Yukon who is who

Adele McMurphy, nee Sansom (1905 – 1980)

Adele McMurphy attended Normal School in Victoria and came to the Yukon [with her family] in 1918. She moved first to Whitehorse and then Carmacks to teach school for two winters and then taught at the Carcross School. She met Jack McMurphy in 1917 after he walked from Telegraph Creek to Carcross to see his parents. He was a mail carrier for Louise Schultz in Atlin at the time. Adele and Jack were married in 1930 and they raised five children in Carcross. The family moved to Bennett in 1935 and Jack worked for White Pass on the rail line crew. They moved back to Carcross in 1937 so the children could attend school.¹⁾

When her daughter Dolly contracted polio in 1953, Adele became an agent for White Pass to help pay the medical bills. She worked there for seventeen years manning the public town phone, the White Pass dispatch phone, and the administration phone. The family lived upstairs in the depot with their two youngest daughters. After Adele’s death, the family created a special edition cookbook of her recipes with a cover sketch by artist Ted Harrison.²⁾