Herbert Gordon Armstrong (1905 - 1993)
Gordon Armstrong was born in Whitehead, Saskatchewan. He came to Whitehorse in 1929 to work as a butcher for the Burns Meat Packing store, operated by T.C. Richards.1) Armstrong went on to become the manager of the Burns store. He and wife, Peggy, and their daughter, Pat, were busy participants in the community clubs and events.2) Gordon Armstrong was elected president of the Whitehorse Curling Club in December 1937.3)
Gordon Armstrong was Whitehorse's first mayor after it was incorporated as a city in 1950.4) He was acclaimed to the position and went on to serve four terms.5) There was no city hall, so the mayor and four aldermen met on the second floor of the Northern Commercial Building for the first two years. The city had a collection of ramshackle shacks and broken wooden sidewalks with no sewer or water system. The city had no tax base and relied on small Territorial Council grants. In 1951 a decision was made to move Yukon’s capital from Dawson to Whitehorse and the Yukon Act was amended to allow for two Whitehorse representatives on the Yukon Council. Whitehorse became the official capital of the Yukon on April 1, 1953. In 1954 Armstrong proposed a city water and sewer system to be completed in 1955 with a cost to homeowners of about ten dollars a month. Armstrong left the Burns Company in 1954 and started Yukon Sales, a distribution company, with his nephew Bob Armstrong. They worked out of the Armstrong’s historic house on Wood Street, a house that once belonged to Dr. Frederick Crane. In 1958, Gordon Cameron succeeded Armstrong as mayor. Armstrong had brought Whitehorse from a small pioneer village to a modern city. The Armstrongs moved to Vancouver in 1962 but Gordon was often back in the territory operating his Yukon Sales Company. Gordon Armstrong is buried in Kelowna, British Columbia.6)