeals to technology in the form of the relatively new invention, the aeroplane.

Err. Not a blimp, though. Specifically, Eames recruits the services of World War I Flying Ace, Captain Wilfred Reed, May, better known as Wop May. Oh, uh... Not a slur. I think it's just... Okay. My last name is Basso. I'm allowed to say it. Whatever.

Fair, fair, sure. A bona fide Canadian military legend. May was born in 1896 in Carberry, Manitoba. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his World War I service, during which he shot down 13 enemy planes and was involved in the airfight that grounded Baron von Richtofen, a.k.a. The Red Baron. Oh, whoa. It's kind of like getting like a military Charleston. It's kind of like getting the Red Baron to help you, right? Yeah, yeah. No, that makes sense.

Using his black and orange Canadian Airways, Belanka Monoplane, May is able to gain a much better perspective on Johnson's route than those traveling by land, and he's able to see that Johnson is staying near his own trails to monitor them. So he's not making clean getaways and doing, like, he's, for whatever reason, he's staying back to see if he's being followed, getting the drop on. And he's creating a lot of, I should say, fake trails too. And they come to figure out like the ratio by which he's making fake trails to real trails thanks to this guy Watt May and it really helps them. So it's not that he's trying to get as much distance between him and his pursuers. It's more like he's

trying to trick them and lead them down. Yeah. I get the sense that this might be a guy who wants to kill these cops. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. That could be the case. Yeah. it didn't take much to make him start killing cops in the end they knocked on his door that was all it took which isn't too much well i mean it sort of calls into question and we'll chat a little bit later about this guy's identity before he got to ross river but it calls into question what is this guy afraid that these cops are going to find if they talk to him yeah right yeah because this is a guy who prior to his mid 30s functionally has no identity what did this motherfucker do when he was maybe in north dakota you know why isn't he there now right on febru February 8th, May flies in 700 pounds of food. Again, large party with lots of animals in blizzard conditions. Food vanishes rapidly. And he is able to fly out Constable Millen's body for proper treatment and burial. Okay. That's good. The group finds more evidence that Johnson is seemingly headed west. And that means that he's headed, if you'll remember, toward the Richardson Mountains that form that northern part of the border between the Northwest

territories and the Yukon. Right. This is something of a blessing from the cop's perspective, because the mountains form a natural barrier to keep our mad trapper contained. Common wisdom at the time down to like the local indigenous folks is that, again, these are 1,500 meter 5,000 feet tall mountains. Yeah. These would be impossible for anyone to cross on foot certainly in the winter with the wicked storms, lack of firewood, inhospitable terrain, continuous permafrost, etc. Make sense. Yeah. So they've got them backed up against a wall, essentially. Essentially. With that said, if anyone can do it, Johnson seemingly can, says our head honcho Inspector Eames in his official report. Whoa.

I note in press reports that Johnson is referred to as the demented trapper. On the contrary, he showed himself to be an extremely shrewd and resolute man, capable of quick thought and action, a tough and desperate character. And indeed, the story, whether it's the real thing or this demented trapper spin, is now gaining national coverage via Canadian radio with listeners eager to be distracted from the Great Depression and root for their new, unlikely folk hero. Right, yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Print media did its part to get the word out too.

Although on February 13th, when newspapers published a photo of a trapper with a fur hat, purported to be the mad trapper, it turned out to be a different Albert Johnson, a man from Princeton, BC, who had never killed anyone and who marched into the newspaper office demanding a retraction. Good for him. We know Princeton. I tubed in Princeton, and I've been to the bathroom there several times. February 12th, an indigenous man named Peter Alexi reports encountering Johnson's distinct snowshoe tracks at La Pierre House,

which is on the Yukon side of the Richardson Mountains. Whoa. That means that Johnson has crossed the seemingly impassable mountains traveling 90 kilometers or 145 miles in the heart of a blizzard. Jesus! And indeed, the search parties are able to find Johnson's old camps in the mountains to verify the feat. Oh, my gosh.

Oh, my gosh. How did, okay. On February 14th, Valentine's Day, Wap May gets the sweetest gift. He again finds Johnson's tracks from on high. But they are obliterated by caribou footprints. Johnson has seemingly overtaken a pack of caribou and used their tracks to camouflage his own.

