December 26, 2023 • 45 mins
Klondike Joe Boyle was a Yukon Lumberjack Commando Secret Agent who managed a Stanley Cup hockey team, outfitted a World War I machine gun company, received astronomically high military honors from England, Canada, France, Romania, and Russia, stole the Romanian crown jewels from a vault in Moscow, hijacked a train, probably romanced European royalty, and once fought a shark in hand-to-hand combat armed with nothing more than a hunting knife.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Joe Boyle, thousands of miles from his home in Canada,
sits in a train car that he's commandeered from the Bolsheviks.
He's got crates and crates of humanitarian aid for the
war torn people of Romania and some boring ol wicker baskets.
But the baskets aren't holding his lunch. They're holding the
(00:27):
Crown Jewels of Romania. Fifty miles out of Moscow, the
train stops. Routines stop at a small town, right not
quite Joe hears something. He sneaks around and looks. Some
guys camouflaged against the snow are sneaking around and trying
(00:51):
to decouple Joe's train cars and make off with the
Crown Jewels, not to mention the humanitarian supplies. Joe balls
up his fists and launches the guys out. He recouples
the train cars, and the train and everything it's transporting
is free to go on for now. But there's still
(01:13):
the rest of the journey. Can he get his precious
cargo through over fifteen hundred miles of snow and civil war?
Of course, he can he's Klondike Joe Boyle.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Hello, and welcome back to Badass of the Week. My
name is Ben Thompson and I am here as always
with my co host, doctor Pat Larishat. This episode is
going to air the day after Christmas, but we're recording
it the week before. So I was just curious if
you have any plans for the holidays.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah, I'm going to be traveling up and down the
East Coast, visiting various friends and family, hanging out, eating cookies.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
You know. Nice. You're going to be bringing all your
podcast gear. Yeah, we've been talking about this. We're both
going to be loading up our holiday travel with all
of the gear to record our podcasts in new and
interesting locations in the future.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
How about you.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
We are going to be going up to Canada to
go skiing, so there's a like we're getting a place
with a couple of other families that a couple of
them have kids, and so it'll be like a fun
little weekend of skiing and hanging out and doing stuff
like that. Nice, and it kind of got us thinking
when we were talking about that, I'm driving up into
(02:36):
British Columbia, so I'll be up in like the Whistler
area and which is kind of a you know, a
ski resort kind of thing, nice log cabins with fires
and you know, sipping wine and beers and eating whatever
hamburgers and stuff. That's kind of the easy mode of
(02:58):
Canadian adventure lifestyle Isle. But there there's also a hard
yes two Canadian to the Canadian womanness. And we had
been talking about, oh, you're going to go to Canada,
maybe we should do a Canadian badass We haven't really
talked about many Canadians on the on the show yet.
I think the only one we've talked about was the
the The Resolute, the ship which is no now now
(03:21):
based out of New Zealand, so no longer Canadian.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yeah, but an actual Canadian human who is from Canada
and doing badass re maybe even in Canada, maybe in
other parts of the world, and.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
That is going to be what we're going to encounter
here today. You know, there's the there's that that common
joke that I'm sure Canadian people love where they're you know,
Americans think that they're just like very polite people, but
if you've ever been to a hockey game, you realize
there is kind of a violent side to the to
the Canadian culture. And one of my favorite quotes about
(03:54):
the people of Canada is is by Winston Churchill. He
was talking about the Allied forces is in World War
Two and he said, if you gave me British officers,
Canadian soldiers and American technology, I think I could conquer
the world. So that's high praise. Yeah, Okay. And the
guy we're going to talk about today, Klondike Joe Boyle.
He is a great example of that spirit and he
(04:17):
is going to embody really all kinds of interesting adventury
badass things, every element of a good badass he's going
to espouse it here and he's going to demonstrate how
it works.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Excellent, bring it on.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
So here's the short here's the short version on Klondike
Joe Boyle. He was a Yukon lumberjack secret agent who
managed a Stanley Cup hockey team outfitted a World War
One machine gun company. Received military honors from England, Canada, France,
Romania and Russia. Stole the Romanian Crown jewels from a
vault in Moscow under the noses of the Bolsheviks, hijacked
(04:51):
a train, probably had an affair with the Romanian princess
and once fought a shark in hand to hand combat
armed with nothing more than a hunting knife. Is klondike, Joe.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Boy Don't you mean hand to finn?
Speaker 1 (05:05):
I think it's more like knife to face combat, but
knife to tooth combat. Okay, But yes, we are going
to take a quick break and then when we come back,
we're going to talk about klondike. Joe Boyle Joseph Whiteside
(05:26):
Boyle was born November sixteenth, eighteen sixty seven, in Toronto.
He was from a relatively wealthy family. His father bred
racehorses in a place called Woodstock, and they had this
big farm where as Joe was growing up he could
spend his days. He was swimming, he rode horses, he
shot guns. He had a pretty happy lifestyle growing up.
(05:52):
When he was seventeen, Joe followed his father on a
business trip to New York City and while they were
hanging out there, this is New York City and eighteen eighties,
Joe started hanging out down by the docks because that's
kind of where all the action was happening in town.
And he met this old sea captain who apparently they
got along really well because the captain was like, hey,
(06:14):
do you want to go on a three year voyage
on a wooden sailing ship across the Atlantic. And Joe
was like yes and definitely going to do this. Jumps
on the ship and then just has a guy go
find his father and tell him, Hey, Joe's not coming back.
He's a sailor. Don't wait up, He'll be back in
a couple of years.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
At least he had the courtesy to text his dad,
as it were. And his dad, I mean, once, once
this has happened, what can his dad do? That ship
has literally sailed.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
So that ship has sailed, Yes, that's true. Well, okay,
so Joe Boyley, I mean he had he'd been on
sailing boats in the lake on his family's property and stuff,
but he hadn't been on like a big wooden sailing
ship on the high seas yet. And so he's out
there and he's kind of learning literally learning the ropes.
I think that's probably where that expression comes from.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Yeah, I like that, let's do that.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
He's learning the ropes, he's learned the tide knots or
whatever it is that you have to like. But he's
doing the thing. He's out there on the Atlantic, and
apparently he works really hard because everybody likes him, and
they like him more. One day where there is a
thunderstorm arrives and the ship is getting tossed around on
the waves, and one of the guys on the ship
gets thrown overboard and he hits into the water. Then
it gets worse because there's sharks in the water, and
(07:29):
one of these sharks starts attacking this sailor while he's
floating in the water. And so what do you do
when you're klondike Joe Boyle. I guess he's not klondike
Joe Boyle yet, He's just Joe Boyle. But he does
the thing I mentioned at the top of the show.
He puts a knife between his teeth, takes off his shirt,
jumps in the water, and starts knifing the shark to
(07:50):
save his buddy. And remember this is during a thunderstorm,
like a torrential downpour, lightning, all of that. He jumps
in the water, the ship's getting tossed around, people are
trying to throw lines and ropes to and he knife's
this shark and frees the guy and they both make
it out alive.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
So instead of jumping the shark. He jumped on the
shark and that was the first thing he did.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
It's emblematic of what's to come.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yes, exactly. Okay, so this ship is probably cursed for
something because they get across there outside off the coast
of Ireland and there is a shipwreck and yeah, so
the ship explodes and he's in the water and he
drifts out and he lands in Cork County, Ireland. He
has no cash on him, he has none of his gear,
it's all sunk with the ship. And so what do
(08:38):
you do. Well, he finds a job working as a
tour guide in Cork County, Ireland.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Of a place he just washed ashore at.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Literally washed up on the shore, not that long ago. Yes,
he finds a job as a tour guide.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
I guess, okay, well, this is where Anne Bonnie's from, right,
so maybe there's something in the air that helps people
sort of man it and live their best lives somehow.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
That's true. That's true. I forget this is where an
Bonnie came from. So yeah, so he lands in Cork
and they were like, oh, you fought a knife. You
knife fought a shark. Great, you can you can show
people around here. You can handle to qualified? Can I
see your resume? Well, I dive bomb the shark with
a bowie knife. Yeah that's probably fine. So okay, so great. Uh.
(09:27):
He works as a tour guide in Cork County, Ireland,
which will be one of the more mild mannered jobs
he has in his career, even though he got it
by shipwrecking on shore in a place he'd never been
before and fighting a way to make a living there.
He earns enough money to catch a boat back to
New York City and then he gets there and within
(09:48):
a week of arriving in New York City he is
married to somebody he met. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He gets
back to New York City, he meets a woman and
he marries her within a week.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
He seems to adapt to circumstances white rapidly.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Shall we say, yes, that is a good way of
putting it. When he wants an he goes after it.
I guess apparently. So. He starts in an animal feed business.
