Ann Louise “Toots” Bouvier, nee Chambers (b. 1937)
Louise Bouvier was born at the old Whitehorse hospital to Carl and Grace Chambers. She was named for her father’s mother, Anne Kershaw Chambers who died just two weeks after Louise was born. Louise is related to old Johnny Fraser through the Chambers. Louise uses her second name, the name of her mother’s mother. Louise grew up at the Dickson homestead on Kluane River at the mouth of the lake, and her grandfather, Thomas Dickson, was blind for all of her childhood. He still taught her how to make biscuits. The kids used to walk from the Dickson homestead to Burwash by the lake or on the highway. Louise spent part of her summers at Champagne where her father’s father, Harlan Chambers, started the trading post. Burwash had always been Louise’s home.1)
Louise bounced between two communities in order to go to school. When she was about six, her mom sent her to Dawson to live at St. Paul’s Hostel and go to the public school. When the Baptist Mission School opened in Whitehorse she went there for a year and then went back to Dawson when she was thirteen. Her last year in school was at the Baptist Mission School again. She also lived at St. Agnes Mission School in Whitehorse. Louise remembers that St. Paul’s Hostel was horrible, as Darium, the man who ran it, was an alcoholic, his wife was a sadist, and the cook didn’t know how to cook. Darium drank all the family allowance that Louise’s mother sent to her. He read their mail, and his wife handed out undue punishment for supposed wrongs. The children could leave the hostel on Sundays after church, but they had to leave the town. On Friday and Saturday nights they could go to the movies and on Saturday afternoons they could shop downtown for an hour. When Louise returned to Dawson after attending Harold Lee’s Baptist school in Whitehorse, Hilda Hellaby was looking after St. Paul’s Hostel and it was a complete change where the kids were treated like humans. The Baptist Mission School had a gym, the girls learned gymnastics and the boys played hockey. When Louise was in high school there were some problems at St. Agnes, and she did correspondence from Burwash for a while. Her French teacher was upset when Louise had to leave because she was very talented with languages.2)
Louise worked at the Burwash Lodge while she did her correspondence courses. The restaurant was built by The Jacquots built the restaurant and the hotel. Leland Allinger and Darrell Duensing bought all of the Jacquots’ property at Burwash and later Leland bought Duensing’s interest. Louise married and moved to Whitehorse and then returned to Burwash for the summer after her divorce. She returned to Whitehorse and worked in the Regina Hotel where she met and later married Maurice Bouvier, originally from Manitoba. Louise worked for the Yukon Association for Non-Status Indians and they got grants to help people with housing. The Bouviers lived in Porter Creek before moving Maurice’s trucking business to Destruction Bay in 1994. Maurice worked for the Yukon Government for ten years and also operated his own truck and loader. Louise has a sister, Kluane, in Whitehorse and a brother, Ron, in Haines Junction.3)