John Flynn

Hall of Fame

Dawson City’s Art Fry Boxing Club has a knack for producing athletes worth immortalizing. John Flynn becomes the third boxer from the club to be inducted into the Yukon Sports Hall of Fame. 

John began his sports career boxing at the club before moving on to other sports. After leaving the canvas, John was hooked on hockey and snowshoe biathlon, two sports he’d have more success in. John played a key role on Yukon’s silver medal-winning hockey team in the 1974 Arctic Winter Games in Anchorage, Alaska. 

That silver pales in comparison to what he accomplished at the games in the snowshoe biathlon. John captured 13 medals — including nine gold — all at the Arctic Winter Games.

Keeping active as a coach in both sports, John took a peewee boys’ team on to win gold at the Yukon Hockey Championships. He was instrumental in the recreation of the 1905 Dawson City Nuggets game against the Ottawa Hockey Club (a.k.a. The Silver Seven) for the Stanley Cup. For 22 days, the Nuggets mushed dogs and snowmobiled to Whitehorse. Instead of taking the White Pass railway like the 1905 team, they bused to Skagway, ferried to Bellingham, Washington, hopped a bus to Vancouver and took the train to Ottawa.

John captained the Nuggets in 1997 and 2011 as part of Hockey Day in Whitehorse. The  Nuggets and Ottawa Senators alumni staged two games in the Yukon (Whitehorse and Dawson). Even though Ottawa kept its 106-year winning streak over the Nuggets going, John enjoyed scoring a spectacular goal.