Yvonne Burian

Yvonne Burian was raised at Stewart Island at the mouth of the Stewart River. Her father was a White Pass & Yukon Route agent when the place was a busy stop on the Yukon River. The community once held an RCMP detachment, a post office, a government telegraph office, two roadhouses and a Hudson Bay Company post. Commercial traffic on the river declined and then ceased when the Mayo Road was completed in 1952. Most of the community moved elsewhere but Rudy and Yvonne and their children remained. Rudy had a trap line upriver and Yvonne ran about fifty traps nearby so she could return to the house at night. They worked at freighting, built rental cabins for river rafters and canoeists, and sold groceries in the former Bay store. In the mid-1970s the river had eroded 150 yards from the mid-1930s shoreline.¹⁾ The Yukon River eventually took Yvonne and Rusy’s house and washed it downriver.