Holy sure. He's smart. He's a smart. Noting his tactics in their book, The Death of Albert Johnson, Mad Trapper of Rat River, writers E.W. Anderson and Art Downs say, ahead somewhere Albert Johnson pressed on, laying out trail and counter trail, unable to light a fire lest it led the posse to him,

unable to kill for food lest the sound of his rifle revealed his presence. He survived by snaring squirrels and brewing tea over miniature fires concealed in tiny caves in the snow-crusted riverbanks. From time to time, he climbed trees to survey his back trail or lay out a course ahead. Whoa. That is. And we can take for granted that he's probably stealing from other people's trap lines because he likes to do that. Yeah, yeah. He's known to do that even when he's not on the run. Yeah. Crazy stuff, though.

That's insane. That is some real backward survivalist shit, doggy. Naked and afraid kind of stuff. And again, that question, who is this guy that he knows these things? Who is this man who seemingly is not from around here yet can like navigate the worst of the sub-arctic with such skill. Yeah. With Watt May's help, though, the search party is able to cut its time way down.

As I said, they observed that Johnson's traveling two false miles for every true mile, and they're able to calculate, but they'll find him the next day. Whoa. A plane helps, brother. A plane helps. It does. It does. Technology. Yep, step back.

Get the big picture. And indeed, on February 17, 1932, RCMP staff sergeant Earl Hersey is leading his dog team when he spots the trapper himself Albert Johnson, if that is his real name, it's not 300 meters in the distance, 300 meters off. Whoa. The RCMP are able to surround Johnson and shoot.

Johnson returns fire. Earl Hersey is shot. Oh, shoot. That's what the gun did. Because Hersey is kneeling, the single bullet causes three wounds through his knee, elbow, and lungs. Oh, that's no fun. Johnson chucks on his snowshoes and tries to head up a nearby embankment, repeatedly

being felled by RC&P bullets, but staggering back to life in determination like the horror movie monster, he seems to be, the press would have you believe that he is, legend has made him out to be. Yeah. And again, I'll quote from that, the book by E.W. Anderson and Art. because I think they've done a good job with this scene. I'll check it over to them. Okay. Albert Johnson left the shelter of the bank, which was too steep to climb and began running back

along the river. Despite his emaciated condition, the weight of his pack and his ungainly snow shoes, he pulled away from the posse. His objective was the opposite bank where the incline was less steep, and Underbrush offered him protection. But a burst of rifle fire rippled the snow around him. In mid-river, he suddenly dropped. And I should say the river, of course, is frozen. Yeah. Ooh. Burrowing into a snowdrift, he dragged his pack in front of him and methodically began to return the fire. There was no panic, no shout of defiance, no acceptance of the inevitable, just Johnson with his supreme self-confidence determined to emerge the victor. The posse moved towards him along the tree-steaded banks.

They called repeatedly for his surrender but also maintained a steady sniper fire. Then some of the group gained positions on the banks overlooking Johnson's snow trench. from then Johnson's end was assured. Though hit repeatedly, Johnson fought on, he was lying on his side reloading his rifle when a bullet struck him in the spine. His desperate resistance ended. Watt May, sweeping overhead,

saw Johnson's sprawled figure, his arm outstretched, rifle and attended. The pilot dipped his wings to signal the end and circled to land on the frozen river. At 12.10 p.m. on February 17, 1932, Inspector Eames' posse moved in to surround Johnson's body. Among wounds was a hole blown in his hip when one of the rifle bullets exploded ammunition in his pocket. Oh, fuck. That's, oh, no. No, you don't think about that one. You live by the

board, you die by the board. I remember sand duning. It's a dangerous sport. Snow duning as well. His frozen, emaciated face was twisted into a horrible grimace, teeth looking like fangs through his beard. Through the wind and fog and at considerable peril, Watt made. flies the injured Earl Hersey, back for medical treatment. Hersy survives. Oh, my gosh. Albert Johnson, ventilated by 17 RCMP bullets, including that fatal shot to the spine by special constable John Moses, does not.

Whoa. In a photo taken by either May or his crewman from the plane, we see a single black dot of Johnson's body surrounded by the flat white landscape of the frozen river. Holy shit. Oh, cinematic. That's the Popizzi's right there. Yeah. I get it now. I get it now.

