Hendrik “Henk” Huijbers, O.M.I. (1916 - 2002)
Father Hendrik Huijbers was born in 1916 in Doetinchem, Netherlands. He was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1943. Huijbers was very active in the Dutch resistance during the Second World War and helped repatriate downed air crews and rescue Jews from the Nazis. He was captured and freed by resistance fighters. He went to England, joined with Dutch troops in exile and was at the Battle of Dunkirk. In 1947, Huijbers was in Canada, filling in for the resident priest at North Battleford, Saskatchewan. It was a one-year appointment but Bishop Coudert persuaded him to go north to Lower Post, British Columbia.1) In 1948, Father Huijbers went to Mayo to assist Bishop Jean-Louis Coudert, and he stayed there for more than forty years.2)
In Mayo, Father Huijbers covered 1,600 km a week to visit his congregation. In the early 1980s, Michael Janssen-Breidahl helped him fix the foundation of the Mayo church and Heritage Canada honoured the father as “the Builder Priest.” Mayo, Cassiar, Haines Junction, Burwash Landing, Beaver Creek, and Northway in Alaska all received churches, thanks mainly to Father Huijbers’ efforts. He also encouraged the establishment of recreation centres, halls, community clubs, and a rectory. Father Huijbers had a forceful personality and could dispense frontier justice.3)
Father Huijbers was a great collector, and he started a museum outside his home when he was stationed in Burwash Landing.4) This was the beginning of the Kluane Museum of Natural History. The building was designed by Conrad Domes and his class at Yukon College and built by the Burwash Landing congregation, but it was considered too large for a community church. The museum society was interested in using the building and Huijber’s artifacts were transferred to their new home.5)
In 1982, Father Huijbers was awarded the Silver Resistance Remembrance Cross by the Dutch Consul General in Vancouver. In 1992, he retired from his active parish ministry in Mayo due to ill health, and Sister Angela Shea CND became the Parish Administrator and Pastoral Worker.6) Huijbers was awarded the Governor General’s Meritorious Service Medal (Civil Division) in 1994 for his forty years of missionary work and his rehabilitation of the Anglican church in Mayo.7) In 1998, Father Huijbers received the Yukon Historical and Museums Association Lifetime Achievement Award in Heritage.
After retirement, Huijbers continued to read Sunday Mass every week at Porter Creek and was a familiar figure at Remembrance Day ceremonies in Whitehorse.8) Huijbers lost both legs to diabetes and lived his last years in the Oblate Centre in Whitehorse.9)