Yukon mining legend Peter Risby honored

Seeking asylum from the persecution of the Klu Klux Klan, Peter Risby fled north to Canada with his family. In so doing, his upbringing would be one of adventure and survival in the harsh arctic lands of the Far North. There, he would be welcomed by the local Indigenes and become a bridge between the First Nations Cree people and the ever-encroaching westernization of European settling.

Risby's true pioneering spirit, contributions to mining and exploration in Canada, as well as legacy as a long-time Yukon prospector and advocate for inclusion in the industry throughout the territory, is being honored through his induction into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame for 2022.

Tara Risby, who led the effort for her father's nomination, said she began working on the proposal "as a proud daughter" and soon realized the major impact her father had on so many individuals and the mining community as a whole.

The induction for the prospector who passed away in 2011 will make him the first Black person to hold such an honor.

The 1950s was a decade marked by the post-World War II boom, the dawn of the Cold War and the Civil Rights movement. "America at this moment," said former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1945, "stands at the summit of the world."

During this time, it was easy to see what Churchill meant. The United States had become the world's strongest military power, its economy was booming, and the fruits of this prosperity – industrialization, expansion, and consumerism – were increasing the standards of living for the average person almost daily.

Yet, even easier to forget were the festering cracks that the everyday citizen survived when not fortunate enough to be born into wealth, privilege or of a particular skin tone.

It was nearly 30 years prior when the infamous Klu Klux Klan enjoyed a resurgence in popularity, due in no small part to D.W. Griffith's 1915 movie "The Clansman," later renamed "Birth of a Nation."

With its depictions of African Americans as brutish and violent, it found ready acceptance from the public, even being screened in the White House by an enthusiastic Woodrow Wilson, America's 28th president.

As it grew in popularity, it became well-known that the KKK disapproved of mixed-race marriage and caused severe and often fatal repercussions for young mixed couples that met and fell in love.

Such was a couple as the parents of the late Peter Risby – a respected prospector and miner, who in his life served as a direct link between the Yukon and the racially-divided United States.

Love surpasses

Risby's black father, a railway porter, and white mother, a German nursing student, eventually had to flee North to Canada to escape the encroaching dangers 1930s America posed to mixed-race couples.

It would be years later that the words of Peter himself would recall how his parents were forced to swim against the tide.

"And that was the problem," he said. "[The KKK] would lynch them or whatever, burn down their houses, the whole family, houses, the whole shantytown or whatever."

Risby had said his paternal grandfather had been a slave on a horse ranch in Kansas. Then, when his father was a young man, he got a job on the Grand Truck Railroad out of Wichita, which eventually took his family to Canada.

"That's where he met my mother," Risby said. "She was a university student that was traveling from a small prairie town ... in Saskatchewan, to the University of Saskatoon. She was taking nursing and my dad was a porter on the train."

He added that after his parents married, they lived in a shantytown in Abeline, Kansas, where he would eventually be born in 1931.

But, Risby said, "word got out" that the mixed-race couple had a child.

"Whenever authorities come looking for this child – which was me – I was kept in a chicken coop all the time. That's where I lived 'til I was about three years old."

Of course, the "authorities" Risby was referring to were the Klan.

Luckily for his family, Risby's father met a friendly priest while working as a porter on the railroad, who often traveled between Winnipeg and Edmonton, and got to know Risby's father.

When the priest found out that Risby had grown up on a ranch, he arranged for him to come work for the mission school in Desmarais, Alberta.

"He eventually provided my father with not only money to travel and to get there, but also 25 acres of free land. And then the whole family, all of the relatives, we all packed up and moved to a new place," Peter said.

Risby remained "eternally grateful" to the Catholic church for the rest of his life, saying his family would never have survived otherwise.

Meanwhile, Risby's maternal grandfather would disown his daughter, wife, and six other children when he learned of the marriage.

"He disowned the whole works, so my dad basically provided for all of my mother's immediate family, until the Second World War and those girls were all old enough that they got wartime jobs," Risby added.

Despite moving to unfamiliar lands, after escaping from Kansas, he had a wonderful childhood in northern Alberta.

"When I was a child, being black meant not a lot to me because all of my friends – other than my immediate family – were all Cree. So we weren't that much different, as far as skin colour," he recalled.

There, Risby would learn vital survival and wilderness skills that would help him throughout his life. Then, at the tender age of seven, he would be forced to attend a residential school. However, not so enthusiastic about its curriculum, he would leave for more practical experiences, never to return.

"I was raised up speaking Cree and doing the same things the Indigenous peoples did, hunting, gathering, fishing. That's how I was raised."

Speaking fluent Cree, despite not being able to read and write, he was a keen learner with an uncanny photographic memory, which he applied to navigate life.

As a teenager, he was eventually hired as a Cree interpreter for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police during treaty negotiations. Once he turned 18, he would join the Canadian Army to serve in the Korean War.

During the war, Risby received a wound where he would spend a few months in a Japanese hospital recovering.

Upon returning home, he would apply the mechanical skills he learned in the military and became a heavy equipment operator at the Cassiar asbestos mine, where he met a geologist that would spark his interest in rocks and minerals.