The next day, Watt May brings Johnson's body back to a clavik. From photos of the corpse, we can see Johnson's resemblance to the mysterious Arthur Nelson of Ross River, Yukon. Okay. Same person. Who again had like one photo of him taken that were able to refer them together. Wow. The surveillance state was a different machine then. You could just be Arthur Nelson and Ross River one day and Albert Johnson and Rat River the next. Yeah. I would also argue that the photos depict his resemblance.

to English comedian Greg Davies, star of Taskmaster. Oh, oh, wow. Okay. Again, given this is a photo of an emaciated corpse and a snarl, maybe not the kindest. I think that Greg Davies is a handsome man. I don't mean anything by it. Albert Johnson's personal effects are gathered and counted. In total, $2,410 in cash are found on his person,

the equivalent of about $48.5 grand in 2025 Canadian money. Walking around money. Yeah, oh, dang. Thank you for the conversion. He also had at least four firearms, including a sawed-off shotgun and a Winchester rifle, and two small glass jars, one containing five pearls worth about $15, and one containing five golden teeth worth about $12.56. Oh.

Obviously, as a piece of mystery, people like to say that these were teeth from his other victims that he'd pulled. Right, yeah. Our current analysis says that this was most likely his own teeth. Oh. You never know when you're going to need. need to make some trades. It's true. This is, again, tying back to that two and a half grand in cash.

Golden dental work was quite uncommon for the time. So maybe a signal of wealth from this guy, Albert Johnson. Ah, I see. They send Johnson's fingerprints to the relevant authorities in Canada and the United States, but are not able to identify the man known as the Mad Trapper. Similarly, attempts to trace his cash and belongings lead to dead ends. I didn't realize fingerprinting would be a technology at their fingertips. but late 1800s I think fingerprinting is my as my belief okay some some Sherlock shit I get it yeah

there you go there you go on February 29th 1932 constable Edgar Millen the mad trappers only known human fatality was buried with full military honors at Beechmont Cemetery in Edmonton since then a wooden cairn has been erected on the site where Millen was gunned down and the nearby body of water has been named Millen Creek oh wow the man who called himself Albert Johnson is buried in the Eclavoc cemetery where you can still find him. Originally, someone dragged a large forked tree trunk to the site and painted the initials A and J on the limbs.

Now there's a larger painted sign that gives the more complete details of the so-called mad trapper of Rat River. Quote, Albert Johnson arrived in Ross River, August 21st, 1927. Complaints of local trappers brought the RCMP on him. He shot two officers and became a few. fugitive of the law, with howling huskies, dangerous trails, frozen nights. The posse finally caught up with him.

He was killed up the Eagle River, February 17, 1932. What is the legacy of this whole saga? Yeah, enough that there's a sign in the cemetery, yeah. The search for Albert Johnson marks one of Canada's largest ever manhunts. Oh, shit. And the first time that both radio and airplane technologies were used in RCMP investigations. Oh, okay. The story of the 42-day hunt for the mad trapper of Rat River and the mystery of his identity continue to enthrall long after his demise.

You can find museums dedicated to the trapper in Aclavik as well as Fort Smith along the northern Alberta border of the Northwest Territories. Because the story eventually went worldwide, people have written in large volume to authorities over the years, claiming to be relatives of the mad trapper a la the Romanovs. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. My great, great, great, great, yeah. None of these leads have gone anywhere. There have been multiple fictionalized retellings of the Mad Trapper's story, naturally. The most prominent and the one that I watched ahead of this episode is the 1981 Western Death Hunt. This was an American and Hong Kong co-pro. Love it. Whoa.

Filmed on location in Banff, Alberta. No way. But if you must film somewhere slightly more accessible, than the Yukon proper, Banff has beautiful mountains. Yeah, truly. This version features a killers row, pun intended, of hard-boiled character actors, including Charles Bronson, playing to type as Mysterious Loner, Albert Johnson. Whoa.

His rough-edged Mountie Pursuer is Lee Marvin. Okay. And we got supporting performances from Carl Weathers and Angie Dickinson. Dickinson's part specifically is virtually non-existent, which makes sense, because when you look at this story the way I just told it to you, who's she playing? There's not a lot of women. She works at the saloon. Is that it?

A woman, played by Anne Woman, who couldn't make it. And so Angie Dickinson took it. She says that she took the role because she wanted to see BAMF. Fair enough. I mean, that's not a bad way to go see Bamp. Your role is small. You know that. In 2007, a documentary team called Myth Merchant Productions made its own mark on Trapper lore.

Not only does Hunt for the Mad Trapper retell the story of Albert Johnson in documentary form, but the filmmakers dug up his grave, having secured permission and funding to DNA test his remains in hopes of ascertaining his identity. Oh, I mean, is there enough of a DNA database to actually match it to anything? In the 23 and me era? Well, I guess, yeah, I guess DNA hereditary living descendants. Okay. Not hereditary living descendants, but we can trace him back to a certain pair of ancestors.

