I started keeping notes about people important in Yukon history when I first came to the Yukon in the mid-1970s. I had a history degree, but my knowledge of Yukon history was almost non-existent. There was no time constraint on the entries as the people around me were as fascinating as the historic ones. The Yukon was changing fast in the 1970s and ‘80s – and it hasn’t stopped.
I read a lot in my jobs and contracts over the years and every time I came across an interesting event, I made a note of the names of those involved. I think it is clear in the Yukon that a determined person can make big changes. The more useful my database became the more I became addicted to adding more names. The wiki entries are now approaching 3,500.
Yukon has a wealth of sources for information about Yukon history including books, newspaper articles and series, magazines, and internet pages and sites. I will single out Murray Lundberg and the amazing crew that supports and grows the ExploreNorth website, and Sam Holloway and Dianne Green for their Yukon Reader and Yukoner Magazine. And of course, our very own treasure house, the Yukon Archives.
I have often volunteered as a judge as the Heritage Fairs in Dawson and then Whitehorse and got pretty tired of hearing about Henry Hudson when there are so many interesting Yukon stories. I realized that, even though there is a ton of written information, there was no easy place for the kids to start and I began thinking about publishing my notes around 2016.
I became seriously interested in filling in the obvious holes and broadening the biographies past my particular focus in 2018 and am still busy doing that. I realized the work in progress will always be that, so in 2024 I applied for a grant to put a Yukon Who Is Who online.
A grant from the Historic Resources Fund allowed me to search out a programmer willing to work on creating a wiki. Thank you Petrus Lommerse at Mammoth Micro Systems! The biographies were in an ancient version of FileMaker Pro in the beginning, but the search function was a serious time waster as the entries grew. I switched the data into Word but decided to keep the formatting to a minimum and leave the credit lines in the text. What a happy choice, as it has made the wiki formatting easy.
Thank you to all of those who helped proof the texts. The errors are all mine so email me if you find some or want to add a name.
Hope you enjoy the site! Sally Robinson