A Rock Fell on the Moon

press kit
A Rock Fell
on the Moon
Dad and the Great Yukon Silver Ore Heist
by Alicia Priest
a Lost
Moose book
pub date:
Sept. 13, 2014
Media Release
A rock fell
on the moon
Dad and the Great Yukon
Silver Ore Heis t
by alicia priest
cover not final
$32.95 • memoir
isbn 978-1-55017-672-8
6” x 9” • 256 pages • cloth
60 b & w and colour photos
For more information, or to schedule
an interview with alicia priest ,
please contact Heather Lohnes
at Harbour Publishing:
[email protected]
604-254-7191
a lost
moose book
pub date:
sept. 13, 2014
harbour publishing
po box 219
madeira park, bc
v0n 2ho canada
“With the passage of decades, many details are lost,
and to the end Dad seldom speaks of his
accomplishments or misdeeds. When he does, his
version of events can scarcely be believed.”
—from a rock fell on the moon
in 1963, over $160,000 worth of ore—easily half a million dollars in today’s
currency—was stolen from under the nose of one of the largest mining companies in Canada in a massive Yukon silver heist. The theft would lead to a
costly year-long investigation by the rcmp, and a series of expensive trials
of record-breaking length for the territory. One of the two men ultimately
charged with the crime—Gerald “Gerry” H. Priest (1927-2006)—would never
admit to his guilt publicly, not even to his own daughter.
A Rock Fell on the Moon is a rollicking memoir from that daughter, journalist
Alicia Priest. In spirited prose, she relates her own investigation into what
really happened all those years ago.
In its heyday in the 1950s and ’60s, Elsa, yt—300 miles north of Whitehorse—
was the site of the second richest silver mine in Canada. Gerry Priest, Chief
Assayer for the local mine, was a clever man who could as easily carry the
role of refined gentleman as he could rustic cowboy, and was adored by his
wife and two daughters. In June of 1963, Gerry inexplicably uprooted his
young family from their bucolic life in Elsa to a cramped basement suite in
East Vancouver, promising it was just a pit stop on the way to an idyllic life on
a ranch in the Alberta foothills. Two months later, Gerald would be arrested
by the rcmp.
In A Rock Fell on the Moon, Alicia Priest consults letters, news stories,
archived rcmp files and court documents, and also interviews mine employees, litigators and rcmp investigators, to piece together the full story
of her father’s infamous heist. The result is a lively, heartrending account
of a mysterious crime that came extraordinarily close to succeeding. It is a
fascinating look into the small mining communities that once thrived in the
Yukon, and a very personal story of Priest’s family, who could only watch
aghast as the life they knew crumbled around them.
www.harbourpublishing.com
Q&A with Alicia Priest
Alicia Priest is a journalist with more
than twenty-five years of newspaper, radio,
magazine and reporting writing experience.
Her work has appeared in the Globe and
Mail, Canadian Medical Association Journal,
Georgia Straight, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver
Magazine and Western Living. She lives in
Victoria, bc, with her husband Ben Parfitt—
also a writer.
In 2012, Alicia was diagnosed with als and
decided that it was time to tell her family’s
story. This is her first book.
What was it like growing up in Elsa—a small mining community in the Yukon—in the 1950s and ’60s?
it was simply splendid. I had it all: creative and imaginative parents who adored me and adored each other, an older
sister and friendly playmates, a live-in grandmother who embodied maternal love, a dog and cat, complete outdoor
freedom no matter the season, lots of alonetime, a pleasant school and a beautiful home full of good food, music,
books and games. My father was the clever, adventurous and affectionate master of ceremonies. I can’t imagine a
better childhood. In fact, I often turn back to those times when I need a reminder of how magical life can be.
When did you begin to realize that there was something amiss with your family’s abrupt move from Elsa to a
basement suite in East Vancouver, and to suspect that your father might be involved in the fishy silver ore shipment being splashed across the pages of the Vancouver Sun?
within a month of moving down, I suspected something was terribly wrong. Our accommodation was so far removed
from what we’d been promised and my mother was unusually quiet. Also, my father was away so much. By August, his
name appeared in the Vancouver paper and I knew that meant trouble. By the time I started school that September, I
knew enough to keep my mouth shut.
How did your father’s high-profile trials over the stolen silver ore, and later stint at Oakalla prison, affect you
and your family? Did you fully understand what was going on?
can you say calamity? His criminal escapades turned our lives upside down and inside out. Financially we went from
needing nothing to being on welfare. But it was the emotional whammy that hurt the most. He broke our hearts. It
took me decades to get over it. Hell, I didn’t marry until I was thirty-four! For years, though, I didn’t know the full story.