Peter the miner

As his daughter recalled, though he loved to learn, he had very little formal education, being taught to read at home by his grandmother.

"He kind of fell into it," Tara said.

While working at the asbestos mine, Risby had a roommate who was studying geology. He quickly discovered his own interest in the study and thus joined his roommate on days off to go prospecting.

While his friend would eventually head back to school, Peter continued to prospect and learn more about the rocks and minerals he had encountered during his explorations.

"He just had a love for it," said Tara, recalling her father's incredible memory for rocks and minerals. "He had a passion for minerals."

As she had pointed out, because he had not learned to write in his early years, he relied on his memory to keep track of the rocks and minerals he would find.

He eventually made his way up to the Yukon in 1957, quickly falling in love with the north.

That same year, he sold his first claims to Johns Manville Co., then the world's largest asbestos producer, and would go on to discover tungsten in the Pelly Mountains, where he would form an enduring friendship and partnership with Al Kulan, a 2005 Canadian Mining Hall of Fame Inductee.

A decade later, Risby and an Indigenous prospector named Art John staked a copper-lead-zinc-tungsten discovery near Godlin Lake in Northwest Territories.

This would spark a staking rush and the formation of Welcome North Mines, which he co-founded with Kulan, John Brock, and Irene Wilson.

While his earliest finds included the Risby-Tungsten property in the Yukon and the Lee property in Northwest Territories, it was the subsequent discovery of more than 80 projects optioned to major companies over his tenure as chief prospector and director for Welcome North Mines that allowed him to fervently strive for inclusivity in a white-dominated field.

In 1981, he would leave Welcome North to prospect the vast Indian River Valley south of Dawson.

Carl Schulze, vice president of the Yukon Prospecting Society, who also knew Risby well, described him as smart and tenacious.

"He was one of the first to open up the Indian River area, to recognize the potential there," Schulze said. "He found quite a few tungsten prospects in the Yukon. He also worked in N.W.T. – so he got around. He was a very impressive guy."

As one of the first to seriously evaluate the placer gold potential of the Indian River Valley, Risby quickly recognized the possibility of establishing a larger scale mine than most "mom-and-pop" operations of that time.

Facing many challenges, he persevered and ultimately developed, owned, and operated the Indian River placer mine that government reports of the time described as a "leading gold producer" that "contributed significantly to the economy of the Yukon."

The project, and Risby himself, attracted international attention. Due to his contributions to the Yukon territory, he was eventually inducted into the Yukon Prospectors Hall of Fame, while also being named Mr. Miner in 1996 for his technical achievements, economic contributions, and as a trail-blazing advocate of diversity and Indigenous inclusion in Canada's minerals industry.

Legacy of inclusivity

Growing up persecuted, living among a people that also dealt with injustices, Risby never forgot his upbringing. After fleeing from school at seven, according to Tara Risby, his Indigenous friends helped keep his whereabouts a secret so he would never have to go back.

"He never forgot that," said Tara. "And it helped cement a lifelong bond Peter felt with First Nations."

Later, as a prospector in the north, Risby would work closely with Indigenous partners and mentor many young Indigenous students.

"He believed in education," said Tara.

However, she added that despite his achievements, Risby faced adversity as a person of color in a white-dominated field.

"That's one of the reasons why he wanted to create opportunities for other people of colour, particularly Indigenous people, due to his upbringing among the Alberta Cree."

An advocate for inclusion in the industry, Peter was also one of the first to hire women for exploration programs.

"In an era where those things were not commonplace he really blazed a trail," added Tara.

Pierre Gratton, president and CEO of the Mining Association of Canada, says Risby's life was "inspiring."

"I think everyone thought 'wow what a guy."

Nonetheless, Gratton also notes that the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame still has a long way to go in terms of diversity. He hopes that Risby's induction will inspire young people of color to pursue a career in mining.

"Definitely within the Canadian community our demographic is still pretty limited and we need to change that," he added.

As Risby's daughter pointed out, he faced many hardships throughout his life. With his experiences in his early years, Peter also had his share of health challenges over the years, including heart issues and pancreatic cancer. Throughout the hardships, however, Peter persevered, teaching his children that if he could do something, they could too, she said.

While Peter Risby passed away in 2011 at the age of 79 due to pancreatic cancer, his children and grandchildren continue to uphold the values he lived every day.

"In their own ways, his offspring and grandchildren are each continuing his legacy," Tara said, "Even for the youngest in the family – ages four and one – who weren't able to meet their grandfather."

Tara describes her four-year-old nephew as a "chip off the old block" from her dad. "The youngster holds a love of rocks like his grandfather and among many facial expressions he has that are similar, there's a look he gets when he investigates a rock up close through a magnifying glass that mirrors his grandfather," she said.

Risby's legacy will undoubtedly be felt for generations to come as Tara works to continue sharing his stories with the world. She is in the process of working on some children's books about her father, which she is excited to share with her young nephews.

"For him to be the first black person to be inducted is just another level. We're just so proud of him and so excited," finished Tara.

For the Risbys, and even more so for Tara, she could not be more proud to see her father immortalized in the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame. The official induction ceremony will occur in August.