Iris Warner (1927 - 2013)

Iris Warner and her husband Al first came to the Yukon in 1959. Al was an aviation mechanic and they lived in Atlin, Carcross, Inuvik, and Dawson, before settling in Whitehorse. Iris wrote stories on Yukon history that appeared in the Yukon News, The Whitehorse Star and the Klondike Sun. Notable among these were a series of articles on the North-West Mounted Police and a history of the Yukon Order of Pioneers. She was also a regular contributor to BC Outdoors, Alaska, and North. She published several small books jointly, or on her own. In Dawson, Iris became actively involved with the Dawson Museum Society. They had just suffered the loss of the first museum which burned in 1960. Warner, Fred Berger, and Joe Langevin worked together to gather a new collection for the museum, and the museum reopened in the Old Territorial Administration Building in 1962. Iris was the curator of the museum until the family moved to Whitehorse. During her term, she was involved in the acquisition of several historic buildings later turned over to Parks Canada.¹⁾

In Whitehorse, Iris Warner was a member of the MacBride Museum Society Board in the early 1970s, and she was an advocate for establishing a territory-wide heritage organization. She was a founding member of the Yukon Historical and Museums Association (YHMA) in 1977. Warner was awarded YHMA’s Yukon Heritage Award in 1979. Her unfinished manuscript about Yukon roads remains in the Yukon Archives. Iris and Al retired to Salt Spring Island in 1981 and she left most of her body of work at the Archives. Al died in 1997 and Iris Warner is survived by two sons, Marc and Alan.²⁾