Donald’s earliest years were spent on his parents' farm in Grandview, MB.  In 1924 his parents and the five children moved to Norway House, MB, where he attended school and came to appreciate the north.  They returned to Grandview in 1926.  The major national news that year was of the exciting atmosphere of the gold rush to Red Lake. 

It greatly interested the then 10-year-old, who well-remembered hearing his veteran prospector father talking of the mining news of the day and also seeing the colourful prospectors and their dog teams at Norway House.  From then on, Donald went prospecting with his father, and worked as a delivery boy.  As a youth, he was enchanted to meet the legendary Grey Owl, and spent much time reading the wilderness man’s books. 

With little defense against the Great Depression except to terminate his formal education and find work, Donald at age 17,  joined his father in working on steam boilers and pumps at the Manitoba gold mines of God's Lake and Island Lake Gold Mines in Manitoba.  It was at Island Lake he obtained his first miner’s license; Donald maintained its active status continuously for 50 years.

When the senior Parrott secured a position firing the steam boilers at the newly opened Madsen Red Lake Gold Mines in 1936, he brought Donald in as his assistant.  The father-and-son team moved shortly afterward to work in that mine’s drill steel shop.  Donald also worked briefly for Kelson’s Sawmill at Flat Lake, Faulkenham Lake Gold Mine, the May-Spiers Gold Mine at the west end of Red Lake, followed by stints with V & W Transportation on freight boats, and in mining at Skookum Gold Mines. 

At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Parrott joined the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, later transferring to the sapper’s unit of the Royal Canadian Engineers.  He was a senior corporal and acting lance sergeant in the engineers for three years before taking an electrical welding course and received trades pay as a technician from late 1943 until war’s end.  After five and a half years’ service in various European fronts, Parrott was honourably discharged from the army in 1945.

While stationed in England, he and an Irish-born nurse, Barbara Crowley, were married in 1943.  Donald’s return from overseas was a joyous occasion; he, Barbara, and their English-born first child, Diane Patricia, settled in Madsen where Parrott resumed working at Madsen Mine, as mechanic, underground crusherman and carpenter’s assistant. 

The Parrotts’ second child, John Fleming, was born in Madsen, while two daughters, Constance (Connie) and Susan Marie were born in hospital in Red Lake, where Barbara Parrott later nursed for many years.

In1948 the Parrotts moved to Red Lake when Donald took a job at Hayes Steel Products. The remainder of his career in mining was spent as chief stationary operating engineer (eventually 2nd class) at Campbell Red Lake Gold Mine in Balmertown where, at the time, he was the only person to work over 25 consecutive years in the power house.  Parrott retired from Campbell, and spent most of his years researching and writing local history, as well as indulging his other great passion, prospecting for gold.

Soon after his return from war service, Parrott began to spend some of his leisure time studying local folklore and talking to prospectors who had partaken in the Red Lake Gold Rush of 1926.  This casual interest became a consuming passion.  He began to interview and correspond with countless mining veterans. 

Parrott, who had left Grade 10 in order to work to support himself, was nearing 50 when he began the Herculean task of committing to paper the anecdotes, stories and fast-fading memories of events of the last major gold rush of the 20th century. 

Some pioneers not only gave him unprecedented access to their memories, but also, in some cases, to their journals, scrapbooks and photographs.  Blissfully unaware of the conventions of interviewing and historical writing, Parrott gathered his material and tapped out gold rush stories on a well-worn typewriter.

The result was The Red Lake Gold Rush, a monograph Parrott financed and printed in 1964.  He had captured and recorded a fascinating phase of Canada’s gold mining history in a book which was the first of its kind about the Red Lake District.  Parrott’s magnum opus sold extremely well and went through many printings over the following two decades.

Though he authored nine other books on gold mining and aviation history, his definitive book on the Red Lake Gold Rush is the work for which he is best known.  Today, his body of historical work stands as the quintessential example of an enthusiastic amateur historian’s traditional storytelling of bygone eras.

Parrott’s motivation for documenting both the silver rush to Red Lake in 1922, the first gold rush in 1926 and the second gold rush in 1926 (as well as much aviation history) came from a deep conviction: he felt that he must remedy the fact that the passage of time was taking with it the “originals” of a notable Canadian mining camp and an intense period of northern mining. 