He has seven kids, and he manages a boxing club
where he helps some up and coming boxers, gives them
some fighting experience, and arranges some exhibitions and fights for them. Okay, cool. Cool,
(10:22):
So that's going pretty well until eighteen ninety seven, when
this is the kind of the Yukon gold Rush. The
news is starting to arrive in New York City that
like they have found gold in the Yukon and there
are like fortunes to be made out there. Okay, that
sounds pretty cool, But Yukon is extremely far away from
New York City and also from Joe Boyle's hometown of Toronto.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
So it's on the other side of the continent. It's
maybe more an idea rather than an actual place for
people who are hanging out on the East Coast. It's
like you hear of it, there is gold, but getting there.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Getting there it's and he's pretty successful here. He's running
the boxing thing. He's got his own business. The Yukon
is far so I live in Seattle, which is as
far northwest as you can basically get to the Canadian border. Like,
I'm very close. I still jump going up to Vancouver
for the weekend. I'm driving there and it takes like
(11:20):
three hours. So I'm very close to Canada, and the
Yukon is the northwesternmost province in Canada. But for me
to drive to Whitehorse, which is just kind of right
across the border from of the Yukon. It's thirty four
hours by car by cars, by car, yeah, which is faster.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Than people would be traveling in those days.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
So right, thirty four hours by car from Seattle, which is,
like I said, as close as you can get. That's
how far north the Yukon is. How far away it
is from the United States. I mean, I guess not
including Alaska. But so okay, hey, they found gold. That
sounds like an adventure. Joe Boyle does the reasonable thing here.
He divorces his wife, he leaves his family behind, and
(12:06):
he goes on an insane, life threatening overland journey to
take part in the Klondag gold Rush.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Oh so he has to go all the way from
New York to Yukon.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
And he goes with an Australian boxer named Frank Slevin,
who I assume was one of the boxers that was
part of his operation. And they go on this crazy
journey across all of the US and Canada, like literally
coast to coast. There are not cars. They are making
this trip by foot and horse and snow sled dogs.
(12:40):
And they're paying for their trip. They're making money by
setting up boxing exhibitions like we'll fight club kind of
fighting exhibitions where he and Frank Slevin will they'll either
organize local boxers to fight or they'll fight against all
local boxers. So they're able to make some money doing this,
but it's not a lot, and this journey is expensive,
and it's far, and it's cold. You got to buy
(13:01):
supplies and provisions and all this stuff. When they finally
arrive in Dawson City, Yukon, the two of them can
combine to produce twenty two.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Dollars okay, which probably went farther in those days than
twenty two dollars today, Like twenty two dollars today, that's
lunch and a coffee.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
No kidding, in those yes, in those days, in those days,
it was a little better. But it's still but still
it's still not like.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
It's not enough to get you home and nowhere near
striking it rich territory.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Yes, it's not enough to get you home. If this
doesn't work out, and spoiler alert, this is going to
work out. They are both going to be up to
their next in Klondike Gold by the time they leave
Dawson City, Dawson City. It's kind of this cowboy frontier town.
It's on a permafrosted glacier. It's high in the mountains.
I mean, picture those black and white pictures of the
(13:50):
Yukon gold Rush where people are there's no gortech here.
They're wearing like furs and leather and getting frostbite and
altitude sickness and falling off mountains and stuff they're using
like literal rope and not para cord. This is a tough,
tough place, right then. These guys have to be pretty
tough to survive there. Joe is able to make some cash.
(14:12):
He works as a manual laborer. He does some boxing,
he works as a horse jockey for a while, and
then he's able to get some money together, which he
then immediately blows trying to pan for gold. So he
buys a little plot. He gets all set up. That's
why you go out there, right right. He gets there,
he's got the twenty two dollars. He can't afford to
like create an operation just yet. He makes a little
(14:34):
bit of money. He starts panning for gold. He doesn't
find anything.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Then what happens.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Then he decides, look, I'm not going to do this.
He becomes a pioneer on a technique called dredging, which
was pretty new at the time. So remember this is
like the eighteen eighties eighteen nineties, And he built a
machine that would that would basically like dig all of
the sediment and soil up from the bottom of a
lake or a river and try to mine gold out
(15:03):
of there. So there is gold in the ground in
the Yukon and people are trying to kind of like
strip mining for it basically, and he's like, oh, I
wonder if like I can pull it out of the
rivers and the lakes. So he starts doing that.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Build the engineering skills here.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yes he is. So he starts digging this up and
he finds he finds gold, and he finds a lot
of it, and yes, he gets a lot of gold.
He sets up a logging business, he sets up a
hydroelectric power plant. He becomes so rich off of all
this gold that he becomes known as the King of
the Klondike. Whoa which is not bad because a lot
(15:39):
of people are here, a lot of people are making
a rich here, and way way way more people here
are freezing to death, are going broke and having to
run home with their table between their legs. So great,
he's successful at this. Awesome, So what does he do next.
He's a big sports fan and he's an endless promoter.
He's been doing all of these boxing promotions and at
(15:59):
nights you know five he of course, he puts together
a crew of hockey players and decides he's going to
challenge the Ottawa Senators to the Stanley Cup. Because that's
just a thing you could do back in nineteen oh five.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Okay, I mean you just you just get together a
bunch of people and say, hey, we're signing up for
the Stanley Cup.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Yeah, we want to we want to compete for the
Stanley Cup. Okay, great, this is nineteen oh five. I
mean the goalies aren't wearing masks, that kind of thing,
like that time period of hockey. And he gets a
bunch of guys together who work on the various operations,
the logging operation or the gold mining operation, just like
(16:36):
big strong Yukon dudes, and he puts together with hockey
team of them and he challenges the reigning Stanley Cup
champions to a match for the Cup. And I love
that you could just do this in these days like
it would be like today, like some you know, like
Beer League team in Edmonton just being like I'm gonna
(16:58):
I'm gonna challenge the Pens for best of seven for
the Stanley Cup. And then you show up there and
everybody kind of like is already drunk and like they
you know, throw up on Cidney Crosby or whatever. Yeah,
I would definitely watch that if that was a thing, Like,
I would definitely watch a bunch of like drunk idiots
get beat thirty seven and nothing by the Boston Bruins. Right,
(17:19):
And our.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Particular drunk idiots they are the Dawson City Nuggets.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Yes, Dawson City Nuggets, and I hesitate to call them
drunk idiots, but they do party hard. So Dawson City
is four thousand miles from Ottawa, right, And Klondik Joe
has just made this trip. He came from New York
out to Dawson City, and I was going to go
back to Ottawa. And remember this is not going to
be You can't get on the team plane and fly
(17:43):
out there. Right. It took twenty three days. And this
is like the Oregon Trail was not that long ago, right,
It's that style you're Oregon, trailing your stuff over mountains, rivers, forests.
They're going by dog sled trains, steamership, more trains, walking horseback,
all of this stuff. They're dragging all their gear with them.
They get seasick, they get rained on there's icy roads,
(18:06):
and they have this epic journey over four thousand miles
across the entire width of Canada, and finally they arrive
and they challenge the Autawa Senators, the Silver Seven, which
is a very famous lineup for this hockey team. This
team was basically unbeatable. They're considered one of the greatest
hockey teams ever assembled. And these guys from Dawson City
(18:27):
are gonna show up on a doorstep and yep, hey,
let's play. Okay, Hayley Cup on the line. Okay, so
how do you think they did well?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Okay, So, on the one hand, they're going up against
the Silver Seven and they've had a strenuous journey. On
the other hand, these are the Dawson City Nuggets. We've
got Klondike Joe, who apparently can do anything and put
up with anything, and doesn't blink when he's faced with
a shark, for example. Not that they had Sharks on
(18:57):
this particular journey. But you know, so bears be I'm guessing, well,
there are the underdogs. I tend to root for underdogs,
So I don't know. Did they put up a good
show and maybe not beat Ottawa but give them a
run for their money.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
No, they were slaughtered. They got they went out there.
They've been thrown up over the side of steamerships for
three weeks. They've been traveling by dog sled. They got there.
They were all beat up and tired and exhausted, and
they were never going to be able to compete with
Ottawa talent wise. Anyway. In the first game, they lose
(19:38):
nine to three, and a decent number of the players
on the Nuggets get ejected because while they are not
going to win, and they are going to get beat
and they're going to get beat badly, they are going
to fight these guys, which is the thing that is
legal in hockey. It's the only sport in the world
where you can literally punch a member of the other
team in the face in the middle of a point
(19:58):
and you don't get ejected from the game. There's actually
rules in place in ice hockey for attacking members of
the other team with physical punches right, and still somehow
several members of the Duston City Nuggets managed to get
themselves ejected from this game for fighting too much or
being too violent.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Wow, okay, that's a pretty high bar.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
They didn't have the talent to skate with the Senators,
but they could knock them down. And this is probably
why they stopped allowing any drunk idiots to challenge the
Stanley Cup champions to ice hockey, because you really don't
want your star players getting injured into scenario like this.
But this does speak to the character of the Duston
City Nuggets that these were tough guys, and I'm sure
they were like, hey, whatever, this is just how we
(20:39):
played in Dawston City, you whims. So it was a
best of three series. They got beat nine to three
in the first game, and then in the second game
they lost twenty three to two, which is still to
this day a record for the worst defeat in the
history of the Stanley Cup. Couch Ottawa star player was
(21:01):
a guy named Frank McGhee who he scored fourteen goals
in that game, which is still an NHL record for
the most goals scored in a Stanley Cup series. Okay,
McGee was also kind of a badass. I do want
to talk about Frank McGee for one second. He was
pretty badass. He was one of the original nine members
of the Hockey Hall of Fame and then he went
off to World War One and was killed in action
(21:21):
fighting the Germans in France. So he's pretty badass character
as well. But scoring fourteen goals in a game is
pretty impressive, even if it is against the relatively amateur
team of the Dawson So, yeah, you know, I think
they should bring it back. Yukon doesn't have an NHL team,
they should bring back the Dawson City Nuggets campaign.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah. What would their mask copy? A nugget?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
I guess a nugget? Probably? Yeah, people, Yes, really angry nugget,
really angry golden gold miner. Yes.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
What did they do after they had been defeated so soundly?