I believed he was innocent and wrongly convicted, and his subsequent humiliation was just too much to bear.
How did your relationship with your father change after his conviction and imprisonment? Did he ever admit
to you and your family that he might have been involved in the crime?
he emerged from prison a changed man. Or at least that’s how I saw it at the time. With hindsight I realize that his guilt
and his imprisonment brought out his worst inherent traits. Bitter, cynical and emotionally twisted in some weird way.
Not that he stopped loving us or us him. I, at least, never stopped. But he was one of those men who are great with young
children but no good when his children develop minds of their own. Early on he told my mother the truth of his misdeeds
and eventually he told my sister but with me he maintained his innocence to the end.
What made you decide to start your own investigation of your father’s crime?
after deliberately ignoring that part of my past for decades, I became curious about what exactly happened and how.
When I began to share snippets of the story with close friends, they were intrigued. The more distant I became from the
trauma, the more I realized that I had a darn good yarn to tell. My mother told me as much as she wanted me to know
but when I turned to my father, his version of events could scarcely be believed. Details changed with each telling and
as time passed he slipped into dementia.
When he died in 2006, I vowed to ‘some day soon’ delve into the true story. Three years later, my sister and I visited
the Yukon together for the first time since our family left. We broke into the derelict Elsa schoolhouse where birds
nested in our former classroom and scrawled our names on the blackboard. Lots of other ex-Elsa students had done the
same. Then we scattered my share of our dad’s ashes from the top of Galena Hill, just above what was left of the Elsa
townsite. A few days later I went to the Yukon Courthouse in Whitehorse and requested records of his 1963 and 1964 trials. Back home, however, my hectic life stalled my literary intentions despite my vow to get around to it. Then, in August
2011, my mother died. Three days later I boarded a plane for Whitehorse where I did research in the Yukon Archives, then
rented a car and drove north to visit the remains of Elsa and the distant Moon silver ore claims.
What was it like meeting with people who had worked at the Elsa mine with your father, people who were
involved with investigating or litigating his case, and even visiting the old Elsa townsite as part of your investigation?
a few of the people i knew because my mom had kept in touch with a handful of Yukon friends. But after I recovered
from the shock of finding and meeting two former United Keno Hill Mines (ukhm) geologists and the two primary rcmp
investigators, it was wonderful. I felt a deep connection to them even though they helped convict my dad. I was astounded that my dad’s case was so fresh in their memories and, after all these years, remained so prominent. Geologist
Bob Cathro and his wife Pat have become dear friends. As for going back to Elsa, it was sad. There is no Elsa, just a work
camp of atco trailers, a mine site and encroaching bush. But it’s still spectacularly beautiful!
What in your mind was the most eye-opening information that you uncovered throughout your research and
investigation for this book?
probably the most interesting was discovering how many people strongly suspected Martin Swizinski as the third
man in the crime. He was never charged, but was suspected by rcmp officers, geologists and others. Because of
confidentiality rules, names of suspects are blacked out in the official police files until that person has been dead for
twenty-five years. So in 2028 someone might want to check those police files again.
Why did you decide to tell this story now?
while i’d started researching the story in 2011, I didn’t begin writing until 2012. That’s when I received the ultimate
deadline. I was diagnosed with als, a mother of a terminal illness. If I was going to write the book, I had to start there
and then while I could still talk, type, eat and walk somewhat normally. With tremendous organizational help from my
husband Ben Parfitt, I wrote and rewrote and then rewrote again for fourteen months.
What do you most want readers to take away from reading the story of your father’s heist and its repercussions on your family?
above all, a pleasurable read! Also, I hope readers gain a glimpse of a lost world, an overlooked snippet of Canadian
history, and perhaps a wee lesson about taking care who you marry.
Has looking at your family’s story in such detail affected how you feel about it and/or altered your perspective on the past?
i treasure my past. Especially my first ten years but even the painful parts are, looking back, valuable. Do I have regrets?
You bet! But at this point regrets are useless and my life has never been dull. And, hey, I got a story out of it!
Timeline of Events
October 23, 1951
Gerald “Gerry” H. Priest and his wife Helen move to Elsa, a
small, rugged mining community in the Yukon Territory. He
will become the Chief Assayer at the United Keno Hill Mine
(ukhm)’s Elsa operation.
