Mary Philomena Lyman
	
Mary Lyman was the Hudson's Bay Co. (HBC) cook at Herschel Island in the winter of 1924-25. That winter was described by the police as unusually "rowdy."  The HBC supply ship sank and the island was short of provisions. Men from the Canadian Army Corp of Signals were stranded and Christian Klengenberg and his American crew were frozen in.((Barbara E. Kelcey, //Alone in Silence: European Women in the Canadian North before 1940.// Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001: 163-5.))

Mary Lyman was the first unmarried woman to be employed at Herschel Island.  She had been at Fort MacMurray as a housekeeper for HBC. Her employer moved to Edmonton in the spring of 1924 and Mary followed him. She was hired as the stewardess aboard the //Distributor,// the sternwheeler that supplied the Mackenzie District. She was hired at Aklavik in August as the housekeeper for the Herschel Island HBC post by V.W. West, the manager and Western Arctic District accountant.((Barbara E. Kelcey, //Alone in Silence: European Women in the Canadian North before 1940.// Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001: 163-5.))

Mary was a widow of about fifty with the skills for the job. In December 1924, Mary and West were fighting over the use of the Company's sitting room which West refused to share. Mary then refused to cook and West asked for her resignation. There was nowhere for Mary to go until breakup in seven months. Inspector Calkin mediated and Mary was willing to go back to work but West paid her off. Apparently Mary was always talking, and she was a gossip.((Barbara E. Kelcey, //Alone in Silence: European Women in the Canadian North before 1940.// Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001: 163-5.))