Did they go crawl away and hide under a rock?
Speaker 1 (21:59):
No? So after the finals were over, Ottawa invited Dawson
City to come out and party with them after that
twenty three to two beating, and the two teams like
went out and had a bunch of beers and got
hammered and got in trouble because they were trying to
take turns drop kicking the Stanley Cup across the Rideau
(22:20):
Canal in downtown Ottawa. Yes, drinking beer out of the
Stanley Cup as a bucket list item for me, but
but drop kicking it over the canal and drunkenly, right,
And so so that's the Dozen City Nuggets, right. They'll
(22:41):
punch you in the face in the middle of the
game and it's so hard they get dejected for it,
but then afterwards you want to hang out with them.
This is kind of a good analog for Joe Boyle
to just violent and just really really going all out
all the time, no off switch, no filter. But at
the end of the day, you still want to hang
out with them for some an inexplicable reason. So, as
(23:02):
I mentioned with Frank McGee, Frank McGee is killed in
action during World War One, and that's where this story
is headed. But let's stop right there and hear a
word from our sponsors and we're back. Let's pick right
(23:23):
up where we left off. So that Stanley Cup was
nineteen oh five, world War One begins in nineteen fourteen,
and Canada is part of the Commonwealth, and they are
expected to contribute soldiers to the army to send people
over to France to fight the Germans in World War One.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
And I'm assuming that klondike Joe is going to want
to be involved in some way because he's got skills,
he's got interest, he's got energy exactly. So how old
is he at this point?
Speaker 1 (23:49):
He's forty nine, which is okay, not like it's beyond
draftable age, right, Yeah, the draft kind of ends at
thirty five, but he's forty one.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Here and say, hey, I'm klondike Joe. Please give me
something to do.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Which is basically what he does. So he uses his
own money to recruit a fifty man machine gun company
of the Canadian Militia. He outfits them with uniforms, equipment,
machine guns, ammunition, all the stuff he buys himself. And
then he kind of just shows up and is like, hey,
I'm klondike Joe. I have a machine gun company for you.
Are you interested? Yes or no? The Canadian Militia says yes.
(24:24):
They make him an honorary lieutenant colonel, despite the fact
that he has no military training or experience.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
He's not he has Harry, but he has experience.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
He has experience leading people and leading companies and fighting.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Not thousands of miles of Canadian wilderness.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
And that's true. That is logistics, and that is what
most of war is at the end of the day.
And he's got this big personality and people want to
follow him and people are inspired by him. Right, So
he's given the uniform of a lieutenant colonel in the
Canadian militia and he loves this uniform. He's very proud
of it. Never take it off. He's never seen in
public from the day he gets it. He has never
(25:03):
seen in public again without it, including when he later
on in his career will start going on special operations
behind enemy lines where.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
You're supposed to be clandestine and not noticeable. Yeah, exactly
what would you do for Klondike bar But what wouldn't
Klondike Joe do something? Something? I guess.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Yeah, I feel like there's a joke to be happy listeners.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
If you come up with a better version, please let
us know.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
So he goes over to Europe with this machine gun
company and he is eventually like he's deemed too like
he's too old to fight in the infantry. Is what
the British government decides, right, so he brings this machine
gun company over there, but he doesn't lead them into battle.
They serve in the Canadian Militia forces in World War One,
(25:50):
but he doesn't go with them. He's a little too old.
So they make him an officer of the Royal Engineers
because they had engineering skills and maybe his talents are
a little bit more geared towards that. So of course
the British Army sends him to Russia to aid the
forces there in their struggle against the Germans. So he
(26:10):
goes to the Eastern Front and he is helping what
so does the White Army, which is kind of the nationalists,
the pro democracy Russian forces and their struggle against both
the Germans and the Bolsheviks, the communists who are also
trying to take over. So in nineteen seventeen he ends
up taking over the Russian Transportation Department and starts setting
(26:31):
up rail lines between Petrograd and Odessa.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Don't turn around, their railway commissars in town, don't keeping
my day job, so okay, yeah, so he shows up.
He gets handed management of Rustot.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
And builds a rail line from Petrograd which is present
day Saint Petersburg, to Odessa in Ukraine, and so that's
a pretty big rail line and he's in charge of
building it.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
He is not phased by geography, apparently not at all.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
So yes, so let's kind of recap up to this point.
Joe Boyle was from Canada. He goes to New York City.
He jumps on a boat randomly because he felt like it.
He fights a shark, jumps into the water to fight
a shark to save one of his crew members, gets
into a shipwreck, rushes up in Ireland, where he becomes
a tour guide, and then makes his way back to
(27:24):
New York. Has an entire life there, leaves that to
go to the Yukon, finds gold, competes with the Stanley Cup,
raises a machine gun company to fight in World War One,
and now he is sailing over here to Europe. They
put him in charge of the Russian Department of Transportation,
where he's building rail lines. Cool, okay, So remember that
(27:46):
World War One is still going on and you really
can't put Joe that close to the action without expecting
him to get his hands done. Of course, And in
nineteen seventeen he somehow finds himself in the middle of
the Battle of Tarnopol. The German army is overrunning Russian
positions all throughout the city. There's no Russian officers kind
of taking control here. So Boyle, he is an officer
of the British Army and he organizes the defenses of
(28:08):
the city. He commands it's a rail hub, probably why
he was in town for it. Yeah, and he ends
up organizing the defense of the city and they repel
the German attack. And apparently he showed so much heroism
during the battle that Czar Nicholas the Second of Russia
actually awarded him the Order of Saint Santislaus, which inducts
(28:29):
him into an order of Russian knighthood that dates back
to the days of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Wow, okay, that's me. I thought. He's really proud of that.
If he was so proud of his uniform earlier, he
must be really chuffed about this.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yes, that big star is going directly onto that uniform
and it's never coming office.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
So the Tsar is overthrown in nineteen seventeen, and the
First Revolution is the Democratic revolution that overthrows the czar,
and they're trying to install democracy and so oil stays
on in Russia. After that, he was the Department of
Transportation head. They know a good thing when they see it.
They keep him working for the provisional government. He becomes
(29:09):
the Railway Commissar and he's tasked with basically getting ten
thousand train cars full of men, weapons and gear to
the front lines of the war. The Provisional government wants
to end the war, but they're slow about it, and
they're too slow about it, and that's why they get overthrown.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
But it seems like the premise for a top game.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
It is, and there's crazy stuff here, right, So Joe
Boyle takes control here and he starts maneuvering weapons and
gear and trying to run the logistics. Not of the
Dawson City Nuggets trying to get over to Ottawa, but
for like reinforcements from Siberia to get over to the
front lines in Europe to fight the Germans much higher state. Yes, yes,
(29:51):
and they are. You know, train cars are being like
dragged down the sides of mountains and sides of mountains,
I believe is literally what it sounds like. People and
machines with ropes dragging train cars down the sides of
mountains when there's collapses or railroads getting blown up. So
it's a war zone. There's artillery, there's things blowing up
(30:11):
all over the place. There's it's cold, it's mountainous. It
probably looks fairly similar to the Yukon, but it's Siberia
this time. And now he's Siberia, Joe Boyle. The February
Revolution is the provisional government, and then in October that's
when the Bolsheviks take over, and that's Lenin and the
Marxists and the Communists.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
And he had been on the side of the White Army, so.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
He had well, so they keep him on because they're
hurting for skilled people in this position. Right, he's doing
a good job at what he's doing. He is a
central worker here, but he's not feeling great about this. Right.
He is a British officer, and the British were working
against the Bolsheviks, yeah, and he worked with their White
Army and he got this nice, pretty order of Santislaus
(30:58):
from the Czar, who is not a friend of the Bolsheviks.
And so he's like, all right, I get to get
out of here.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
This is klondike Joe or Siberia. Joe whatever, whatever we're
calling him now, My guess is he doesn't just politely
leave and peace out and fade.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Into Vender's letter of resignation. That is not what happened,
Klondik Joe. He is. One of the other things he
has been doing throughout this entire process is because he
has built this rail line from Saint Petersburg to Odessa,
he's tesked. In addition to bringing weapons and supplies to
the front lines of the war, he is also trying
(31:35):
to bring humanitarian aid, food and clothing to the people
of Romania, which is where a lot of this war
is taking place. The remaining people are suffering in World
War One and in the revolutions that are going on
around this time, and so.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
The right between all of these countries who are not
friends with one.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Another, right they're kind of stuck in the mill here
and they're suffering. And Joe's one of his big projects
to bring food and clothing and medical aid to the
people of Romania. So that's great, But for whatever reason,
he learns that the Bolsheviks have come into possession of
the crown jewels of Romania as well as a large
(32:16):
portion of the country's gold wealth, and they've relocated it
to a bank in Moscow for quote safe keeping during
the war, And you know, the Bolsheviks need money, and
their ideology does not really suggest that they're planning on
returning the crown Jewels to the aristocrats of Romania.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
And Joe likes shiny things, and he likes an interesting project,
shall we.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Say, And he likes the Romanians, and he doesn't like
the Bolsheviks' is worried they're going to kill him, and
so what does he do? What is the rational thing
to do? Here? There is a heavily secured vault in
Moscow that possesses the crown Jewels of Romania. It is
guarded by Bolsheviks who probably are one bad day away
from having you thrown in jail as a foreign agent
(33:04):
and executing. Okay, you're Joe Boyle, though it's nineteen eighteen,
and you are a guy who has a history of
getting something in his head and going after it immediately.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
So okay, what do you think is he going to
think Ocean's eleven up this place and just go in
and yoink the jewels and the gold and high tail
it out of there. And I don't know what he's
going to do next, but seems to me that Joe
is going to get the jewels. I mean, it's such
a it's such a cliched thing to do, but this
is screaming jewel heist to me.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
It's a jewel, it's a jewel.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Whoo. I love a good heist.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
It's not just a jewel heist though, because because it's
it's even more intense than that. He doesn't. This isn't
like the Minion's movie where they steal the Crown Jewels
and run away, right, or Ocean's eleven even because not
only does Joe Boyle steal the Crown Jewels of Romania
out of a secure facility in Moscow, he also loads
(34:01):
that train up with hundreds of pounds of gold from
the Romanian treasury.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
The Romanian treasury which is currently being held in Russia
for quote unquote safe keeping.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Right right right, The Russians have taken it from Romania
for safekeeping, and they're going to hold it in Moscow.
