Eric Edensor Coke Richards
Eric Richards and his family moved to the Yukon in October 1925. The family included Dora (10 years old), Ted (9), Wilda (8), and Ray (7). Grace Richards was pregnant with Joyce at the time. Eric was hired to manage the dry goods department for Taylor and Drury. He spent most of the next eighteen years with the company. The main store was in Whitehorse and other stores included ones at Pelly, Ross River, Champagne, Sheldon Lake, Teslin, and Carmacks.1)
Eric and Grace moved to Vancouver in the summer of 1943 but in the fall of 1944 decided the city was not for them and they moved back. Daughter Joyce and her husband Gordon bought a car and drove them back up the Alaska Highway. The road was not open to civilians and there were no accommodations along the route. The men did not tell the gate man about the women and the baby that were hidden in the back under a tarp.2)
Eric Richards was instrumental in starting up the first Whitehorse Drama Club and he was producer, director, make-up man and set designer. In his spare time, he painted signs and logos for local businesses. He designed the big white horse on the Whitehorse Inn sign that now resides at MacBride Museum.3)