Joyce Hayden (d. 2009)
Joyce Hayden was born in her grandparent’s log farmhouse in Birch Lake, Saskatchewan. She met her husband Earle at a country dance in 1948 and they were married a year later. In 1953, the couple and two small children headed up to Whitehorse in a 1949 Dodge pickup, following the promise of plenty of work.1) They rented an old cabin in Moccasin Flats, in Whitehorse, for the first summer. They planned to stay for two years, and continued to live in the Yukon for the next twenty-three.2)
Joyce’s daughter joined the Brownies and Joyce became involved with the Girl Guides. She was a Fluffy Owl, a Brown Owl, Camp Advisor, Camp Commissioner for Yukon and NWT Council, Guide Lieutenant, Guide Captain, Blue Guider, and District Commissioner. She was a founding member of the Yukon Council in 1973. Joyce believed that camping should be an integral part of the Guide program.3)
Over her life, Hayden sat on the boards of more than forty organizations. Among them was the Yukon Women’s Mini-Bus Society that brought mass transit to Whitehorse in 1975. Hayden helped found the Yukon New Democratic Party and the Status of Women Council in the mid-1970s to name but two non-profit groups she was involved with. She ran the Whitehorse YWCA in the early 1970s. It was one of the few organizations to offer childcare services. The Haydens moved south in 1976 first to Vernon and then to Masset in British Columbia but they returned in 1987.4)
Joyce sat in the Yukon legislature, first as a back bencher and then as a cabinet minister from 1988 to 1992. She was responsible for Health and Social Services, Juvenile Justice and the Yukon Housing Corporation. In 2003, Hayden received a Governor General’s award in commendation of the Persons Case for outstanding contributions to the quality of life of women in Canada. She wrote books on the history of Yukon women and she did much of this work while she was legally blind. Hayden is survived by her husband, three children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.5)
Joyce Hayden was inducted into the Yukon Transportation Hall of Fame in 1999. She received a Lifetime Achievement Heritage Award from the Yukon Historical and Museums Association in 2002.