And don't worry, you'll get it back when the Communists
decide they're willing to give it back to the aristocracy
and the bourgeoisie. We'll let you know. So Joe gets
a train in Moscow. He liberates the crown jewels of
Romania and a decent portion of that country's treasury wealth,
(34:34):
loads it all into two commandeered railway cars, and then
runs it twenty five hundred kilometers through a civil war
to deliver it back to the Romanian people. And this
is like, this is like great locomotive chase vibes, like
this is a this is not a casually riding on
the rails being like, eh, maybe they haven't noticed that
(34:56):
I stole all that stuff yet. This is like the
there's only one direction I can go here, so you know,
I've got the thing, and you know where I'm headed yep.
At one point along the way, they're at this train
station and the manager there is with the Bolsheviks, and
he refuses to let boil pass. Even though Klondik Joe
is still officially the senior member of the transportation department.
(35:19):
He doesn't panic. He has to find a way to
get this train out of basically impound. So he decides, Okay,
what am I going to do? He organizes a party,
like a huge party, a music concert and just a
massive like dinner whole shindig, whole event logistics. Yes, all
(35:39):
of the train party officials can come. There's you know whatever,
anybody is invited. We're gonna sing, dance, we're gonna have music.
We're gonna have this tea, this really fancy tea that
I brewed for you guys. That's basically just like straight
one fifty one whiskey tea. And of course everybody drinks
it and they get drunk. And he uses that opportunity
(36:02):
to cut the telegraph wires, hijack those trains back again
and get out of there. Okay, he does this. He escapes,
He goes through this war zone and he's being shot at,
he's being chased, he's being waylaid at various stops along
the way, so he doesn't know if the next stop
he gets to is going to be in control by
the White Army or the Red Army or the Germans.
(36:23):
And he's carrying two trains that are literally loaded with
gold and jewels, and it's just him. It's just him
and a couple other guys who are not heavily armed.
This isn't an armored train or anything. This is a
railway car. But he does it. He steals the Crown
Jewels of Romania from Lenin and gets it back to Romania.
(36:43):
And this is around the time that he starts to
have a relatively intimate relationship with Queen Marie of Romania,
who's probably pretty grateful to have the crown jewels back.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Yeah, and we can't go into depth here, but she
was Maria Romania is English. She grew up learning how
to ice skate and even play ice hockey, which I
mentioned because it seems relevant in the circumstances.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
And something from them to talk about her.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Yeah, shared interest. And she was in an arranged marriage
to Ferdinand of Poland, and the two of them didn't
really click on a personal level, but sometimes happens in
aristocratic arranged marriages. They developed a good working relationship, and
Ferdinand in particular grew to respect Marie's better knowledge of
(37:31):
the world. And Marie became an influence kind of behind
the scenes, but also acknowledged publicly on much of Poland's
policies in World War One. So by nineteen fourteen she
was queen. Her husband was king, but she was queen
because she was married to him. But she was pretty
influential and she advocated for Romania entering World War One,
(37:56):
and she, being an aristocrat, was able to contact relative
all over Europe to get the best possible terms for Romania.
She got involved with the Romanian Red Cross and along
with her daughters, visited hospitals, she visited soldiers with cholera.
And she was pretty talented, Okay, also pretty privileged, also talented.
(38:20):
She was a prolific author. She published about three dozen
books and short stories. She threw herself into life, and
she had a reputation for being kind of a party animal.
She according to some sources, she had affairs. The paternity
of some of her children was questioned, and some of
this might be exaggeration or opportunistic propaganda, but the takeaway
(38:44):
is that one way or another, Marie lived life to
the fullest, and whatever the exact details of the truth
of the matter, it's quite easy to see how people
of the time were shipping her in Klondike Joe, lots
of shared interests, lots of shared viste.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
They did get along really well. We know they got
along really well. They wrote a bunch of letters to
each other. They will be friends for the rest of
their lives. Some people suggest that you know, like you said,
affairs and paternity and all that stuff. Joe gets implicated
in some of that. We don't know for sure, and
we never will probably, but she was a big proponent
(39:21):
of Joe Boyle and a big fan of his and
the work he was doing for Romania, and she liked
him on a personal level.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
So Joe is in Romania and there is some speculation
that perhaps he stole the Crown Jewels for her. That's
like kind of the romantic version of the story, is
that like he knew her before he stole the Crown
jewels and he stole them, stole her jewels back for
her or whatever. But I think that might be one
of those things that we keep talking about where they
write the erotic story version of the fan factor version. Yeah,
(39:51):
that erotic fan fiction. Yeah, after the after the fact,
we don't know, but it's fun to think about. So, So
Joe Boyle is now he's in Romania and he really
you can't go back to Russia after this.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
He cannot show his face there, he can no.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
So he starts working with the British intelligence the kind
of pre soe the burgeoning like British spy service, and
he starts running undercover spy rings operating in Romania and
Southern Russia, primarily against the Soviet Union, but also a
little bit against the Germans as well. He starts relaying
(40:34):
information back. He creates this network of spies because he's
he's good at networking, he's good at logistics. Yeah, and
he starts sending information back to London about the Soviets
and the Germans, their their movements in World War One
and then after as well, so in the between wars period.
One of the achievements that earned him a lot of
(40:56):
fame in Romania was he personally negotiated the release of
fifty Romanian nobles who had been taken prisoner by the
Bolsheviks and Odessa, without bloodshed, just negotiating it and made
that happen. And that was such an impressive feat that
he earned the Star of Romania, which is like their
medal of Honor, the highest honor in Romania. They made
(41:17):
him a national hero. The king declared him a savior
of Romania for all of the work he had done,
not just with the negotiating those nobles release and stealing
the crown jewels of Romania and also but also like
bringing all of the food and aid to the people
who needed it, which is pretty great. He attended the
Paris peace Conference that ended World War One, I think
(41:39):
as a guest of Marie who was also there, and
that's the Treaty of Versailles, like he was there when
it was signed, and then after the war he was
able to negotiate and secure roughly twenty five million dollars
in humanitarian aid that he distributed to the people of Romania.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
So he ends his military career that bcket that he
got from the Canadian militia for raising fifty Yukon dudes
to have a machine gun company. He ends up with
the Star of Romania, the British Distinguished Service Order, the
Russian Order of St. Santislav, and the French Quadiguier for
his service to all of those countries during the war.
(42:19):
He's got high ranking, very high medals from let's say
one to three four different countries, none of which was
his own, so that's awesome. He dies in England in
nineteen twenty three at the age of fifty eight.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
And there's a story that every year after he died,
on the anniversary of his death, a mysterious woman dressed
in black would visit his grave, and these visits continued
until nineteen thirty eight, which happens to be the same
year that Maria Romania. Draw your own conclusions.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
So that's Joe Boyle, klondike. Joe Boyle. He was a boxer,
he was a sailor, He fought a shark, He found
gold in the Yukon, he competed for this team, managed
to Stanley Cup team. He stole Crown jewels, he fought
the Bolsheviks, he fought the Germans, he partied with the
Queen of Romania. And I just think this guy's life
it reads like a like a fiction novel, reads like
(43:17):
something out of a comic book.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
You know, what would you do with your klondike Joe?
Speaker 1 (43:22):
Yes, lots a lot of a lot of stuff. Yeah, yeah,
hijack a train from the Communists, through a war fight.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
A shark, steal back, some Crown jewels, a.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Punch of member of the Ottawa Senators, throw parties. And
so that's Joe, and he's he's awesome. I love this story.
It was one that from the early days of the website,
I've been wanting to tell the story. So I'm really
glad I got to do it today.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
All right.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Well, thank you guys as always for listening. We hope
you had a really great holiday. Please do try to
remember to like and subscribe and do all that stuff
because that does help us out. And yeah, thank you
so much. We'll see you the next one.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Stay Badass. Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast
produced by High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me,
Pat Larish, and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is
by me and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs
Brandon Phibbs. Mixing and music and sound design is by
(44:24):
Jude Brewer. Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeart Badass
of the Week is based on the website Badass oftheweek
dot com, where you can read all sorts of stories
about other badasses. If you want to reach out with
questions ideas, you can email us at Badass podcast at
badassotheweek dot com. If you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen,
(44:49):
and tell your friends and your enemies if you want as.