He realized - long before others did - that the names, memories and deeds of the pioneers who braved the wilds of a desolate hinterland were being lost to history, and that only the fortunate few whose discoveries became gold producers were immortalized.  It is largely due to his efforts that hundreds of participants in Red Lake area gold rushes - now long-since dead - were rescued from permanent obscurity. 

Although Parrott remained unconcerned with the conventions of historical writing, the value of his primary research is its documentary richness.  At a time when they were readily available, Parrott collected the memories, details and myriad stories of the gold rush and marshalled information from a wide variety of sources, such as federal and provincial archives and libraries, and government records. 

Even though synthesizing the voluminous information was a task Parrott found overwhelming, it is more important that, regardless of any flaws in his work, he established a base from which other historians and writers in general could launch their own historical investigations.

Besides his well-known books on the first and second gold rushes to the Red Lake District (and their reprints), Parrott also published an impressive list of eight other histories:  A Parrott Family History (1981), Harold Farrington, Pioneer Bush Pilot (1982), 50 Years Mining Gold:  An Autobiography (1984), Princess Patricia’s Regiment 1938-41 (1990), Canada’s Richest Gold Mine:  Placer Dome’s Campbell Mine (1993), The Gold Mines of Red Lake, Ontario (1995), Short Stories of Red Lake’s Gold (1996) and Gold Mining Spurs Air Transportation in Canada, 1926-1936 (1998).  All of these manuscripts were written in longhand and then typed; no sophisticated word processors ever entered Parrott’s home.  He simply preferred to do things his own way.

In order to market and distribute his books, Parrott had to be his own publicist and agent.  He relentlessly advertised, marketed and self-mythologized himself.  In the process, he not only sedulously orchestrated his historical legacy, but also sold thousands of books at scant profit.  The minor profits rarely concerned Parrott because his major goal was always to write and share the history of the Red Lake District and its people.

Parrott’s community involvements and affiliations were many and varied:  a founder and life charter member of the Chukuni Masonic Lodge and other lodge affiliates (Royal Arch Masons, Dryden, Knight Templars (Fort Frances), Khartum Temple Shriners, and a 32 degree Mason in the Scottish Rite Freemasonry, Thunder Bay), member of the Grandview Lodge over 60 years, member of the Red Lake branch of the Canadian Institute of Mining & Metallurgy for 35 years, elected 35 consecutive years as an elder on the Red Lake United Church Board, three years on the Madsen United Church board, various positions on the Red Lake District Chamber of Commerce for 25 years, member of the Prospectors and Developers Association, and a life member of both the Western Canada Aviation Museum and Canadian Aviation Historical Society. 

After making their home in Red Lake for 45 years, the Parrotts retired in 1978, first to Brandon, MB, and then to Thunder Bay in 1980, to be near family.

On the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, Parrott, along with many veterans across Canada, was honoured with a 50-year medal to add to the chestful of medals he already had.  It was an especially moving time for him:  at the same ceremony, he received a 50-year membership in Red Lake Branch 102 of the Royal Canadian Legion.  In retirement, he made countless trips to military reunions, both nationally and abroad.

Barbara Parrott died in1998 in Thunder Bay, and this loss, of course, was a profound sorrow to her husband of almost 55 years.

Parrott spent most of his adult life documenting and writing the history of the Red Lake District, and was a shrewd, intensely interested observer of the Red Lake area mining scene for over 65 years.  Ultimately, he authored 10 books on the gold mining and aviation history of the area.  His last book, Gold Mining Spurs Air Transportation in Canada, 1926-1936 (edited by John Richthammer), was published in 1998 when Parrott was 82.

Even before the publication of his last book, debilitating arthritis had curtailed the historical work for which he became well-known, and in his last days, Parrott could only compose in his mind.  He died in 2002 in Grandview Lodge, a retirement home in Thunder Bay, Ontario, in his 86th year.  Donald’s ashes were buried amongst some of his ancestors in Brandon Hills Cemetery, Manitoba. 

To remark that the loss of Donald Fleming Parrott is a significant one is an great understatement.  He was everything to his family, while the amount of local history he retained only in his memory was inestimable.  Rest well, old soldier.

Donald Parrott was a mentor, collaborator and long-time friend of John Richthammer. 

John may be reached at: archivesguy@hotmail.com