Margaret L. Thomson (d. 1983)

Margaret Thomson was in the medical corps of the Royal Canadian Air Force. She was posted to the Whitehorse base in the early 1950s.1) She and her husband, Alex, moved to Victoria, British Columbia before Margaret returned to the Yukon and Ross River in 1967. She worked to improve medical services, educational facilities, and recognition of the rights of Indigenous women.2)

In the 1960s, many prominent First Nation women including Angela Sidney, Ellen Bruce, Virginia Smarch, Pearl Keenan, and Margaret Thomson worked for improvements within their communities and protested inequality on the federal level.3) Margaret served as the president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada. She received the Queen’s Jubilee Medal in 1977, and in 1982 was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of laws by the University of Victoria. She would have been one of twenty-four Canadians to receive the Citation of Citizenship on Canada Day 1983.4)

The Whitehorse Thomson Centre for extended care patients is named for Margaret Thomson of Ross River, Yukon. Margaret’s daughter Nancy became an announcer for CBC North.5)

1) , 5)
Photograph posted by CBC Yukon on Facebook, 8 November 2019.
2) , 4)
“In Memoriam.” Northern Lights, No. 99, Advent, 1983: 20.
3)
Kenneth Coates, Best Left as Indians: Native-white Relations in the Yukon Territory, 1840 -1973. McGill-Queen’s Press, 1993: 229.