Yukon who is who

Anna Frances Watson, nee Kipp (1895 – 1990)

Frances Kipp graduated from nurses’ training at Vancouver General Hospital in 1919 and wanted to get away from the horrors she saw there during the Spanish flu epidemic. She applied to the Whitehorse hospital and got the position. The train was stopped about just outside of Whitehorse and the RCMP came aboard to announce that all passengers from Vancouver would be quarantined at the police barracks for eight days to prevent an outbreak of the flu in the Yukon.¹⁾

Frances started work at the Whitehorse hospital in late April 1919, but after a month she was sent to Champagne where about forty First Nations people had the flu. She described her 100km trip from Whitehorse on the Kluane Wagon Road. Her travel party had to clear brush and fallen trees and fill in holes in the road. It took them eight hours to make the trip.²⁾ The story of the trip to Champagne, and an interview with her, is included in the Watson Family fonds at the Yukon Archives.³⁾

In the spring of 1920, Frances was sent to Chooutla School in Carcross where all of the children and teachers were sick. White Pass sent her down on an unscheduled train: one engine, one car, and one passenger. Frances was engaged to a man in Whitehorse, but he had to leave for work and while she was away he contracted the flu and died. Bill Watson, the Whitehorse telegraph operator, delivered the telegram.⁴⁾

Frances was friends with Bill Watson’s sister and Bill and Frances first met in 1916 when Bill travelled through Vancouver on his way to serve in the First World War. In November 1922, Bill and Frances travelled to Chilliwack where both their families were living and they were married in January 1923. They returned to Whitehorse in November and their daughter Dorothy was born. Frances suffered poor health that year and they moved to Chilliwack in late 1923 and then on to Washington state. Daughter Dorothy (Watson) Moles was living at a nursing home in Bellingham in early April 2020 when she contracted the coronavirus and died of complications.⁵⁾