Harry Gordon-Cooper was born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1912. He displayed an early taste for adventure by going to sea at seventeen but left after two years to improve his education. The author moved to Hong Kong to find suitable employment and, although these were the Depression years, he managed to accumulate four years of experience as a physical education and gymnastic instructor, plus training as a dancer. He had decided this was to be his profession; however, the war came, and he joined the RCAF instead. He served as a pilot attached to the RAF and finished the war as a Flight Lieutenant with a Mention in Dispatches.
Harry arrived in the Yukon in 1947. As a bush pilot, hydrometric surveyor, camp cook, horse wrangler, prospector and, strate's Court, he traveled his adopted territory extensively and knew most of the old-timers who lived on the lakes and rivers before roads replaced waterways as traffic routes. He has been keeping notes for decades on their stories which are part of the fabric of Yukon history - from a period largely lost or just plain ignored, between the Gold Rush and the current "boom" which began in the 1950's. Most of the stories in this book come from his early days as a bush pilot. "I wanted to write down and perpetuate their stories before they were lost, " explains Harry Gordon-Cooper - Yukoner.
