Corinne Cyr (d. 2006)

Corinne Cyr was born in Saskatchewan. She graduated as a registered nurse from St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver in 1939. She worked for two years in Vancouver and Vernon, British Columbia. before arriving in in Whitehorse in 1941. She met her future husband, Laurent Cry, at a restaurant on the first night she arrived in town. She was one of three nurses at the twenty-year-old Whitehorse General Hospital. She worked eight hours a day, seven days a week for $55 a month plus room and board. The nursing staff was up to five by the summer of 1942 when a ten-bed extension was added to the town’s hospital. The army hospital was not built until the early fall of 1942. Corinne flew to Teslin in September 1942 to try and cope with an epidemic of measles. She had less than three years of experience. She was given blankets, cough syrup, penicillin, and aspirin, and the doctor told her to use her common sense and “good luck.” The RCMP quarantined the village and accompanied Cyr on her twice daily rounds. One Catholic priest turned his home into an infirmary and the other looked after the dogs of ailing families. [Many people in Teslin had dog teams at the time.] The Anglican church was transformed into an eight-bed hospital. In the end, 129 out of 135 were sick and three died. Other diseases also threatened the community and four children died from meningitis.¹⁾

Corinne Cyr was awarded the Commissioner's Award for public service in 2001. She was a community leader through her work and membership in the Catholic Women's League, the Royal Purple, the Ladies Auxiliary, the Yukon Order of Pioneers, and the Independent Order of the Daughters of the Empire.²⁾ In 2002, Corinne and Laurent Cyr were presented with the Commissioner’s Award for their public service to the community.³⁾