Jenny Laberge
Jenny Laberge was Tlingit, born in Rangoon, just outside Juneau, Alaska. Many in her family had already immigrated inland when she was born. Her immediate family came from the coast and lived at Dalton Post [Shaw’she in Southern Tutchone] on the Tatchenshini River before they settled in Tagish where she grew up. They moved north along Marsh Lake and eventually lived at Winter crossing on the Teslin River. They lived at Lake Laberge for a while but not in a permanent settlement.1)
Jenny told her daughter Violet [Storer] that they could pull a skin boat through Miles Canyon with a rope, but you couldn't do that with a raft because of the whirlpools. They would pack all their stuff around the canyon and the rapids. Jenny said that everybody lived near the rapids when she was a child. They lived there because they could gaff salmon in the summer, all the way down to Lake Laberge. Their favourite place was the rapids because they could gaff the salmon and also catch them in nets. In the summertime, they would go along the Fiftymile, the section of the Yukon River between Marsh Lake and Lake Laberge. Jenny and Billy Laberge had a fish net right where the S.S. Klondike is, just across the river where there is an eddy.2)