Talking to Chuck Haines and Ralph Zaccarelli the other day, they mentioned that the late Charlie Rendell worked at the Franklin Garage in the 1950s.
I phoned his wife Amanda Rendell and she said, “Yes, Charlie did fender and body work there, and was an excellent mechanic.”
Amanda thought the garage was on King Street and the building was probably torn down in the 1950s. The owner’s name was Franklin Osbourne. Chuck Haines mentioned that his father, Steve Haines, worked as a parts man on weekends.
Thank you to Alex Van Bibber and John Lambert for the letters.
Jim Robb
Re your picture of Franklin’s Garage in the Yukon News of June 11:
While working on No. 2 Dredge at Bear Creek in the early ‘30s, I used to get work done on my motorcycle at this garage in Dawson City, Franklin Osbourne’s.
Snoose Bensen was a mechanic there and did most of the work on my bike.
Snoose, his brother Erik and their father skied into Dawson from Whitehorse.
Anyway, I finally sold Bensen my bike, where it lay, being late for work that morning.
I was speeding on that rough road across Jackson’s tailings, wrecked my bike and ended up three days in the hospital.
Early one spring, Franklin was fishing in the Klondike River just out of Dawson on the Ogilvie Bridge. He slipped into the river and drowned. It was a good place for grayling a few springs later. Hank Dubois also slipped in the river, same place, and drowned. The ice along there slopes toward the current.
Dubois owned the Downtown Hotel at the time.
Alex Van Bibber
Champagne
Jim Robb was asking about Franklin’s Garage and I found this in the Klondike Sun:
Fred came to the Yukon 43 years ago. He worked for United Keno Hill mines, Yukon Consolidated Gold Corporation, Cassiar Asbestos, and Peel Plateau Exploration.
For two years he worked at Franklin’s Garage (Dawson City Motors) and in 1961, when the Bonanza Hotel was put up for sale, Fred bought it.
John Lambert
Whitehorse