Ellen Davignon, nee Porsild (b. 1937)
Ellen Davignon was born in Dawson to Danish immigrant parents Bob and Elly Porsild. The Porsilds were mining and trapping in Dawson before they and their four children moved to Whitehorse in 1943. In 1947, Bob bought an old [military] camp at Johnsons Crossing and converted it into a highway lodge. Ellen attended a one-room school at Brooks Brook and then went to high school in Whitehorse. She married Phil Davignon, an Alberta farmer who was running a tire shop on the Alaska Highway. Phil and Ellen bought the Johnsons Crossing lodge in 1965.1) The couple ran the lodge for nearly thirty years.2)
When the Whitehorse Star wanted someone to write some news from Teslin, Ellen took the opportunity to start a column. She wrote for the paper for five years and then moved to the Yukon News to write the monthly column “Lives of Quiet Desperation” from 1964 to 2005. During a hiatus in late 1980s, she wrote about life on the Alaska Highway in her book The Cinnamon Mine referring to the tasty buns she cooked for travellers who stopped at the Johnson’s Crossing Lodge. The Davignons sold the Lodge and campground in 1992 and moved to Whitehorse.3) That year, Ellen became the first Yukoner to be named the territory’s writer-in-residence.4) After briefly retiring, Ellen started work at Mac’s Fireweed Books in 1994.5) The bookstore published her thoughts under the title “Ellen’s Rants.”6)