Joyce Yardley, nee Richards (1925 – 2016)
Joyce Richards was born in Strathmore, Alberta and moved with the family to Whitehorse in 1925. Her parents were Carissa Grace and Eric Edensor Coke Richards. Joyce Richards met her future husband, Gordon Yardley, in the fall of 1941 on the train from Skagway to Whitehorse. Gordon had been working as a deckhand on a sternwheeler at Carcross and was on his way to Whitehorse to take a job as a mechanic for Pan American Airlines. They were married in 1942 and the family lived at Ten-Mile Ranch for some years. After moving back to Carcross they kept a market garden at the ranch. Joyce was the Carcross postmistress from 1955 to 1960 when the Yardleys bought the Beloud Lodge on the Haines road. They sold their ranch at Ten-Mile and all the buildings at Carcross..1)
In 1967, Joyce and Gordon sold the lodge to their daughter Norma and her husband Cal Waddington and turned the acreage into a ranch. The Yardleys bought Jimmy Kane's trapline in 1971. They trapped for two years with Mike Crawshay helping out, and then went into live trapping when Danny Nowlan's game farm in Whitehorse was looking for wolverine. Their kids had moved to Whitehorse, so Joyce and Gordon followed and started a construction company, St. Elias Enterprises, during a housing boom..2)
In 1978 the Yardleys partnered with Harold and Rita Olson to buy Karl Siegar's mine on Pine Creek near Atlin and their son Kirk and his wife joined them as third partners. The partners all lived at Discovery and made a community, although they eventually split the claims. Gordon had a stroke in 1981. In 1983, they moved their mining operation to Ron Grainger's claims on Seymour Creek in the Mount Freegold area. In 1985, the pay dirt at Freegold was too thin to work and so Kirk and Gordon spent the summer exploring and ended up back at Atlin. Then bought some claims on Gold Bottom at Soap Creek in 1986 and were still mining there in 1992. The Yardleys sold their home in Whitehorse in the winter of 1986-87 and moved to Vancouver Island.3)
Joyce Yardley wrote several books about the Yukon, all published by Hancock House Publishers: Crazy Cooks and Gold Miners (1993), Yukon Riverboat Days (1996), and Yukon Tears and Laughter (2006).