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Updated: June 28, 2025
Starnes refers with proper sarcasm to the cases in which people imagine the Police ought to save them from the results of their own carelessness. He says, "There have been a number of sluice box robberies on some of the creeks, and we have been fortunate in securing one or two convictions, but in many instances it was impossible to find the thieves.
Starnes is not extravagant in his requisition. Canada is a rich country, and these men holding her lonely outposts deserve consideration, but some picayune arm-chair censor may cut things out, and so the Superintendent goes warily, but he will not desist altogether because he knows the place better than the censor, and he knows that his men should have some reasonable comforts.
Daly evidently concluded that he had no case against the Police, for he is not heard from again. Up in the Yukon that year, as already mentioned, Superintendent Z. T. Wood was in command of the territory, with Inspector Courtlandt Starnes in charge at Dawson, and Superintendent P. C. H. Primrose at White Horse, and Assistant Surgeon Fraser on Dalton Trail.
Starnes here hits at the all too common assumption of people who, with sense enough to be responsible for their acts, think that some one else is under obligation in matters of health and property to save them from the consequences of their own practices.
Starnes has a reference to the verdict of a coroner's jury in the case of one Dr. Bettinger which indicates that he thinks the jury "played safe." It appears that the doctor had started from Dawson for the coast on foot and that he was not clad well enough for such a trek.
Starnes, who is a short, heavily built and powerful man, capable of enduring much hardship, had come through in the previous winter, staying some months at Lake LaBarge and Little Salmon, accumulating stores of goods from the coast to be taken through in the spring to Dawson, where a shortage was impending.
With these two from the beginning, indeed some were in the country ahead of them, was a group of very able officers, Superintendent Z. T. Wood, Inspectors P. C. H. Primrose, C. Starnes, F. Harper, W. H. Scarth, A. E. Strickland, R. Belcher, A. M. Jarvis, F. L. Cartwright, Surgeons W. E. Thompson and S. M. Fraser.
Referring to the same case Inspector Starnes, then in charge at Dawson, says, "This case has cost the Government a great deal of money, but I am sure it had a very salutary effect on the bad element, as it has shown them that nothing will be left undone and no expense will be spared to prevent crime and bring the guilty ones to justice."
It is interesting to note in Starnes' report this significant clause: "To the early resident of Dawson the present sanitary condition of the town must be a source of congratulation and a matter of satisfaction." For thereby hangs a tale redolent with a record of hard work. J. W. Good succeeding Dr. Thompson, who was the first medical officer, but had gone on leave.
But the Mounted Police had to travel many a long and dangerous mile through many a weary month before these facts were discovered. We give an outline of the process in the following pages. Superintendents Starnes and Demers recommended that an expedition be equipped for two or three years and sent out to investigate, but the wrecks of schooners and other untoward incidents interfered.
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