James Gardner Beebe (1945 – 2007)
Jim Beebe was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. He arrived in Canada as a politicized anti-war activist and was a reporter for the Toronto Star.1) He was the editor of the Whitehorse Star newspaper for a brief time in the early 1970s. He returned to the helm between 1978 and the spring of 1982. Jackie Pierce worked alongside Beebe both in the early 1970s and as advertising manager during his second stint at the newspaper. She remembered Beebe as a fine editor who was in charge during periods of great change in the territory. Beebe hired editor Jim Butler by phone out of Montreal in 1981 as a government reporter. Beebe left the Star in 1982 and went to work as a communications advisor for the Council for Yukon Indians (later Council of Yukon First Nations) and then moved to work for the Yukon Government. The Star had only three editors in twenty-nine years - Beebe, Massey Padgham (1982-1988) and Jim Butler (1988 - +2007).2)
Beebe worked for the Yukon Government on indigenous rights, policy and planning. He moved to Victoria in 1992 to work for the British Columbia Government as a senior advisor in several ministries and in the Government Policy and Communications Office. He was involved and served on the Advisory Planning Commission and the Downtown Advisory Commission for the City of Victoria. He was a Director of Trafford Publishing, an on-demand publishing service in Victoria.3)