Alice Swearingen Cyr
Alice Cyr was born in Cusick, Washington. She studied Anthropology and History at Whatcom Community College. She lived in Skagway for thirty years and worked as Historical Interpreter for Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park. She created the Historical Resource manual and trained the first tour guides for the White Pass & Yukon Route railway. Alice joined an old Yukon family when she married Paul Cyr. When the WP&YR railway closed down for the first time in 1982, the couple moved south and Alice enrolled in university. She graduated in 1994 with degrees in history and anthropology from Western Washington University.1)
Alice Cyr was awarded the 2017 Yukon Historical and Museums Association Helen Couch Volunteer of the Year Award. She started volunteering at the Yukon Transportation Museum (YTM) in 2016 to catalogue the large collection of Paul Cyr’s photographs and artifacts she donated to the museum. Her role expanded to create a collections and research area and to test a new record-keeping system that encourages community involvement. Her virtual exhibit “Paul Cyr loved cats” opened at the YTM in February 2018.2)