"Many noble characters were met on the trail of '98." -- W.H.T. Olive

Born in Truro, Ontario in 1865, William Henty Trewolla Olive served an apprenticeship in woodwork and architecture before travelling west to British Columbia where he worked installing the stairwells in Victoria's new Parliament Buildings. Married to a woman he had courted in England, they had four children while living in Victoria, and a fifth later. His employer Francis Rattenbury, the architect, sent him to the Yukon to build boats while founding the Bennett Lake & Klondyke Navigation Company. Olive built three steamboats. He and his family lived in Atlin, B.C. until they moved to Carbon, Alberta in 1904. There he built a school and later served as Justice of the Peace. He died in Calgary in July, 1940. His granddaughter Evelyn Johnson decided to publish his memoirs of the 'Klondyke' that he had prepared in 1939. Edited by Allan Safarik and published by Tim Lawson, the manuscript was handsomely packaged as The Olive Diary: The Gripping Tale of W.H.T. Olive's Adventures in the Klondyke of 1989 (Surrey: Timberholme Books, 1998 $26.95).

[BCBW 2003] "Klondike"