Page 88 the source of the gold in the rivers and creeks of the Y ukon The common, but obviously wrong, belief was that it from elsewhere, ei - ther the mountains or Alaska. R yan’ s concept was that there was a source right under the feet of Y ukon resi - dents. He believed he could fnd the Mother Lode by taking soil samples along the banks of rivers and from the gravel beds that lined them. How he started the Second Great Y u - kon Mining Rush begins with his idea that he could follow a trade he started at age 15, trapping. However , there was a great demand for mushrooms and the pay was good. R yan became a picker of morels, chanterelles and matsutakes for the restaurants of Paris and T okyo. He eventually settled near Dawson that had a population of 30,000 in 1898 but was down to 2,000 when he arrived. In 1992, he met Cathy in Whitehorse, the capital of the territory , and asked her to join him picking mushrooms. Broke at the time, she accepted. They ended up in 365-square-foot for - mer barber shop outside Dawson that lacked both electricity and running water . T wo children came along and four people slept in one room. T imes were hard as the mushroom demand slumped so R yan turned to prospecting; the only secure income was a $10,000 annual grant the Y ukon government gave to prospectors, aug - mented by occasional work picking morels. R yan kept taki ng soil sample s and if he got a few specks of gold, he didn’ t quit as so many of the territory’ s pros - pectors did but dug deeper until he either got enough of a gold sample to interest a junior mining company in his claims......or ran out of specks. In 1997, Shawn and Cathy decided to take a gamble and become full time prospectors. In every public speech, R yan praises his wife as she proved herself not loyal to his dream of striking it rich but a shrewd business person, a tough negotiator and good mother to their daughter and son. They now live in a fne house in Whitehorse, fnanced by the $6 mil - lion they received when mining giant Kinross Gold Corp. paid $138 million for R yan’ s frst big discovery that end - ed up in a junior called Underworld Resources Ltd. “It takes a special kind of spouse to accept the life of a prospector . She is the backbone of the business. She is the mainframe. The reality is that 80 per cent of the people in this business for the last 20 years go through these up and down cycles and the only reason we are still in the business is because of these spouses that are supporting us,” R yan said in his acceptance speech in ac - cepting the 2009 award. In fact, Kathy made a major decision on her own that eventually enabled R yan to fulfll his dream. When he was out in the feld, she talked the owner of two 20-by-24-foot cabins to sell them to her on credit and to join them together . Then she ordered hydro to be hooked up. R yan was angry at her because he wanted to spend the money that would be required for hydro on claims as he believed in staking as many claims as they could af ford in promising areas. At one time he and W ood would own 35,000 claims, more than any other prospector in Y ukon history . R yan then could use a computer and access geological data that he incor - porated into his search theories. He fxed on a spot about 30 miles south of Dawson where the Y ukon and White Rivers met. And that is where he found the gold. (L to R) Shawn R yan, PDAC Prospector of the Y ear; PDAC President Scott Jobin-Bevans Cont’d from pg. 84 R yan combines scientifc data with his intuition to fnd or e bodies “The Porcupine Camp” 100 Y ears of Mining Page 86