Helga Germain (1928 - 2008)
Helga Germain was born in Klausdorf, Germany. She immigrated to Canada with her family in 1930 and settled in Hines Creek, Alberta. Helga came to the Yukon in 1953. Shortly after arriving she took a job at the Whitehorse Inn where she met and later married Paul Germain, a Quebecker who had been in the Yukon since the early 1940s. Helga and Paul had two sons, Randy (b. 1961) and Pierre (b. 1965). She held various jobs while raising her kids but went back to work full time when Paul died suddenly during a business trip to Bermuda. She took over the front desk of the Travel Lodge in 1972 and soon reigned as the front office manager. She played an important role as the hotel became the Sheffield and then the Westmark Whitehorse. “She had an eye for detail and a sense of fairness that was combined with a tongue that could nail a snake at twenty paces.” She did her part to build tourism in the Yukon and it was a loss when she retired in 1995.1)