August 29, 1953
Alicia Priest is born at the Mayo Hospital in Mayo Landing,
Yukon Territory.
July, 1961
ukhm begins the last phase of excavating the richest vein of
silver ore in its history and indeed one of the richest silver veins
on the planet.
July 30, 1961
Frank Obella, a Compressor Operator at ukhm who is working
in the early hours of the morning when the miners are off shift,
notices something odd—inexplicably, a sudden drag of air exits
the system and the pressure plummets by nearly half. Going to
investigate, he spots a man in the distance fading deeper into
the darkness of the mine.
Obella phones and wakes up mine captain Fred Southam,
who arrives with three others to check the mineshaft. Finding
no one, they conclude that Obella has cried wolf—someone
asks if he’d been drinking before or during his shift.
Two weeks later, another compressor man has a similar experience, but this time sees two men and recognizes them as
ukhm miner Anthony “Poncho” Bobcik and night mine captain
Martin Swizinski. This second incident is not reported.
August, 1961
A vacancy opens in the assay office where Gerry supervises
four employees. The job goes to Poncho, who becomes a close
friend of Gerry’s.
March, 1962
Mine superintendent Bill Case notifies the two shift bosses that
the unused tunnel at the back of the mine would soon be retimbered in preparation for new mining activities. Gerry starts
going out late at night for several days in a row.
July 10, 1962
Gerry buys the remote Moon claims, which had sparked interest from prospectors and miners in the area for years. He will
later attribute a large silver ore find to these claims.
October, 1962
Poncho quits the assay office and moves to Keno City, yt.
Timeline cont’d
June 4, 1963
The Priest family, except for Gerry—who promises to
follow not long after—abruptly moves to a dank East
Vancouver basement suite. After that, Gerry is with
them only sporadically.
June 21, 1963
Al Pike, the widely disliked General Manager at ukhm,
glances out his window and spots a fully loaded flatbed
truck parked in front of the Elsa Cookhouse. No ukhm
transports are scheduled for that afternoon. Suspicious,
he later has one of his employees grab him some samples
of the ore. The truck turns out to be hauling ore belonging to Gerry.
July, 1963
Gerry is greeted by an fbi agent in Montana, at the
smelter he has hired to process his ore. The agent questions Gerry, who says the ore is from his Moon claims.
The impression he gives is of a man with nothing to hide.
August 6, 1963
Inspector J.L. Vachon of the rcmp’s Whitehorse detachment announces an investigation into Gerry’s ore
shipment, which he believes was stolen from one of
ukhm’s premier operating mines.
August 9, 1963
rcmp Constables Lauren McKiel and Barry Wallace arrest
Gerry. Poncho will later be arrested as well.
November 19, 1963
Gerry and Poncho begin the then longest and most
expensive preliminary hearing in Yukon history, which
takes place in Mayo’s Northern Lights Lodge No. 157 in
minus-45 f temperatures.
October 8, 1964
Gerry and Poncho’s first trial begins in Whitehorse. It lasts
more than five weeks, making it the longest criminal
proceeding in the Yukon at the time. After twenty-eight
hours of deliberation, the jury finds Gerry and Poncho
not guilty of stealing ore concentrates, only Poncho
guilty of stealing ore precipitates, and on the charges of
conspiring to sell ore containing silver and attempting
to sell stolen silver ore to the smelter, the jury is unable
to agree. The trial ends in a hung jury and not a single
charge against Gerry sticks.
March 31, 1965
At the end of their second trial in Whitehorse, Gerry
and Poncho are both found guilty of possessing stolen
silver ore and silver ore concentrates, and of conspiracy
to sell the stolen goods. Gerry is sentenced to four years
imprisonment at Oakalla penitentiary, one of British Columbia’s roughest jails.
December 23, 1965
Gerry is released through the efforts of bc Supreme
Court and BC Court of Appeal judge Angelo Branca,
who had been his original lawyer on the case, and returns home.
February 1, 1966
A total of $1,149.09 is raised for the Gerald H. Priest
Appeal Fund.
May, 1966
Gerry loses his appeal—his final court appearance. He
will go on to bounce back to Oakalla penitentiary for
nearly three months, then move to the bc Penitentiary,
finally ending his term in the Agassiz minimum-security
prison.
January 9, 1989
ukhm operates its last shift in Elsa. The town is rapidly
abandoned.
For more information about A Rock Fell on the Moon,
or to schedule an interview with alicia priest,
please contact Heather Lohnes at Harbour Publishing:
[email protected]
604-254-7191
www.harbourpublishing.com