Yukon who is who

Roy Johnson (b. 1951)

Roy Johnson was born into the Crow clan in Dawson, the fifth child of Elsie and Charlie Johnson. He remembers being a very young child at Tr’ochek where his parents settled after they rafted down the Yukon River from Fort Selkirk. At the age of two, Roy contracted tuberculosis (TB). He spent a week in Whitehorse and then was flown to the Camsell Hospital in Edmonton where he met his sisters Dorothy and Aubrey and his brothers Ronald and Frank who had also contracted TB. After he recovered he was sent to the Chooutla Residential School in Carcross. He was four years old and too young to attend school but was kept there until he was old enough to be admitted into the school program. He was treated poorly and suffered abuses. He left school in 1968 and worked for a time at Yukon Chrysler before returning to Dawson. Roy played hockey for many years and participated in the recreation of the 1905 Stanley Cup game in Ottawa. He worked at many different jobs over the years including at Clinton Creek Mine, the Elsa mill, as a carpenter and labourer, and in various capacities for the Yukon Government. He served in the Canadian Rangers for fifteen years. Roy met his life partner, Louise Drugan, in 1983 and they have three sons. Until 1991, he struggled with alcoholism. In 2010 he fell ill and was paralysed from the waist down and he now walks with two canes. He is very involved in his community and works closely with the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Heritage Department. He has won many awards from the Harry Allen award for coaching hockey to the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Volunteer of the Year award. He is an avid photographer who has recorded the past twenty or more years of community history.¹⁾