Hours: Monday to Friday, 9:00am-5:00pm; Closed on Weekends and Statutory Holidays.
Location: 400 University Drive, Yukon Place (Beside Yukon University), Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada, Y1A 0M4
Contact: 867-667-5321, yukon.archives@yukon.ca
Access: Open to the public. For those unable to visit the archives, reference assistance is available through correspondence.
Website Address: http://www.tc.gov.yk.ca/archives.html
The Yukon Archives is home to the records of the territorial government. Documents from the central registry date back to 1896 and cover a range of topics related to health and medicine including education, wildlife, transportation, liquor licenses, public health, hospitals, scarlet fever, child welfare, and family allowances.
The Archives is the repository for the records of Yukon municipalities including Dawson City, Whitehorse, Mayo, Faro, Watson Lake, and Haines Junction. These records include municipal public health and welfare records.
The archive also maintains some federal government records such as Mining Recorders’ documents and record books, Mounted Police material, Yukon Telegraph Service records and microfilm copies of the United States Army, Northwest Service Command records relating to the construction of the Alaska Highway and the Canol pipeline.
The Archives has the corporate records of various Yukon organizations, associations, and businesses. Those which pertain to the history of medicine include: the St. Mary’s Hospital (Dawson City) fonds (1897-1989); Good Samaritan Hospital (Dawson City) fonds (1898-1900); Anglican Church, Diocese of Yukon fonds (1861-2007); Taylor and Drury Limited fonds (1902-1960); and the Sisters of Ann collection (1899-1974).
The private manuscript collection includes diaries, correspondence, scrapbooks, account books and other papers of individuals who have been associated with the Yukon in various capacities such as financial agents, lawyers, politicians, naturalists, miners, doctors, clergy, writers and researchers. This includes the records of William Buchan, a medical doctor in Whitehorse from 1958 to ca. 1970; Henry Clay Bowers, a doctor who came to Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897-1898; doctor Andrew S. Grant who came to Yukon as a Presbyterian missionary in 1898; and Phoebe Elizabeth Reynolds, who served as a nurse for the British army during the First World War and then came to Yukon and worked as a nurse in the Mayo Hospital from 1928-1930.
The Archives also has a wealth of material related to the territory’s First Nations people such as the Tchawsahmon Society Oral History Project fonds, Yukon Women’s Project fonds, Yukon Indian Arts and Crafts Co-operative Ltd. Fonds, Yukon Indian Cultural Education Society fonds, Their Own Yukon Project collection, Ta’an Kwach’an Cultural History Project fonds, George Johnston fonds, and the Freddie Johnston fonds.
In 2002, the Yukon Archives began digitizing its photographic holdings. Currently, 3718 image records from 17 collections are listed on the Archives’ Images Database website with subject search capability. The digitized collections contain many images related to the history of medicine including images of Yukon hospitals dating from the 1920s.
The website for the Yukon Archives has a series of online exhibits on various themes including At Home in the Yukon, Yukon Women and Children, Wintering in the Yukon, and The Klondike Gold Rush.