We'll be back next week with another one. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts,
Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast produced by
High five Content.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Joe Boyle, thousands of miles from his home in Canada,
sits in a train car that he's commandeered from the Bolsheviks.
He's got crates and crates of humanitarian aid for the
war torn people of Romania and some boring ol wicker baskets.
But the baskets aren't holding his lunch. They're holding the
(00:27):
Crown Jewels of Romania. Fifty miles out of Moscow, the
train stops. Routines stop at a small town, right not
quite Joe hears something. He sneaks around and looks. Some
guys camouflaged against the snow are sneaking around and trying
(00:51):
to decouple Joe's train cars and make off with the
Crown Jewels, not to mention the humanitarian supplies. Joe balls
up his fists and launches the guys out. He recouples
the train cars, and the train and everything it's transporting
is free to go on for now. But there's still
(01:13):
the rest of the journey. Can he get his precious
cargo through over fifteen hundred miles of snow and civil war?
Of course, he can he's Klondike Joe Boyle.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Hello, and welcome back to Badass of the Week. My
name is Ben Thompson and I am here as always
with my co host, doctor Pat Larishat. This episode is
going to air the day after Christmas, but we're recording
it the week before. So I was just curious if
you have any plans for the holidays.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah, I'm going to be traveling up and down the
East Coast, visiting various friends and family, hanging out, eating cookies.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
You know. Nice. You're going to be bringing all your
podcast gear. Yeah, we've been talking about this. We're both
going to be loading up our holiday travel with all
of the gear to record our podcasts in new and
interesting locations in the future.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
How about you.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
We are going to be going up to Canada to
go skiing, so there's a like we're getting a place
with a couple of other families that a couple of
them have kids, and so it'll be like a fun
little weekend of skiing and hanging out and doing stuff
like that. Nice, and it kind of got us thinking
when we were talking about that, I'm driving up into
(02:36):
British Columbia, so I'll be up in like the Whistler
area and which is kind of a you know, a
ski resort kind of thing, nice log cabins with fires
and you know, sipping wine and beers and eating whatever
hamburgers and stuff. That's kind of the easy mode of
(02:58):
Canadian adventure lifestyle Isle. But there there's also a hard
yes two Canadian to the Canadian womanness. And we had
been talking about, oh, you're going to go to Canada,
maybe we should do a Canadian badass We haven't really
talked about many Canadians on the on the show yet.
I think the only one we've talked about was the
the The Resolute, the ship which is no now now
(03:21):
based out of New Zealand, so no longer Canadian.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yeah, but an actual Canadian human who is from Canada
and doing badass re maybe even in Canada, maybe in
other parts of the world, and.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
That is going to be what we're going to encounter
here today. You know, there's the there's that that common
joke that I'm sure Canadian people love where they're you know,
Americans think that they're just like very polite people, but
if you've ever been to a hockey game, you realize
there is kind of a violent side to the to
the Canadian culture. And one of my favorite quotes about
(03:54):
the people of Canada is is by Winston Churchill. He
was talking about the Allied forces is in World War
Two and he said, if you gave me British officers,
Canadian soldiers and American technology, I think I could conquer
the world. So that's high praise. Yeah, Okay. And the
guy we're going to talk about today, Klondike Joe Boyle.
He is a great example of that spirit and he
(04:17):
is going to embody really all kinds of interesting adventury
badass things, every element of a good badass he's going
to espouse it here and he's going to demonstrate how
it works.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Excellent, bring it on.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
So here's the short here's the short version on Klondike
Joe Boyle. He was a Yukon lumberjack secret agent who
managed a Stanley Cup hockey team outfitted a World War
One machine gun company. Received military honors from England, Canada, France,
Romania and Russia. Stole the Romanian Crown jewels from a
vault in Moscow under the noses of the Bolsheviks, hijacked
(04:51):
a train, probably had an affair with the Romanian princess
and once fought a shark in hand to hand combat
armed with nothing more than a hunting knife. Is klondike, Joe.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Boy Don't you mean hand to finn?
Speaker 1 (05:05):
I think it's more like knife to face combat, but
knife to tooth combat. Okay, But yes, we are going
to take a quick break and then when we come back,
we're going to talk about klondike. Joe Boyle Joseph Whiteside
(05:26):
Boyle was born November sixteenth, eighteen sixty seven, in Toronto.
He was from a relatively wealthy family. His father bred
racehorses in a place called Woodstock, and they had this
big farm where as Joe was growing up he could
spend his days. He was swimming, he rode horses, he
shot guns. He had a pretty happy lifestyle growing up.
(05:52):
When he was seventeen, Joe followed his father on a
business trip to New York City and while they were
hanging out there, this is New York City and eighteen eighties,
Joe started hanging out down by the docks because that's
kind of where all the action was happening in town.
And he met this old sea captain who apparently they
got along really well because the captain was like, hey,
(06:14):
do you want to go on a three year voyage
on a wooden sailing ship across the Atlantic. And Joe
was like yes and definitely going to do this. Jumps
on the ship and then just has a guy go
find his father and tell him, Hey, Joe's not coming back.
He's a sailor. Don't wait up, He'll be back in
a couple of years.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
At least he had the courtesy to text his dad,
as it were. And his dad, I mean, once, once
this has happened, what can his dad do? That ship
has literally sailed.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
So that ship has sailed, Yes, that's true. Well, okay,
so Joe Boyley, I mean he had he'd been on
sailing boats in the lake on his family's property and stuff,
but he hadn't been on like a big wooden sailing
ship on the high seas yet. And so he's out
there and he's kind of learning literally learning the ropes.
I think that's probably where that expression comes from.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Yeah, I like that, let's do that.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
He's learning the ropes, he's learned the tide knots or
whatever it is that you have to like. But he's
doing the thing. He's out there on the Atlantic, and
apparently he works really hard because everybody likes him, and
they like him more. One day where there is a
thunderstorm arrives and the ship is getting tossed around on
the waves, and one of the guys on the ship
gets thrown overboard and he hits into the water. Then
it gets worse because there's sharks in the water, and
(07:29):
one of these sharks starts attacking this sailor while he's
floating in the water. And so what do you do
when you're klondike Joe Boyle. I guess he's not klondike
Joe Boyle yet, He's just Joe Boyle. But he does
the thing I mentioned at the top of the show.
He puts a knife between his teeth, takes off his shirt,
jumps in the water, and starts knifing the shark to
(07:50):
save his buddy. And remember this is during a thunderstorm,
like a torrential downpour, lightning, all of that. He jumps
in the water, the ship's getting tossed around, people are
trying to throw lines and ropes to and he knife's
this shark and frees the guy and they both make
it out alive.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
So instead of jumping the shark. He jumped on the
shark and that was the first thing he did.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
It's emblematic of what's to come.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yes, exactly. Okay, so this ship is probably cursed for
something because they get across there outside off the coast
of Ireland and there is a shipwreck and yeah, so
the ship explodes and he's in the water and he
drifts out and he lands in Cork County, Ireland. He
has no cash on him, he has none of his gear,
it's all sunk with the ship. And so what do
(08:38):
you do. Well, he finds a job working as a
tour guide in Cork County, Ireland.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Of a place he just washed ashore at.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Literally washed up on the shore, not that long ago. Yes,
he finds a job as a tour guide.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
I guess, okay, well, this is where Anne Bonnie's from, right,
so maybe there's something in the air that helps people
sort of man it and live their best lives somehow.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
That's true. That's true. I forget this is where an
Bonnie came from. So yeah, so he lands in Cork
and they were like, oh, you fought a knife. You
knife fought a shark. Great, you can you can show
people around here. You can handle to qualified? Can I
see your resume? Well, I dive bomb the shark with
a bowie knife. Yeah that's probably fine. So okay, so great. Uh.
(09:27):
He works as a tour guide in Cork County, Ireland,
which will be one of the more mild mannered jobs
he has in his career, even though he got it
by shipwrecking on shore in a place he'd never been
before and fighting a way to make a living there.
He earns enough money to catch a boat back to
New York City and then he gets there and within
(09:48):
a week of arriving in New York City he is
married to somebody he met. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He gets
back to New York City, he meets a woman and
he marries her within a week.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
He seems to adapt to circumstances white rapidly.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Shall we say, yes, that is a good way of
putting it. When he wants an he goes after it.
I guess apparently. So. He starts in an animal feed business.
He has seven kids, and he manages a boxing club
where he helps some up and coming boxers, gives them
some fighting experience, and arranges some exhibitions and fights for them. Okay, cool. Cool,
(10:22):
So that's going pretty well until eighteen ninety seven, when
this is the kind of the Yukon gold Rush. The
news is starting to arrive in New York City that
like they have found gold in the Yukon and there
are like fortunes to be made out there. Okay, that
sounds pretty cool, But Yukon is extremely far away from
New York City and also from Joe Boyle's hometown of Toronto.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
So it's on the other side of the continent. It's
maybe more an idea rather than an actual place for
people who are hanging out on the East Coast. It's
like you hear of it, there is gold, but getting there.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Getting there it's and he's pretty successful here. He's running
the boxing thing. He's got his own business. The Yukon
is far so I live in Seattle, which is as
far northwest as you can basically get to the Canadian border. Like,
I'm very close. I still jump going up to Vancouver
for the weekend. I'm driving there and it takes like
(11:20):
three hours. So I'm very close to Canada, and the
Yukon is the northwesternmost province in Canada. But for me
to drive to Whitehorse, which is just kind of right
across the border from of the Yukon. It's thirty four
hours by car by cars, by car, yeah, which is faster.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Than people would be traveling in those days.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
So right, thirty four hours by car from Seattle, which is,
like I said, as close as you can get. That's
how far north the Yukon is. How far away it
is from the United States. I mean, I guess not
including Alaska. But so okay, hey, they found gold. That
sounds like an adventure. Joe Boyle does the reasonable thing here.
