Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Oct 24/01) - One of Yellowknife's earliest pioneers passed away Oct. 3. Mildred O'Callaghan, who kept a family farm with her husband Denis near Frame Lake in the early 1940s, was 89.

Mildred O'Callaghan: She used to supply gold mines with fresh eggs and vegetables out of her family farm near Frame Lake during the 1940s.

In 1940, the O'Callaghans left their home in Fort Smith on a homemade raft for Yellowknife.

They lived in Old Town for the first year, before moving their little shack to Frame Lake.

After a couple years raising chickens and a garden, the couple obtained an agricultural lease for a four-acre plot where Sombek'e Park stands today, They grew Yellowknife's first wheat crop that same year.

The O'Callaghans used their plot, which grew to include where the Prince of Wales Museum and legislative assembly would be built several decades later, to supply gold mines with fresh eggs and vegetables.

When Yellowknife expanded into New Town in 1945, the O'Callaghans became the town site's first family. They later built the Yellowknife Apartments, and opened a beauty salon, tailor shop, barber shop, and butcher shop.

In Outcrop's Yellowknife Tales, Mildred O'Callaghan remembers a much different town than the bustling city Yellowknife would later become.

"The streets were not paved with gold," O'Callaghan writes. "As a matter of fact there were no streets yet, but wide trails around the rock. The rock is where Yellowknife was then."

The O'Callaghans left Yellowknife in 1967 for Summerland, B.C., where they retired. O'Callaghan is survived by her daughter Marie, four granddaughters, and one step-granddaughter.