Yukon who is who

William John Llewellyn “Bill” Thomson (1921 - 2019)

Bill Thomson and his family moved to Whitehorse around 1970 after a long career in the oil business. He worked for White Pass & Yukon Route in the Yukon before he retired. He was a justice of the peace for fourteen years in Whitehorse and served as a coroner ad citizenship court judge. He was an avid outdoorsman and rode his horse on trips into the backcountry into his late eighties.¹⁾

Thomson got his start in mushing by organizing the annual Sourdough Rendezvous dog races. From 1972 to 1984 he organized the Rendezvous sprint races. Seventeen mushers did the first race in 1975.²⁾

Thomson founded the Carcross to Atlin Commemorative Mail Run in 1975 and ran it until the last race in 2004. The mail run was started to relive the 1898 to 1933 delivery route of 130 km from Carcross to Atlin.³⁾ In the first year, Thomson was sworn in as an official mail carrier and he has carried the mail every year after that for thirty years. The first dog team race just had two participants and the numbers have fluctuated over the years with forty-two being the highest number. The mail envelopes are specially made commemorative envelopes. When they arrived in Atlin, the envelopes are cancelled again and put into the mail system. They have been shipped all over the world and one year were sent to twenty-seven countries.⁴⁾ The race raised $130,000 over the years, with most of it going to the Shriners Hospitals for Sick Children.⁵⁾