He divorces his wife, he leaves his family behind, and
(12:06):
he goes on an insane, life threatening overland journey to
take part in the Klondag gold Rush.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Oh so he has to go all the way from
New York to Yukon.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
And he goes with an Australian boxer named Frank Slevin,
who I assume was one of the boxers that was
part of his operation. And they go on this crazy
journey across all of the US and Canada, like literally
coast to coast. There are not cars. They are making
this trip by foot and horse and snow sled dogs.
(12:40):
And they're paying for their trip. They're making money by
setting up boxing exhibitions like we'll fight club kind of
fighting exhibitions where he and Frank Slevin will they'll either
organize local boxers to fight or they'll fight against all
local boxers. So they're able to make some money doing this,
but it's not a lot, and this journey is expensive,
and it's far, and it's cold. You got to buy
(13:01):
supplies and provisions and all this stuff. When they finally
arrive in Dawson City, Yukon, the two of them can
combine to produce twenty two.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Dollars okay, which probably went farther in those days than
twenty two dollars today, Like twenty two dollars today, that's
lunch and a coffee.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
No kidding, in those yes, in those days, in those days,
it was a little better. But it's still but still
it's still not like.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
It's not enough to get you home and nowhere near
striking it rich territory.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Yes, it's not enough to get you home. If this
doesn't work out, and spoiler alert, this is going to
work out. They are both going to be up to
their next in Klondike Gold by the time they leave
Dawson City, Dawson City. It's kind of this cowboy frontier town.
It's on a permafrosted glacier. It's high in the mountains.
I mean, picture those black and white pictures of the
(13:50):
Yukon gold Rush where people are there's no gortech here.
They're wearing like furs and leather and getting frostbite and
altitude sickness and falling off mountains and stuff they're using
like literal rope and not para cord. This is a tough,
tough place, right then. These guys have to be pretty
tough to survive there. Joe is able to make some cash.
(14:12):
He works as a manual laborer. He does some boxing,
he works as a horse jockey for a while, and
then he's able to get some money together, which he
then immediately blows trying to pan for gold. So he
buys a little plot. He gets all set up. That's
why you go out there, right right. He gets there,
he's got the twenty two dollars. He can't afford to
like create an operation just yet. He makes a little
(14:34):
bit of money. He starts panning for gold. He doesn't
find anything.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Then what happens.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Then he decides, look, I'm not going to do this.
He becomes a pioneer on a technique called dredging, which
was pretty new at the time. So remember this is
like the eighteen eighties eighteen nineties, And he built a
machine that would that would basically like dig all of
the sediment and soil up from the bottom of a
lake or a river and try to mine gold out
(15:03):
of there. So there is gold in the ground in
the Yukon and people are trying to kind of like
strip mining for it basically, and he's like, oh, I
wonder if like I can pull it out of the
rivers and the lakes. So he starts doing that.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Build the engineering skills here.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yes he is. So he starts digging this up and
he finds he finds gold, and he finds a lot
of it, and yes, he gets a lot of gold.
He sets up a logging business, he sets up a
hydroelectric power plant. He becomes so rich off of all
this gold that he becomes known as the King of
the Klondike. Whoa which is not bad because a lot
(15:39):
of people are here, a lot of people are making
a rich here, and way way way more people here
are freezing to death, are going broke and having to
run home with their table between their legs. So great,
he's successful at this. Awesome, So what does he do next.
He's a big sports fan and he's an endless promoter.
He's been doing all of these boxing promotions and at
(15:59):
nights you know five he of course, he puts together
a crew of hockey players and decides he's going to
challenge the Ottawa Senators to the Stanley Cup. Because that's
just a thing you could do back in nineteen oh five.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Okay, I mean you just you just get together a
bunch of people and say, hey, we're signing up for
the Stanley Cup.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Yeah, we want to we want to compete for the
Stanley Cup. Okay, great, this is nineteen oh five. I
mean the goalies aren't wearing masks, that kind of thing,
like that time period of hockey. And he gets a
bunch of guys together who work on the various operations,
the logging operation or the gold mining operation, just like
(16:36):
big strong Yukon dudes, and he puts together with hockey
team of them and he challenges the reigning Stanley Cup
champions to a match for the Cup. And I love
that you could just do this in these days like
it would be like today, like some you know, like
Beer League team in Edmonton just being like I'm gonna
(16:58):
I'm gonna challenge the Pens for best of seven for
the Stanley Cup. And then you show up there and
everybody kind of like is already drunk and like they
you know, throw up on Cidney Crosby or whatever. Yeah,
I would definitely watch that if that was a thing, Like,
I would definitely watch a bunch of like drunk idiots
get beat thirty seven and nothing by the Boston Bruins. Right,
(17:19):
And our.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Particular drunk idiots they are the Dawson City Nuggets.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Yes, Dawson City Nuggets, and I hesitate to call them
drunk idiots, but they do party hard. So Dawson City
is four thousand miles from Ottawa, right, And Klondik Joe
has just made this trip. He came from New York
out to Dawson City, and I was going to go
back to Ottawa. And remember this is not going to
be You can't get on the team plane and fly
(17:43):
out there. Right. It took twenty three days. And this
is like the Oregon Trail was not that long ago, right,
It's that style you're Oregon, trailing your stuff over mountains, rivers, forests.
They're going by dog sled trains, steamership, more trains, walking horseback,
all of this stuff. They're dragging all their gear with them.
They get seasick, they get rained on there's icy roads,
(18:06):
and they have this epic journey over four thousand miles
across the entire width of Canada, and finally they arrive
and they challenge the Autawa Senators, the Silver Seven, which
is a very famous lineup for this hockey team. This
team was basically unbeatable. They're considered one of the greatest
hockey teams ever assembled. And these guys from Dawson City
(18:27):
are gonna show up on a doorstep and yep, hey,
let's play. Okay, Hayley Cup on the line. Okay, so
how do you think they did well?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Okay, So, on the one hand, they're going up against
the Silver Seven and they've had a strenuous journey. On
the other hand, these are the Dawson City Nuggets. We've
got Klondike Joe, who apparently can do anything and put
up with anything, and doesn't blink when he's faced with
a shark, for example. Not that they had Sharks on
(18:57):
this particular journey. But you know, so bears be I'm guessing, well,
there are the underdogs. I tend to root for underdogs,
So I don't know. Did they put up a good
show and maybe not beat Ottawa but give them a
run for their money.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
No, they were slaughtered. They got they went out there.
They've been thrown up over the side of steamerships for
three weeks. They've been traveling by dog sled. They got there.
They were all beat up and tired and exhausted, and
they were never going to be able to compete with
Ottawa talent wise. Anyway. In the first game, they lose
(19:38):
nine to three, and a decent number of the players
on the Nuggets get ejected because while they are not
going to win, and they are going to get beat
and they're going to get beat badly, they are going
to fight these guys, which is the thing that is
legal in hockey. It's the only sport in the world
where you can literally punch a member of the other
team in the face in the middle of a point
(19:58):
and you don't get ejected from the game. There's actually
rules in place in ice hockey for attacking members of
the other team with physical punches right, and still somehow
several members of the Duston City Nuggets managed to get
themselves ejected from this game for fighting too much or
being too violent.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Wow, okay, that's a pretty high bar.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
They didn't have the talent to skate with the Senators,
but they could knock them down. And this is probably
why they stopped allowing any drunk idiots to challenge the
Stanley Cup champions to ice hockey, because you really don't
want your star players getting injured into scenario like this.
But this does speak to the character of the Duston
City Nuggets that these were tough guys, and I'm sure
they were like, hey, whatever, this is just how we
(20:39):
played in Dawston City, you whims. So it was a
best of three series. They got beat nine to three
in the first game, and then in the second game
they lost twenty three to two, which is still to
this day a record for the worst defeat in the
history of the Stanley Cup. Couch Ottawa star player was
(21:01):
a guy named Frank McGhee who he scored fourteen goals
in that game, which is still an NHL record for
the most goals scored in a Stanley Cup series. Okay,
McGee was also kind of a badass. I do want
to talk about Frank McGee for one second. He was
pretty badass. He was one of the original nine members
of the Hockey Hall of Fame and then he went
off to World War One and was killed in action
(21:21):
fighting the Germans in France. So he's pretty badass character
as well. But scoring fourteen goals in a game is
pretty impressive, even if it is against the relatively amateur
team of the Dawson So, yeah, you know, I think
they should bring it back. Yukon doesn't have an NHL team,
they should bring back the Dawson City Nuggets campaign.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah. What would their mask copy? A nugget?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
I guess a nugget? Probably? Yeah, people, Yes, really angry nugget,
really angry golden gold miner. Yes.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
What did they do after they had been defeated so soundly?
Did they go crawl away and hide under a rock?
