Yukon who is who

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Elly Porsild (1903 - 2004)

Elly Porsild was born in Denmark. She married Bob Porsild after knowing him for only three weeks. Porsild was in Denmark on vacation from his project of bringing 3000 reindeer from Alaska to the east shore of the Mackenzie River. Elly travelled to America with Bob and they arrived at his camp about forty miles up the Delta from Aklavik. They stayed there for four years and their first-born Betty was safely born there. They lived briefly in Vancouver before moving to the Klondike where they prospected for the Mother Lode in the summer and hunted and trapped in the winter. Aksel, Ellen and Joanne were born during these six years. When the children were of school age, the Porsilds moved into Dawson in 1940 and then on to Whitehorse a couple of years later. In 1947, they purchased a US army camp at the Teslin River on the Alaska Highway and Elly ran a small boardinghouse. After seventeen years, they sold the lodge to daughter Ellen and her husband Phil Davignon and retired in 1965. They bought a house in Whitehorse and were involved with church and community for the next twelve years.((Ellen Davignon, "Elly Porsild: Grand Dame of the Yukon" in Sam Holloway, editor, //The Yukon Reader,// Volume Two, 2024: 35-37))