Lily “Penny” Sippel, nee Collins (b. 1940)
Penny Sippel was born in Vancouver when her mother travelled from Stewart Island to her parents' home in the south to give birth to her second child. Penny's mother's family, the Burians, had a strong connection to Stewart Island and the Stewart River after Alfred Burian first located in the area and was joined by brothers Renny, Karl, Rudy, and Walter during the depth of the Depression. Martha Burian joined her brothers at Stewart Island in 1936 and she and brother Rudy bought the Stewart Island Roadhouse. Penny's parents, Martha and Phil Collins, were married in 1937 and they took over running the roadhouse.1) Phil was a longshoreman for the British Yukon Navigation Co., a subsidiary of White Pass & Yukon Route. Martha ran the roadhouse, offering rooms and meals. Both of her parents ran traplines in the winter.2)
Penny's family moved to Dawson when Penny was two years old and she attended school in town for one year before her father bought a trap line on the north fork of the Klondike River. The family moved to the old Hullenbach Roadhouse in 1947.These were good years as prices were high for furs and Martha kept chickens and her garden provided lots of potatoes, turnips and carrots. Her snare line caught squirrels, rabbits and the occasional lynx.3)
In 1949, the family moved south for about a year and Penny and her siblings attended school as home schooling in the Yukon had not worked out all that well for them. This time they settled in Whitehorse.4) In 1952, the family lived in the Whiskey Flats area of Whitehorse that is Rotary Park today. Phillip worked with the Army, building houses in Camp Takhini.5) Penny attended school in the military Armouries where Kwanlin Mall is now, and then Whitehorse High School on Second Avenue. Her Young People's Association raised money and purchased an army building at Fourth and Hoge streets that they used as a teen centre.6)
When Phil and Martha and their younger children moved to Dawson Creek in 1957, Penny stayed in the Yukon. In 1959, at age seventeen, she married Don Sippel who was in the Yukon serving with the 19th Alberta Dragoons. Don was in full dress uniform for the wedding, and the Dragoons flanked the couple's pathway from the church with their swords raised in a arch.7) Penny and Don raised three children: Donna, Cindy, and Paul.8)
In 2003, Penny and Don moved from their home in Whitehorse into a cabin at Marsh Lake. The building was originally a bakery attached to the Whitehorse Inn. The Sipples had the original sign but never put it up in case people came to the door wanting fresh bread. They enjoyed having the leisure time just to chat with visitors about the weather.9)
Penny was crowned May Queen in the 1956 precursor to the Sourdough Rendezvous spring festival, May Days. Don and Penny Sippel were named Mr. and Mrs. Yukon in 2023.10)