Bert Wybrew (~1916 – 2004)
Bert Wybrew was born in Whitehorse. He was a business partner with Neil Colville in the Whitehorse cable TV company WHTV.1) In 1958, he was the station manager of WHTV and also manager of the Whitehorse Inn. WHTV started telecasting to wired homes in Whitehorse around 1958. Cable vision arrived in Whitehorse before it reached many bigger centres to the south. Residents had to buy a television set and they were not cheap. They were also black and white. There was one channel which broadcast old movies, announcer-operated bingo games, and one daily newscast read to a self-directed camera. Sometimes the camera was directed from the back of the Whitehorse Inn to the front of the liquor store.2)
Bert Wybrew was a one-man show at first. Les McLaughlin was working as a teenaged volunteer at the military-run radio station CFWH. Bert asked him to host a teenaged dance party on Saturday mornings for WHTV, ‘just like American Bandstand.’ Les was to round up a group of boys and girls and show up at the station. Then he would be the on-camera host as Bert played rock-and-roll through the sound system behind the camera. The dance floor could accommodate about eight people and Les sat behind a desk.3)
Bert Wybrew was a founding partner of the Whitehorse radio station CKRW along with Rolf Hougen, Ken McKinnon, Aubrey Tanner, and Bob Choate. The radio station received a licence to operate in December 1968.4)
Wybrew campaigned for Whitehorse mayor in December 1967 on a platform of opposing the installation of parking meters. He won the election but Justice John Parker overturned the results on the basis of alleged voter irregularities. Wybrew won the by-election in March 1968. He was acclaimed in the 1969 election and re-elected to a third term two-year term in 1971.5)
Wybrew was the mayor of Whitehorse in the summer of 1973 when five aldermen resigned from the city council leaving the council without a quorum. Councillors Clive Boyd, Alder Hunter, Steve Henke, Paul Lucier, and Jim Howatt resigned over a dispute with the Yukon Executive Council about the purchase of some lots at Main and Steel streets. Two days later, on 11 July 1973, Commissioner Jim Smith hired an administrator, Joseph Oliver, and fired mayor Wybrew. The city manager, Bob Byron, stayed on in his position. On 20 July a taxpayers’ advisory committee to the city was appointed by the territorial government to assist Oliver. Three hundred Whitehorse residents assembled outside city hall on 23 July to show support for Mayor Wybrew and his council. In a by-election for city council, held on 20 September, Mayor Wybrew was voted back in with city councillors Paul Lucier, John Watt, Olive Pociwauschuk, Chuck Hankins, Peter Patrick, and Al Wright. Bob Byron resigned following the election.6)
On 21 November, Wybrew announced he would not run in the December 1974 civic election. Paul Lucier was acclaimed as the new mayor with elected aldermen Chuck Hankins, Pete Patrick, Olive Pociwauschuk, John Watt, and Wayne Palmer.7)