Samson Hartland may not have been born in the Yukon, but he has taken on its history as his own, and repatriating pieces of it that have left the territory is his life's passion.

Spread out on his dining room table is a vast and enviable selection of photographs, claim documents, stereoview slides and more.

Items dating as far back as 1898 are propped up next to phone books from the '60s and '70s, all providing insight and record of life in the Canadian North. And representing the 29-year-old businessman's driving desire to keep the territory's history in the Yukon.

Hartland's love affair with Yukon history began in earnest when he was still a teenager.

At the tender age of 17, the young entrepreneur opened Grizzly Collectables, a business which began as a sports memorabilia store, but soon morphed into a collection of Yukon antiques and artifacts.

The young Hartland was mentored by another Yukon history buff, artist and creator of The Colourful Five Per Cent books, Jim Robb.

"Some of the most respected people in Whitehorse are collectors," Hartland says. "Jim Robb, the Hougens; their collections are really incredible."

But Hartland, who spends much of his spare time and money vying for bits of Yukon history on sites such as eBay, doesn't see these other assemblers of Klondike history as competitors; he sees them as comrades with a shared vision.

"The most important thing for me is keeping these things in the Yukon," says the former city councillor.

"I want my kids to be able to touch their history, to really know where they come from.

"I have a belief that in order to know where you are going, you need to know where you came from."

So when Hartland is cruising eBay for a set of Dawson City postcards, or a collection of faded photographs taken during the construction of the Alaska highway, he keeps his eyes peeled for other Yukoners who are doing the same.

"I know most of their names now," he says. "When I see them bidding for something, I steer clear and hope they get it."

But there are other competitors out there that Hartland wants to beat, although it isn't always an easy race.

"The University of Alaska is on eBay, and I have to compete with them," he says, explaining that the university has a seemingly endless appetite for anything related to the Gold Rush, the building of the Alaska Highway and all things northern.

"The University of Washington, too," adds his wife, Lindsay. She teases her husband about his expensive hobby, but is just as enthusiastic about the photo albums and diaries spread out on their dining room table.

"These places have deep pockets," Hartland says with a sigh. "We're talking Library of Congress stuff here."

Hartland has found some things online that are too good to pass up, but also too dear for his own budget.

"I've tried to rally the troops for some items, get people interested in the cause, but sometimes the bidding just gets out of our range."

He once watched the cash register from the Matthew Watson Store in Carcross go to an American collector for $5,000, unable to muster a defence.

"So that's probably sitting in someone's store now, as a curiousity, when it should really be here, as a piece of our history."

The monied institutions are one thing, but what Hartland fears the most are the hoarders.

"It's horrible to think that not only are things leaving the Yukon, but they are ending up in some guy's moldy, dark closet."

Any concerns that the objects in Hartland's collection are doing the same are quickly dispelled.

"The real fun is when it gets here," he says affectionately, touching a stack of Magic Lantern slides. "We get to go through it, find another bit of the story. Each item is another piece of the puzzle.

"It's a huge puzzle," he laughs.

Hartland and his wife have read every newspaper, looked through every album and deciphered every line of chicken scratch in the collection. It is obvious they have developed a personal relationship with each piece of history they own.

"This fellow," Hartland says, pointing to a carefully preserved binder of letters from one Alex Hall to "Mother and Dad," "his biggest issue was a problem with the ladies. He just didn't have a lot of success."

Hall's letters meticulously relate the life and times of a YMCA supervisor, living in the North in the 1940s, and Hartland has read every one of them.

"He was a bit obsessive," Hartland says, grinning. "He kept track of the minutiae of his day-to-day life. From the weather, to what he ate, to whom he saw. Maybe that was the trouble he had with the ladies."

In letters from Whitehorse, Edmonton, Calgary and Dawson City, Hall tells his parents of a time so unlike our own.

"A visiting couple in town ... they wish to have some people in for dinner. Call in on Tom to pass on the invitation, then a walk down Main Street. Sunday, most of the shops are closed, but the shopkeepers in taking inventory."

It was a different era when a couple of travellers from Ontario would simply stop a young man on a quiet street and invite him in for a meal, simply because they wanted some society.

Another prized possession is an album chronicling the dismantling of the Whitehorse Canol Refinery and its transfer to Dawson Creek via the Alaska Highway, then on to Edmonton by rail from September 1947 to May 1948.

The album is signed by "Mr. & Mrs. D. R. Macky," who would likely be pleased to know their careful work is still being appreciated today. Two photos from the collection were published in last Friday's Star as part of a feature on the refinery.

As his collection grows, Hartland refines his methods.

"I've gotten a lot better at narrowing my search to Yukon," he says. "If I try to get everything, there's just no boundaries."

But it is still an uphill battle, fighting against collectors of all stripes, people who specialize not in regions, but professions or mediums.

"There are some voracious postcard collectors out there, and there's almost no point in going for the RCMP stuff." Nevertheless, he has a handsome selection of both.

Ultimately, Hartland says, he does what he does so his daughter, a third-generation Yukoner whose great grandfather first came north to work for the CBC, will have a fuller sense of her own history.

"That little baby in the next room," he says, pointing his thumb at little Cadence Hartland's bedroom, "that's what it's all about.

"I'm doing this for her, so she can know where she comes from."