Yukon who is who

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Helen Couch, nee Sippel (d. 2008)
	
Helen Couch moved to the Yukon in the 1940s with her husband, Orval Couch. Orval had employment as a mechanic on the Alaska Highway. Helen was the first woman living at Swift River and did mending for the U. S. Army soldiers and later served meals for highway travellers.((Helene Dobrowolsky interviewed Helen Couch in 1991 for the Alaska Highway Interpretive Milepost Project. Heritage Branch files 4057-5-8 II.)) She opened her home to the British Yukon Navigation truckers, health nurse Miss Hackett, school children from Rancheria, and the Protestant Sunday School "vanners" Miss Hassel and Miss Saule.((Clara Rutherford, "Helen Couch - YHMA's Volunteer for the Centuries." Yukon Historical and Museums Association, Spring Newsletter, 2008: 9.))

In the 1950s, the Couch family moved to Whitehorse where Helen became alderwoman for the Camp Takhini Community for two terms, organized the Takhini Youth Club, was a founding member of the Takhini Elementary School Parent Teachers Association, and often attended conferences across Canada at her own expense. She organized kindergartens at Takhini and Porter Creek schools and worked to have kindergarten included in the Education Act. Helen was a Sunday School teacher, a foster mother to countless children, camp mother, camp cook, and fundraiser for the Mount Mac Recreation Centre.((Clara Rutherford, "Helen Couch - YHMA's Volunteer for the Centuries." Yukon Historical and Museums Association, Spring Newsletter, 2008: 9.)) Helen was a director on the MacBride Museum Board from 1988 to 2001, attending most of the events and supplying baking for many of them. She was on the Yukon Historical and Museums Association (YHMA) Board from 1991 to 1992 and from 2003 through 2008.((YHMA 2018 website: https://www.heritageyukon.ca/programs/heritage-awards)) 

Helen Couch was the recipient of the MacDonald-Cartier Award in Ottawa (1989), twice nominated for the City of Whitehorse Volunteer of the Year Award, Mrs. Yukon 1992, and board member of many not-for-profit organizations including the first Board of Directors for the Yukon Heritage Resources Board. She was a recipient of YHMA's volunteer of the year award in 2002 for her sixty-three years of dedicated service in heritage and education. The award was renamed the Helen Couch Volunteer of the Year Award in 2008.((Clara Rutherford, "Helen Couch - YHMA's Volunteer for the Centuries." Yukon Historical and Museums Association, Spring Newsletter, 2008: 9.))
	
The Helen and Orval Couch scholarship, in the Yukon Foundation, is available to a student who has been a resident of the Yukon for at least two years and is enrolled in an apprenticeship trade, political studies, child development, agriculture or nursing program.((The Yukon Foundation, 2020 website: https://www.yukonfoundation.com/list-of-funds.))