Dorothy Hopcott

Dorothy Hopcott and Mary Tobacco owned the Caribou Hotel in Carcross. Dorothy bought out her partner in 1964. The hotel at that time had nine rooms, a dining room and a bar. Back of the hotel were two trailers and three cabins they rented out to the government. Dorothy also had four parrots that lived in the dining room. Dorothy started living with her common law husband, Don McLennan [McLean], in 1966. When he moved into the hotel he started work as a bartender and a maintenance man and kept the fires going during the winter. Don was born in New Brunswick and arrived in Carcross in June of 1966.¹⁾ The parrot named Polly had very colourful language and became a famous character in Carcross. Hillie Smith remembers the bird and Dorothy Hopcott and Don McLean from her years as a child in Carcross in the late 1960s and early 1970s.²⁾