Yukon who is who

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Margaret Eileen “Meg” McCall, nee Sutherland (1931 – 1995)
	
Meg McCall was born in Mayo to Jessie (Jenny) Margaret MacKay and Hugh Cormack Sutherland of Scot descent. Meg was educated in the Yukon, Vancouver, California, France, and Germany. She was an art student in California when she met future husband Ian McCall who was interning at Vancouver General Hospital. They married in 1952. Ian worked at hospitals in Victoria and New Westminster.((Joyce Hayden, //Yukon’s Women of Power.// Windwalker Press, 1999: 210-218.))\\
	
The McCall’s spent some time in Europe before moving back to West Vancouver where Ian set up a busy medical practice and Meg qualified to sell real estate, set up an antique shop, and joined a theatre group. In the early 1970s, Cassiar Asbestos opened a mine at Clinton Creek and Ian was offered a job, so they rented their house and headed north. The McCalls had four children in five year and lost their first son in a fire at Cassiar.((Joyce Hayden, //Yukon’s Women of Power.// Windwalker Press, 1999: 220-221.))\\
	
Meg liked to hike three miles down the Fortymile River and around the old historic site of Forty Mile. She persuaded others at the Clinton Creek mine to form a Historical Society to try and protect the historic site as it was being pillaged for interesting objects and furniture. The Historical Society salvaged the few remaining broken things including Mrs. Bompas’ tiny pump organ that had been smashed with an axe. Bishop Marsh salvaged a few church items and distributed them to Yukon churches. The society replaced window glass that had been shot out, cut the grass and hired a caretaker. Cassiar Asbestos gave them start-up money and they fund-raised with plays and BBQs. They had several work parties at Forty Mile and had a membership of thirty-eight people at peak. The Society was disbanded when Meg moved to Dawson. Over four years they had raised collapsed floors, cleaned up the graveyard, and preserved things as well as they could. They returned the bank balance to Cassiar. Before they disbanded, Meg received reassurance from the Yukon Government that they would keep the caretaker, but he was not hired until after Art Anderson’s cabin burned to the ground.((Meg Sutherland McCall, “The Mystery Behind Fortymile.” //The Whitehorse Star// (Whitehorse), 10 March 1978.))\\
	
During the Clinton Creek years, Meg wrote two melodramas and took Clinton Creek Productions to Dawson to perform in the Palace Grande Theatre. The McCall children stayed in Vancouver during the winters so they could go to school. After four years, Meg and Ian moved into Dawson where they were considered eccentric by their neighbours. Ian was constructing a forty-eight-foot ferro concrete yacht in their back yard. From 1974 to 1978, Meg wrote a bi-weekly column for the //Whitehorse Star// and became interested in feminist politics.((Joyce Hayden, //Yukon’s Women of Power//. Windwalker Press, 1999: 222-225.))\\
	
McCall was elected as a Progressive Conservative to the Yukon Legislature in 1978. She and Alice McGuire were the only elected women in the Legislature between 1978 and 1982. Meg was nervous for two year and then she became angry. She was appointed to the Executive Committee in 1979, responsible for the departments of Health and Human Resources and Education. She was very concerned with social conditions and the alcoholic culture. She authorized the first study on the effects on alcohol on the foetus, and successfully established day care legislation. In 1980, she was the focus of accusations of ministerial favouritism over money promised to a Dawson day care.  In 1982, she supported the establishment of the Yukon Advisory Council on Women’s Issues. The Council became the Women’s Directorate and worked hard to eliminate sexism in Yukon Government hiring and personnel practices. McCall introduced reforms to seniors’ programs including pharmacare and increased help for utility bills. When she finished her four-year term, she considered a major triumph to be the establishment of the Yukon Government Cultural and Heritage Resources Branch. In 1982, the McCalls returned to their home in West Vancouver.((Joyce Hayden, //Yukon’s Women of Power.// Windwalker Press, 1999: 225-235.))