When Michael Winage arrived in northwestern Canada at the twist of the 19th century , he was known at first as " braggy Mike"thanks to his impressive size . But he managed to cumulate a few more moniker before his extraordinary , 107 - year life was over .
bear in 1870 , Winage immigrated to Canada from Serbia as a shaver in 1882 with his family . Not much is known about his young person or his household ’s background except that he made his agency to Dawson City , once the epicenter of the Klondike Gold Rush , when he was 30 years old .
The Klondike Gold Rushbegan outside of Dawson City in 1896 , but by the time Winage got to townspeople in 1900 , as a constable on a military mission to transport wiener and sleds for the Mounties , the horde of prospective prospector had mostly move on to try their fortune elsewhere . Winage had spend several months journey northerly from Winnipeg , so he plant up camp in Dawson City and started prospect anyhow , beginning in Dominion Creek , about 55 miles outdoors of the city . He was apparently pretty successful ; he never bring out how much gold he found but after boasted aboutgoing to town one night in 1911 and spending $ 87,000 . When he was his 90s , he claimed tohave once been worth $ 400,000 blackguard .
Despite finding fortune in the hills , Winage was finally obligate to find a caper and got himself a lance as a woodcutter , which is how he earned his next nickname : Sawdust Mike . ( Althoughhe also once saidthat it was actually a result of his hobby of sweeping the floor of legal profession , hunt for gold dust . ) Some say he then became Black Mike — the moniker that stuck around for the rest of his life — after he help some folks put down 400 tons of ember in 1918 , coat himself in ember dust in the process . Others , though , said it was due to his personal hygienics : As Canadian writerDavid Thompsonput it , “ His bottom had a pillow with a black indent where his head lie . ” ( Perhaps one of these chronicle was the accelerator for the other . )
For the rest of his life , Winage remained in Dawson City , where he made a name for himself in the town as a material character , easy make out by the sensation of sum sometimes tucked into his hat and his bent on wrist — a relic he earned after fracture his sleeve and put the break himself . He was probably most ill-famed , though , fora stunt he perpetrate in 1961 , when he was in his early ninety .
The jewel of the metropolis was thePalace Grand Theater , built in 1899 and casually known around town as “ the Auditorium . ” It was slate to be restored in ’ 61 , having been recently buy by the federal administration . What happened instead was that it was torn to the ground and finally replaced from scratch , to the expectant dismay of the Dawsonites . While the building stand strip to its bones , with only a few fittings and paries left to be dismantle , Winage was sometimes spotted skulking around the construction site . Having resided in Dawson for six decades at that percentage point , he probably remembered that this construction was already there when he showed up — which have in mind it had been there during the Klondike Gold Rush too .
One summer eventide , when the floorboard had been pull up and only a few walls remain , Winagechatted with a few of the workersat the site . He asked them how much gold they thought might be lurking in the shit that had been sitting below the theater for 62 years , having fallen between the boards from spectator pump ’ pockets . He reckon there ’d be two prevention ’ Charles Frederick Worth , and when the men said they thought there ’d be only one , Winage assure them there was a way to retrieve out .
arm with a washtub , a pan , a rocker , a water hosepipe , and some shovel , Black Mike and the doer record up after drop by the wayside time one night and bug out panning the unwrap dirt behind the protection of the remain two walls of the old theatre of operations . Mike ’s hunch turned out to be correct . As the black-market gold - minelaying enterprise began , the men watch out as gold dust as well as nugget appeared in the cooking pan .
It ’s not completely clear how much they walk aside with , but these guy certainly were n’t the only people who had this idea . Not long after this illicit operation on governance - possess land went down , once the building was completely demolish , the territory underneath it was remove and dampen by a local mine , whereupon a bunch more atomic number 79 was found . Black Mike had come upon at just the right metre .
Winage maintained his unfearing reputation well into erstwhile age , with report of himdigging cars out of the snow at historic period 92 without even getting windedandleading civic parades through Dawson when he was 103 . In an clause on the Canadian North in a 1968 issue ofNational Geographic , it was sound out that he uphold to prospect for atomic number 79 in the hills at 98 . After a few years pass in a nursing home , he died on March 15 , 1977 — the day after lionise his 107th natal day . He enunciate he ’d outlive three wives and all of his friends .
