Sue Van Bibber, nee Dickson (b. 1911)
	
Sue Dickson was born at Kluane Lake to parents Thomas and Louise Dickson. She grew up at the farm on Kluane Lake and went to school in Dawson. It was horseback from Kluane to Champagne, car to Whitehorse and steamer to Dawson. The Dicksons had a car when she was a kid. Buck bought the car and ran it down the lake just before the ice went out. The kids all learned to drive on the lake. She came back from Dawson in 1928 and took the car out on the lake in 1929. Then they started taking cars out from Silver City.((Alaska Highway Interpretive Panel Project. Champagne interview with Sue Van Bibber by Rob Ingram. November 19, 1991. Yukon Archives, 92/14 SR 131-10.))
	
Sue came to Champagne in the fall of 1929. [She stayed and married George Chambers.] It was a big town with a Catholic and an Anglican church as well as two stores. People came in for groceries from Kloo Lake, Aishihik, Hutshi, Klukshu, and Dalton Post. A lot of people came in at Christmas and townspeople rented out their houses, warming them up so they were comfortable. The bunkhouse took borders as well. The first year they used horses in the winter and after that they used the snowmobile. They used to drive the old road with a big truck to Whitehorse. They only made one or two trips a year with the family unless someone was sick. George went once a month for the mail. In the winter they made a snowmobile with skis on the front, and he sometimes went twice a month when they needed supplies.((Alaska Highway Interpretive Panel Project. Champagne interview with Sue Van Bibber by Rob Ingram. November 19, 1991. Yukon Archives, 92/14 SR 131-10.)) 

During construction of the Alaska Highway, there was a big camp at Champagne as well as Mendenhall. There was a sawmill near town and another one at Four Mile. The camp at Champagne was right in the village.((Alaska Highway Interpretive Panel Project. Champagne interview with Sue Van Bibber by Rob Ingram. November 19, 1991. Yukon Archives, 92/14 SR 131-10.)) The military made a deal with George Chambers in April to live on his land – big tents and cook houses, all tents no buildings. The big camp at Mendenhall had a doctor. The Champagne camp was set up for about a year as they didn’t finish until the next spring.((Alaska Highway Interpretive Panel Project. Champagne interview with Sue Van Bibber by Rob Ingram. November 19, 1991. Yukon Archives, 92/14 SR 131-10.))
	
Sue was living in Whitehorse, because the kids were going to school, when the war broke out. Sue lost her husband, George Chambers, [in 1942] and was the only one with a driver’s licence so she a pass to get through the military security gate at McIntyre Creek. She needed the pass to get her family back and forth. Sue lived in Champagne during the summers and was there when the Alaska Highway construction came through.((Alaska Highway Interpretive Panel Project. Champagne interview with Sue Van Bibber by Rob Ingram. November 19, 1991. Yukon Archives, 92/14 SR 131-10.))
	
The construction of the Alaska Highway really affected Champagne. It used to be a big place. The soldiers brought disease that affected the First Nation families very badly, especially the kids. There was measles, whooping cough, chicken pox, and everything else. The men worked on the highway or in Whitehorse, all the ones that could work. The doctors were in Whitehorse and they would come and try and help, but didn’t put all the kids who needed it in hospital. Bobby’s Kane’s family lost all but three of his family of twelve or thirteen children. All of Field Johnson’s kids died. A lot of old people died of chicken pow or measles.((Alaska Highway Interpretive Panel Project. Champagne interview with Sue Van Bibber by Rob Ingram. November 19, 1991. Yukon Archives, 92/14 SR 131-10.)) 
	
George Chambers died suddenly and intestate in 1942 and a public administrator seized control of Sue’s financial assets, including the inventory in the store. She had a hard time affording wood for heating and coped by sending her younger children to boarding school in Dawson. Her two teenage boys worked odd jobs to pay for younger ones’ tuition. She did have a team of horses in her name and rented them out to the highway construction survey parties. Alex Van Bibber, who Sue had known from her school days in Dawson, went with the survey crews to look after the horses. Eventually Sue re-opened the store and business from the soldiers was good for selling groceries and clothing. They travelled to Whitehorse about once a week for supplies. Before the highway, it took a week to get to Whitehorse versus two hours after construction. She and the children spent the winters at their Whitehorse home after the children were school age. Sue remembers that sick children in Whitehorse were sent back to Champagne because the Whitehorse hospital was too small to take them. The families couldn’t look after them and two families that sue knew of were wiped out. A lot of old people died as well.((Joanne MacDonald, “General Store in Champagne thrived during the 1940s.” Untold Stories: Women & The Alaska Highway issue of //The Optimst,// Vol. 18, No.2, June 1992.))

Alex Van Bibber and Sue Chambers were married in 1946, and Alex worked on hydraulic crews for the federal government.((Yukon Archives, Alex Van Bibber biographical sketch.)) They started and ran their own outfitting company from 1948 to 1968. During the first year a client got a ram that still ranks #10 in the all-time B&C record book.((“Legend Award 2005: Legend Alex Van Bibber.” Grand Slam Club / OVIS, 2020 website: https://www.slamquest.org/grand-slam-legends-details-info.php?Legend-Alex-Van-Bibber-1.)) 
	
After the war all the young ones moved from Champagne. Most of the families moved to Haines Junction where there was nothing before the war. Residents went to Whitehorse for groceries and the store at Champagne closed.((Alaska Highway Interpretive Panel Project. Champagne interview with Sue Van Bibber by Rob Ingram. November 19, 1991. Yukon Archives, 92/14 SR 131-10.)) 

Five of the Dickson children, three of them women, operated outfitting concessions in the Yukon: Ruth owned areas #11 and #12; Sue owned area #16; Bobby owned areas #2, #3, and #4; Belle owned areas #14 and #15; and Buck and Richard Dickson owned area #10.((“How it all started… Over 1000 years ago.” Dickson Outfitters, 2019 website: http://www.dicksonoutfitters.net/how-it-all-started-over-100-years-ago-0))