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My Life Story

"Well, I don't quite know where or when I was born - maybe in Bohemia in 1886.

I think I was two years old when I came to the States. Somehow, I got separated from my parents and ended up in the foster home of a farmer in New Salem, Pennsylvania.

I didn't like it there, and ran off when I was eight - there were lots of kids like me riding the freights back then. Found myself in Tower, Minnesota, where a hobo fella took me under his wing. We lived in a shack outside of town.

I learned to hunt, fish, care for myself. Made a good living trapping, then the war came and I joined the Army Engineer Corp. Went to France to cut wood for construction jobs.

Came back in 1918 and got married to Marion Carlson.  Moved up to Winton, MN, to one of the St. Croix Lumber Mill homes. I'd cruise for timber. In the winters, I'd go trapping with my partner Fred Mayo, and in the summers I'd do a bit of guiding.

Marion had a boy, Harry, a fine lad. We went out into the boundary waters a lot.  But the lumber mill closed in '22 and you couldn't do enough trapping there, so Fred and I left for Great Slave Lake, NWT, in '24. But, Fred caught scurvy and I started trapping alone.

Well, I heard about the Nahanni country and I was determined to get to know it. Marion wouldn't join me and there was no point in going home, so I just stayed.  But, I didn't start looking for gold till the thirties.

You see, Jack Stanier heard the McLeods left a map with the OMI Priest at Fort Liard - well that's where the McLeods grew up - before they went into the Nahanni that last time in 1905.  He got Fr. Turcotte to look thru the old records, and he found a paper showing three streams coming together just above the Flat River Canyon with an 'X'  labeled 'gold' nearby.

So, we all went to Gold Creek to take a look. Gus Kraus, Billy Clark and I spent a summer in '34 there sluicing one of the creeks, but it didn't amount to much. But, I'm still looking. 

Albert at his first Nahanni cabin just within the Flat River - Sept., 1927

Albert, engineer aboard the 'S.S. Thomas Murphy'

In 1943, Harry McGurran died; he had been Dr. Truesdell's handyman and boat engineer. Well, it wasn't worthwhile trapping during the war years, and the Doctor needed someone to take him up and down the river on his visits and at Fort Simpson, so I took the job. That's when I got my shack here. But, the Doctor left in 1950, and I went back to the Nahanni. I guess I lost track of time, 'cause in 1952 the RCMP sent Constable Stan Byers up with Gus Kraus in the police launch to look for me. They brought shovels with them, but there was no need - I was OK.   I still had some grub. We went back to Simpson, but, I only stay during the winters. I kept returning to the Nahanni each year. In the mid '50s, I stayed too long. The ice started to flow and I was caught on the wrong side of the river. Had to wait a month before I could return to my camp. I was low on greens that winter, and lost some teeth to scurvy. I tried to dig up some parsnips at the Hot Springs, but it was too late.

Guess you heard I lost my boat in First Canyon in '59. You see, a wind pushed my scow into a rock, and it upset. I lost everything - my map, gold sample, Marion's picture, even the $500 I was gonna use to get my teeth fixed at Ft. Nelson.  I swam to shore with just a pocket knife and a few matches. Left a message in charcoal on the canyon wall and started up a creek.

It was eight days before they spotted me below the Hot Springs; Dick Turner got the Oil Exploration helicopter to look. Boy, I was never so glad to see Dick !

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