Brian Shanahan (1948 – 2008)
Brian Shanahan was born in Clonmel, Ireland and immigrated to Canada with his family when he was nine. He lived in almost every Canadian province and served a brief stint with the Royal Canadian Air Force. He moved to the Yukon in 1965 and attended F.H. Collins but dropped out in grade ten and started working at United Keno Hill Mine. He lived in Elsa, Calument, Mayo, Watson Lake, Whitehorse, and Carcross. Over his life he owned a Radio Shack store, worked for seven years at Cantung as a mine millwright, and had many other jobs.1) Brian left Watson Lake and went back to school for his teacher's degree in his 40s and he proved to be a “superb and brilliant” teacher and a person who could “could charm the spots off a tiger.” Brian Shanahan became the Carcross school principal.2)
Everything at the Carcross school had Principal Shanahan’s stamp on it. Even the name of the school, Ghuch Tla, was largely his doing. Carcross was the only elementary school in North America with a CRTC-licensed radio station that broadcasted into the community and beyond. Shanahan said he needed a hook to get the school under control and channel the student’s energies while involving the community at the same time. Some seventy students, teachers and community members participated in operating, creating, and planning shows and the community used the station for announcements and language instruction.3)
Shanahan won various awards and brought a lot of money to the school including the school being a Network of Innovative Schools member which came with a $30,000 award. The school had a state-of-the-art climbing wall, a fully equipped darkroom, a pottery program and a mini museum. Shanahan was thinking of retiring and running a hotel in the Philippines when he died there of a heart attack.4)