Guy S. Churchward
Guy Churchward had a sheet metal shop in Dawson in 1898. He designed and constructed the Yukon Airtight Heater stove. He left Dawson in 1918 and worked for wages until 1922 when he and his wife, Edna Mae, decided to start over in the new mining district of Mayo. He got lumber from the Broadway Hotel in Dawson and started to build a shop. His family arrived from Tacoma to live in a tent until the building was finished. Guy and Edna Mae had two children, Philip and Annie (Besner). In 1937, Churchward built a huge furnace for the Silver King mine bunkhouse.1)
Chii Ahan/ Churchward Hill at kilometre 223 on the Dempster Highway is a limestone anticline. The Gwitch’in name means “Beaver House Mountain” and the legend concerns a giant Pleistocene beaver. The English name honours Guy Churchward, the Dawson tinsmith who invented the Yukon airtight heater, a lightweight stove well-liked by prospectors and homesteaders.2)