Bonnie and Clyde. It's Bonnie and Clyde. You got it. Among the notable discoveries of this genetic testing, dietary isotope tests revealed a corn-heavy early diet, suggesting a youth spent in the American Midwest. He said North Dakota, maybe not so far from the truth. Right.

The research team also discovered Johnson had scoliosis, making those cold nights camped out in the blizzard conditions on hard rocks and permafrost, even more impressive. You got to imagine that trick back. Yeah. When you got to overtake a herd of caribou, that's tough. Ooh, damn, damn, damn. Biogeographical analysis, e.g.

What genetics can we link to what places and when? Okay, thank you. Determined that the trapper is of Swedish extraction. Oh. Maybe a Scandinavian who immigrated to America or grew up in a Scandinavian community there or something. Yeah, okay. He's linked to multiple descendants of Gustav Magnuson and Britta Sven's daughter, both of whom lived in the 18th and 19th. century. Okay. At the very least, we have a pair of ancestors to kind of start our search,

although if we've identified a particular person from there, maybe something for the genetic detectives who are listening to this, right? The family tree warriors. Yeah, the Nancy D.N.A's. Mm-hmm. Sure. That's not bad. It needs a little workshop. I get it. We'll workshop it next time. Okay. We've had a lot on our place. We got time. We got season six. We're good. Exactly. Many of Johnson's genetic markers can be traced to the Swedish towns of hunger, Kavsio and Kooltorp. Cool. Otherwise, thanks for listening to my last full-length story of

Bittersweet Infamy Season 5 and the extended carousel slideshow that was my vacation up north with Rui. Stay warm as the temperatures drop and as spooky season approaches. Watch out for any mysterious and taciturn men who show up in your area with money and guns. It's a wild world out there and you never know who might be a little bit mad. And trapping. And trappin. Thanks for listening.

If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinfemy.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our coffee account. At K-O-HifinFi.com forward slash bittersweet infamy. But no pressure. Bitter sweet, baby. You can always support us by liking. rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at Bittersweet Infamy,

or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet. The sources that I use for this episode's infamous include the Caribou Hotel website, Caribou Hotel.ca, specifically their hotel history page. I read an article from Global News, Royal Visit 2016, Carcross, boasts connection to clondon, Gold Rush, written by Paula Baker, posted September 27th, 2016. I read an article from Yukon Nuggets, written by radio personality, Les McLaughin. The article is entitled Ghost on the third floor, Caribou Hotel and Carcross. I read the article Mrs. Gideon's Ghost,

written by Ken Bolton, published in 2015, October 15th in What's Up, Yukon? All Northern, all fun. I read an article in the CBC. Haunted Carcross, Yukon Hotel featured on New Canada Post stamp. It was posted to the CBC News website September 15th, 2015. I read an article from Yukon News, specifically posted by the McBride Museum, August 4th, 2010. Polly, the foul-mouthed sourdough parrot. And the poem that I mention at the start of the infamous by Robert W. Service, I found on Poetry Foundation.

where you can read the entirety of the poem, The Creation of San McGee. My sources for this episode included The Death of Albert Johnson Mad Trapper of Rat River by E.W. Anderson and Art Downs, published in 2000 by Heritage House and accessed via archive.org. The Mad Trapper of Rat River Northwest Territories Timeline. You find that online at nwt Timeline.ca. I watched the 2009 TV movie Arctic Manhunt for the Mad Trapper, and I also read Myth Merchant Films, The Alberta OCEL. me and Othrum work to identify the Mad Trapper of Rat River on dna solves.com. I watched the 1981 Peter Hunt Western film, Death Hunt, and I read the Wikipedia pages for Aclavoc and Fort McPherson Northwest Territories. Huge thanks to our monthly subscribers and film club members over at coffee.com,

K-O-hyphen-Fi.com slash bittersweetin for me, become a member of the film club, and you can access old episodes of the Bitter Sweet Film Club suggest movies for us to watch like our friends, Terry, Jonathan, Lizzie D, Sof, Dylan and Satchel, and Erica Joe. Bitter's Infamy is a proud member of the 604 Podcast Network. This episode is edited by Alex McCarthy, cover photo by Luke Bentley. Our interstitial is by Mitchell Collins, and the song you're currently listening to is T Street by Brian Steele. I'm a lot of the mrs.

I'm a good I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm

I'm a I'm I'm I'm I'm We're going to be able to be.