CARBONNEAU, CHARLES-EUGENE - (358 - ENGLISH)

CARBONNEAU, CHARLE-EUGENE - (358 - ENGLISH)

Of  French-Canadian origins, Charles-Eugène  Carbonneau arrived in Dawson City on August 30, 1898.  He said that he was the representative of a special house specializing in the brewing of champagne.  The business cards which he distributed said:

                           M. Le Comte Carbonneau

                                 Representing

              Messieurs Pierre Legasse, Brothers and Co.

                    Bordeaux, Paris, and New York

This card was printed in French in Pierre Berton’s book, Klondike, page 403

During the year 1899, he sold champagne to Belinda Mulroney, owner of the Fairview Hotel.  Each day, Charles-Eugène sent a bouquet of roses to this rich Klondike business woman to tempt her and to win her over.  After one year of dating, she finally accepted his marriage proposal and this was even though one of the French-Canadian miners (Jos Poitras) swore that the count was truly only a barber in St. Denis Street in Montreal.

In October 1900, Father Alphonse Desmarais, blessed the marriage of Charles-Eugène and Belinda in Saint-Joseph’s Church in Dawson City where Belinda had had installed electricity for the ceremony; however,  it was said that the mass ended by candle-light because of jealous miners who cut the electric currant.

The next day, the newly married left Dawson City by steamboat for a long honeymoon trip to Paris, France.  There they were noticed because they had a stage-coach pulled by two white horses harnessed in gold trimmings, and they also had an Egyptian valet who would unroll the red carpet in front of the Carbonneaux when they alighted.

 Once back in the Yukon they took advantage of the good years in the Klondike to increase their mining interests.  They had mining concessions on the rich Bonanza and Eldorado streams as well as on the Eureka Creek.  With other associates, they belonged to the “Gold Run Mining Company” which at the time was one of the biggest mining exploitation societies.

The couple often went to France.  In Paris, Belinda’s bank account climbed to one million dollars in gold. In the 1910’s the Carbonneaux had a “chateau” or fourteen-room  mansion  built at Yakima, Washington, USA.  Not long after they invested their fortune in a steamship enterprise which ruined them.

During the First World War, Charles-Eugène went to France, and died at the front in a battle in 1916; he was hit in the head by a grenade.  At that time, he was a buyer for the French Government.  However, a mystery surrounds his identity as well as his death.  According to a Dawson City newspaper which was published after the War, it was said that Carbonneau probably died in a French prison.  Another version gives the impression that he was captured in South America where he had absconded with one million dollars.

Ref. Empreinte, vol.11 pages 62-63