Speaker 1 (21:59):
No? So after the finals were over, Ottawa invited Dawson
City to come out and party with them after that
twenty three to two beating, and the two teams like
went out and had a bunch of beers and got
hammered and got in trouble because they were trying to
take turns drop kicking the Stanley Cup across the Rideau
(22:20):
Canal in downtown Ottawa. Yes, drinking beer out of the
Stanley Cup as a bucket list item for me, but
but drop kicking it over the canal and drunkenly, right,
And so so that's the Dozen City Nuggets, right. They'll
(22:41):
punch you in the face in the middle of the
game and it's so hard they get dejected for it,
but then afterwards you want to hang out with them.
This is kind of a good analog for Joe Boyle
to just violent and just really really going all out
all the time, no off switch, no filter. But at
the end of the day, you still want to hang
out with them for some an inexplicable reason. So, as
(23:02):
I mentioned with Frank McGee, Frank McGee is killed in
action during World War One, and that's where this story
is headed. But let's stop right there and hear a
word from our sponsors and we're back. Let's pick right
(23:23):
up where we left off. So that Stanley Cup was
nineteen oh five, world War One begins in nineteen fourteen,
and Canada is part of the Commonwealth, and they are
expected to contribute soldiers to the army to send people
over to France to fight the Germans in World War One.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
And I'm assuming that klondike Joe is going to want
to be involved in some way because he's got skills,
he's got interest, he's got energy exactly. So how old
is he at this point?
Speaker 1 (23:49):
He's forty nine, which is okay, not like it's beyond
draftable age, right, Yeah, the draft kind of ends at
thirty five, but he's forty one.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Here and say, hey, I'm klondike Joe. Please give me
something to do.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Which is basically what he does. So he uses his
own money to recruit a fifty man machine gun company
of the Canadian Militia. He outfits them with uniforms, equipment,
machine guns, ammunition, all the stuff he buys himself. And
then he kind of just shows up and is like, hey,
I'm klondike Joe. I have a machine gun company for you.
Are you interested? Yes or no? The Canadian Militia says yes.
(24:24):
They make him an honorary lieutenant colonel, despite the fact
that he has no military training or experience.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
He's not he has Harry, but he has experience.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
He has experience leading people and leading companies and fighting.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Not thousands of miles of Canadian wilderness.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
And that's true. That is logistics, and that is what
most of war is at the end of the day.
And he's got this big personality and people want to
follow him and people are inspired by him. Right, So
he's given the uniform of a lieutenant colonel in the
Canadian militia and he loves this uniform. He's very proud
of it. Never take it off. He's never seen in
public from the day he gets it. He has never
(25:03):
seen in public again without it, including when he later
on in his career will start going on special operations
behind enemy lines where.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
You're supposed to be clandestine and not noticeable. Yeah, exactly
what would you do for Klondike bar But what wouldn't
Klondike Joe do something? Something? I guess.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Yeah, I feel like there's a joke to be happy listeners.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
If you come up with a better version, please let
us know.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
So he goes over to Europe with this machine gun
company and he is eventually like he's deemed too like
he's too old to fight in the infantry. Is what
the British government decides, right, so he brings this machine
gun company over there, but he doesn't lead them into battle.
They serve in the Canadian Militia forces in World War One,
(25:50):
but he doesn't go with them. He's a little too old.
So they make him an officer of the Royal Engineers
because they had engineering skills and maybe his talents are
a little bit more geared towards that. So of course
the British Army sends him to Russia to aid the
forces there in their struggle against the Germans. So he
(26:10):
goes to the Eastern Front and he is helping what
so does the White Army, which is kind of the nationalists,
the pro democracy Russian forces and their struggle against both
the Germans and the Bolsheviks, the communists who are also
trying to take over. So in nineteen seventeen he ends
up taking over the Russian Transportation Department and starts setting
(26:31):
up rail lines between Petrograd and Odessa.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Don't turn around, their railway commissars in town, don't keeping
my day job, so okay, yeah, so he shows up.
He gets handed management of Rustot.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
And builds a rail line from Petrograd which is present
day Saint Petersburg, to Odessa in Ukraine, and so that's
a pretty big rail line and he's in charge of
building it.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
He is not phased by geography, apparently not at all.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
So yes, so let's kind of recap up to this point.
Joe Boyle was from Canada. He goes to New York City.
He jumps on a boat randomly because he felt like it.
He fights a shark, jumps into the water to fight
a shark to save one of his crew members, gets
into a shipwreck, rushes up in Ireland, where he becomes
a tour guide, and then makes his way back to
(27:24):
New York. Has an entire life there, leaves that to
go to the Yukon, finds gold, competes with the Stanley Cup,
raises a machine gun company to fight in World War One,
and now he is sailing over here to Europe. They
put him in charge of the Russian Department of Transportation,
where he's building rail lines. Cool, okay, So remember that
(27:46):
World War One is still going on and you really
can't put Joe that close to the action without expecting
him to get his hands done. Of course, And in
nineteen seventeen he somehow finds himself in the middle of
the Battle of Tarnopol. The German army is overrunning Russian
positions all throughout the city. There's no Russian officers kind
of taking control here. So Boyle, he is an officer
of the British Army and he organizes the defenses of
(28:08):
the city. He commands it's a rail hub, probably why
he was in town for it. Yeah, and he ends
up organizing the defense of the city and they repel
the German attack. And apparently he showed so much heroism
during the battle that Czar Nicholas the Second of Russia
actually awarded him the Order of Saint Santislaus, which inducts
(28:29):
him into an order of Russian knighthood that dates back
to the days of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Wow, okay, that's me. I thought. He's really proud of that.
If he was so proud of his uniform earlier, he
must be really chuffed about this.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yes, that big star is going directly onto that uniform
and it's never coming office.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
So the Tsar is overthrown in nineteen seventeen, and the
First Revolution is the Democratic revolution that overthrows the czar,
and they're trying to install democracy and so oil stays
on in Russia. After that, he was the Department of
Transportation head. They know a good thing when they see it.
They keep him working for the provisional government. He becomes
(29:09):
the Railway Commissar and he's tasked with basically getting ten
thousand train cars full of men, weapons and gear to
the front lines of the war. The Provisional government wants
to end the war, but they're slow about it, and
they're too slow about it, and that's why they get overthrown.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
But it seems like the premise for a top game.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
It is, and there's crazy stuff here, right, So Joe
Boyle takes control here and he starts maneuvering weapons and
gear and trying to run the logistics. Not of the
Dawson City Nuggets trying to get over to Ottawa, but
for like reinforcements from Siberia to get over to the
front lines in Europe to fight the Germans much higher state. Yes, yes,
(29:51):
and they are. You know, train cars are being like
dragged down the sides of mountains and sides of mountains,
I believe is literally what it sounds like. People and
machines with ropes dragging train cars down the sides of
mountains when there's collapses or railroads getting blown up. So
it's a war zone. There's artillery, there's things blowing up
(30:11):
all over the place. There's it's cold, it's mountainous. It
probably looks fairly similar to the Yukon, but it's Siberia
this time. And now he's Siberia, Joe Boyle. The February
Revolution is the provisional government, and then in October that's
when the Bolsheviks take over, and that's Lenin and the
Marxists and the Communists.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
And he had been on the side of the White Army, so.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
He had well, so they keep him on because they're
hurting for skilled people in this position. Right, he's doing
a good job at what he's doing. He is a
central worker here, but he's not feeling great about this. Right.
He is a British officer, and the British were working
against the Bolsheviks, yeah, and he worked with their White
Army and he got this nice, pretty order of Santislaus
(30:58):
from the Czar, who is not a friend of the Bolsheviks.
And so he's like, all right, I get to get
out of here.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
This is klondike Joe or Siberia. Joe whatever, whatever we're
calling him now, My guess is he doesn't just politely
leave and peace out and fade.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Into Vender's letter of resignation. That is not what happened,
Klondik Joe. He is. One of the other things he
has been doing throughout this entire process is because he
has built this rail line from Saint Petersburg to Odessa,
he's tesked. In addition to bringing weapons and supplies to
the front lines of the war, he is also trying
(31:35):
to bring humanitarian aid, food and clothing to the people
of Romania, which is where a lot of this war
is taking place. The remaining people are suffering in World
War One and in the revolutions that are going on
around this time, and so.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
The right between all of these countries who are not
friends with one.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Another, right they're kind of stuck in the mill here
and they're suffering. And Joe's one of his big projects
to bring food and clothing and medical aid to the
people of Romania. So that's great, But for whatever reason,
he learns that the Bolsheviks have come into possession of
the crown jewels of Romania as well as a large
(32:16):
portion of the country's gold wealth, and they've relocated it
to a bank in Moscow for quote safe keeping during
the war, And you know, the Bolsheviks need money, and
their ideology does not really suggest that they're planning on
returning the crown Jewels to the aristocrats of Romania.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
And Joe likes shiny things, and he likes an interesting project,
shall we.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Say, And he likes the Romanians, and he doesn't like
the Bolsheviks' is worried they're going to kill him, and
so what does he do? What is the rational thing
to do? Here? There is a heavily secured vault in
Moscow that possesses the crown Jewels of Romania. It is
guarded by Bolsheviks who probably are one bad day away
from having you thrown in jail as a foreign agent
(33:04):
and executing. Okay, you're Joe Boyle, though it's nineteen eighteen,
and you are a guy who has a history of
getting something in his head and going after it immediately.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
So okay, what do you think is he going to
think Ocean's eleven up this place and just go in
and yoink the jewels and the gold and high tail
it out of there. And I don't know what he's
going to do next, but seems to me that Joe
is going to get the jewels. I mean, it's such
a it's such a cliched thing to do, but this
is screaming jewel heist to me.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
It's a jewel, it's a jewel.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Whoo. I love a good heist.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
It's not just a jewel heist though, because because it's
it's even more intense than that. He doesn't. This isn't
like the Minion's movie where they steal the Crown Jewels
and run away, right, or Ocean's eleven even because not
only does Joe Boyle steal the Crown Jewels of Romania
out of a secure facility in Moscow, he also loads
(34:01):
that train up with hundreds of pounds of gold from
the Romanian treasury.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
The Romanian treasury which is currently being held in Russia
for quote unquote safe keeping.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Right right right, The Russians have taken it from Romania
for safekeeping, and they're going to hold it in Moscow.
And don't worry, you'll get it back when the Communists
decide they're willing to give it back to the aristocracy
and the bourgeoisie. We'll let you know. So Joe gets
a train in Moscow. He liberates the crown jewels of
Romania and a decent portion of that country's treasury wealth,
(34:34):
loads it all into two commandeered railway cars, and then
runs it twenty five hundred kilometers through a civil war
to deliver it back to the Romanian people. And this
is like, this is like great locomotive chase vibes, like
this is a this is not a casually riding on
the rails being like, eh, maybe they haven't noticed that
(34:56):
I stole all that stuff yet. This is like the
there's only one direction I can go here, so you know,
I've got the thing, and you know where I'm headed yep.
At one point along the way, they're at this train
station and the manager there is with the Bolsheviks, and
he refuses to let boil pass. Even though Klondik Joe
is still officially the senior member of the transportation department.
(35:19):
He doesn't panic. He has to find a way to
get this train out of basically impound. So he decides, Okay,
what am I going to do? He organizes a party,
like a huge party, a music concert and just a
massive like dinner whole shindig, whole event logistics. Yes, all
(35:39):
of the train party officials can come. There's you know whatever,
anybody is invited. We're gonna sing, dance, we're gonna have music.
We're gonna have this tea, this really fancy tea that
I brewed for you guys. That's basically just like straight
one fifty one whiskey tea. And of course everybody drinks
it and they get drunk. And he uses that opportunity
(36:02):
to cut the telegraph wires, hijack those trains back again
and get out of there. Okay, he does this. He escapes,
He goes through this war zone and he's being shot at,
he's being chased, he's being waylaid at various stops along
the way, so he doesn't know if the next stop
he gets to is going to be in control by
the White Army or the Red Army or the Germans.
(36:23):
And he's carrying two trains that are literally loaded with
gold and jewels, and it's just him. It's just him
and a couple other guys who are not heavily armed.
This isn't an armored train or anything. This is a
railway car. But he does it. He steals the Crown
Jewels of Romania from Lenin and gets it back to Romania.
(36:43):
And this is around the time that he starts to
have a relatively intimate relationship with Queen Marie of Romania,
who's probably pretty grateful to have the crown jewels back.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Yeah, and we can't go into depth here, but she
was Maria Romania is English. She grew up learning how
to ice skate and even play ice hockey, which I
mentioned because it seems relevant in the circumstances.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
And something from them to talk about her.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Yeah, shared interest. And she was in an arranged marriage
to Ferdinand of Poland, and the two of them didn't
really click on a personal level, but sometimes happens in
aristocratic arranged marriages. They developed a good working relationship, and
Ferdinand in particular grew to respect Marie's better knowledge of
(37:31):
the world. And Marie became an influence kind of behind
the scenes, but also acknowledged publicly on much of Poland's
policies in World War One. So by nineteen fourteen she
was queen. Her husband was king, but she was queen
because she was married to him. But she was pretty
influential and she advocated for Romania entering World War One,
(37:56):
and she, being an aristocrat, was able to contact relative
all over Europe to get the best possible terms for Romania.
She got involved with the Romanian Red Cross and along
with her daughters, visited hospitals, she visited soldiers with cholera.
And she was pretty talented, Okay, also pretty privileged, also talented.
(38:20):
She was a prolific author. She published about three dozen
books and short stories. She threw herself into life, and
she had a reputation for being kind of a party animal.
She according to some sources, she had affairs. The paternity
of some of her children was questioned, and some of
this might be exaggeration or opportunistic propaganda, but the takeaway
(38:44):
is that one way or another, Marie lived life to
the fullest, and whatever the exact details of the truth
of the matter, it's quite easy to see how people
of the time were shipping her in Klondike Joe, lots
of shared interests, lots of shared viste.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
They did get along really well. We know they got
along really well. They wrote a bunch of letters to
each other. They will be friends for the rest of
their lives. Some people suggest that you know, like you said,
affairs and paternity and all that stuff. Joe gets implicated
in some of that. We don't know for sure, and
we never will probably, but she was a big proponent
(39:21):
of Joe Boyle and a big fan of his and
the work he was doing for Romania, and she liked
him on a personal level.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
So Joe is in Romania and there is some speculation
that perhaps he stole the Crown Jewels for her. That's
like kind of the romantic version of the story, is
that like he knew her before he stole the Crown
jewels and he stole them, stole her jewels back for
her or whatever. But I think that might be one
of those things that we keep talking about where they
write the erotic story version of the fan factor version. Yeah,
(39:51):
that erotic fan fiction. Yeah, after the after the fact,
we don't know, but it's fun to think about. So, So
Joe Boyle is now he's in Romania and he really
you can't go back to Russia after this.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
He cannot show his face there, he can no.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
So he starts working with the British intelligence the kind
of pre soe the burgeoning like British spy service, and
he starts running undercover spy rings operating in Romania and
Southern Russia, primarily against the Soviet Union, but also a
little bit against the Germans as well. He starts relaying
(40:34):
information back. He creates this network of spies because he's
he's good at networking, he's good at logistics. Yeah, and
he starts sending information back to London about the Soviets
and the Germans, their their movements in World War One
and then after as well, so in the between wars period.
One of the achievements that earned him a lot of
(40:56):
fame in Romania was he personally negotiated the release of
fifty Romanian nobles who had been taken prisoner by the
Bolsheviks and Odessa, without bloodshed, just negotiating it and made
that happen. And that was such an impressive feat that
he earned the Star of Romania, which is like their
medal of Honor, the highest honor in Romania. They made
(41:17):
him a national hero. The king declared him a savior
of Romania for all of the work he had done,
not just with the negotiating those nobles release and stealing
the crown jewels of Romania and also but also like
bringing all of the food and aid to the people
who needed it, which is pretty great. He attended the
Paris peace Conference that ended World War One, I think
(41:39):
as a guest of Marie who was also there, and
that's the Treaty of Versailles, like he was there when
it was signed, and then after the war he was
able to negotiate and secure roughly twenty five million dollars
in humanitarian aid that he distributed to the people of Romania.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
So he ends his military career that bcket that he
got from the Canadian militia for raising fifty Yukon dudes
to have a machine gun company. He ends up with
the Star of Romania, the British Distinguished Service Order, the
Russian Order of St. Santislav, and the French Quadiguier for
his service to all of those countries during the war.
(42:19):
He's got high ranking, very high medals from let's say
one to three four different countries, none of which was
his own, so that's awesome. He dies in England in
nineteen twenty three at the age of fifty eight.
Speaker 2 (42:33):
And there's a story that every year after he died,
on the anniversary of his death, a mysterious woman dressed
in black would visit his grave, and these visits continued
until nineteen thirty eight, which happens to be the same
year that Maria Romania. Draw your own conclusions.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
So that's Joe Boyle, klondike. Joe Boyle. He was a boxer,
he was a sailor, He fought a shark, He found
gold in the Yukon, he competed for this team, managed
to Stanley Cup team. He stole Crown jewels, he fought
the Bolsheviks, he fought the Germans, he partied with the
Queen of Romania. And I just think this guy's life
it reads like a like a fiction novel, reads like
(43:17):
something out of a comic book.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
You know, what would you do with your klondike Joe?
Speaker 1 (43:22):
Yes, lots a lot of a lot of stuff. Yeah, yeah,
hijack a train from the Communists, through a war fight.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
A shark, steal back, some Crown jewels, a.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Punch of member of the Ottawa Senators, throw parties. And
so that's Joe, and he's he's awesome. I love this story.
It was one that from the early days of the website,
I've been wanting to tell the story. So I'm really
glad I got to do it today.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
All right.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Well, thank you guys as always for listening. We hope
you had a really great holiday. Please do try to
remember to like and subscribe and do all that stuff
because that does help us out. And yeah, thank you
so much. We'll see you the next one.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
Stay Badass. Badass of the Week is an iHeartRadio podcast
produced by High five Content. Executive producers are Andrew Jacobs, Me,
Pat Larish, and my co host Ben Thompson. Writing is
by me and Ben. Story editing is by Ian Jacobs
Brandon Phibbs. Mixing and music and sound design is by
(44:24):
Jude Brewer. Special thanks to Noel Brown at iHeart Badass
of the Week is based on the website Badass oftheweek
dot com, where you can read all sorts of stories
about other badasses. If you want to reach out with
questions ideas, you can email us at Badass podcast at
badassotheweek dot com. If you like the podcast, subscribe, follow, listen,
(44:49):
and tell your friends and your enemies if you want as.
We'll be back next week with another one. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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