Yukon

The Yukon is an immense but thinly populated territory in northern Canada, extending far above the Arctic Circle. Though it covers an area of 483,450 square kilometers (186,661 square miles), the territory had an estimated population of only about 43,118 in 2021. The Yukon borders the Northwest Territories on the east, British Columbia on the south, and the American state of Alaska on the west.

Until the late nineteenth century, the Yukon was inhabited mostly by Indigenous peoples. The Klondike Gold Rush of the 1890s brought in hordes of treasure-seekers, but the population dropped sharply after gold became harder to find. Mining is a major industry in the territory; other important sectors are tourism, fishing, and fur trapping.

GENERAL INFORMATION

Name: The name "Yukon" is a word meaning "great river," referring to the Yukon River. Originally spelled "Yuk-un-ah," the word comes from the Vuntut Gwitchin (Loucheaux) people.

Provincial Symbols

Bird: Raven

Flower: Fireweed

Tree: Sub-alpine Fir

Motto: None

Capital: Whitehorse, the Yukon’s economic hub and largest community, was incorporated in 1950 and has served as territorial capital since 1953. The community is located just off the Alaska Highway, and about 100 kilometers north of British Columbia. According to the Yukon Bureau of Statistics estimate, the community had a population of 33,893 in 2021.

Dawson, on the Yukon River, served as the first capital, from 1898–1953. The city's economy boomed during the Klondike Gold Rush, but dwindled afterward. A city since 1904, Dawson was an important transportation hub until the construction of the Alaska Highway in the 1940s. Its estimated population was 2,303 in 2021.

PEOPLE & CULTURE

Population: The Yukon has a very low population for the territory’s size—an estimated 43,025 inhabitants in 483,450 square kilometers in 2021. Much of the resident population is seasonal, transient labor. Most communities are very small, with populations ranging from a few dozen to several hundred inhabitants. Most people live in Whitehorse, which had an estimated population of 33,893 in 2021. Besides Dawson, the other main communities are Watson Lake, Haines Junction, and Faro.

In 2021, people of British origin made up around 51 percent of the population, while Indigenous peoples accounted for about 22 percent. French Canadians accounted for around 14 percent; as in other parts of Canada they tend to operate a French-language educational system and maintain a strong community association.

There is one institution of higher education: Yukon University in Whitehorse, which has thirteen community-college branches. For the 2020–21 school year, the school had 1,285 enrolled students, with slightly over half in full-time education programs.

Indigenous People: The Yukon Bureau of Statistics estimated that there were 9,546 Indigenous people living in Yukon in 2021, including First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and others. Members of First Nations make up roughly one-fifth of Yukon's population. As of 2018, there were eleven self-governing Yukon First Nations, while three First Nations in Yukon remained in land claims negotiations. The Council of Yukon First Nations serves as an umbrella organization for most of the Yukon First Nations. First Nations communities are scattered throughout the territory, with populations ranging from a few dozen to several hundred. The northernmost is the Vuntut Gwitchin community of Old Crow, located about 190 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle.

The Tlingit were originally settled along the Pacific Coast. Their communities include Carcross, on the South Klondike Highway, and Teslin, south of Whitehorse, on the Alaska Highway. Burwash Landing and Pelly Crossing are Tutchone communities, while Ross is home to members of the Kaska people. Other peoples include the Han, Tagish, and Tanana.

There are eight groups of Indigenous languages in the Yukon, seven of which belong to the Athapaskan family. The other language group is Tlingit. The Yukon Native Language Centre (YNLC) in Whitehorse, located on the campus of Yukon College, works to teach and promote the aboriginal tongues.

Arts and Entertainment: Much of the Yukon’s cultural life is centered in Whitehorse, the territory’s largest community. Cultural facilities include the Yukon Arts Centre, and the MacBride Museum which offers exhibits on territorial history. Notable historical buildings include the 1899 cabin of gold rush prospector Sam McGee, who was immortalized in Robert W. Service’s poem "The Cremation of Sam McGee." Dawson City’s reminders of Gold Rush history include the annual celebration of Discovery Day (August 16), the day when prospectors George Carmack, Skookum Jim, and Tagish Charley discovered gold in Bonanza Creek, marking the beginning the Gold Rush.

The Yukon has inspired many famous writers and artists. English-born Robert W. Service (1874–1958), mentioned above, wrote many poems on his experiences during the Gold Rush. Writer/artist Edward "Ted" Harrison (1926–2015), another English-born immigrant, was well known for his paintings and children’s books dealing with the Yukon. Whitehorse native Pierre Berton (1920–2004) was a journalist and historian who wrote many popular books on Yukon and Canadian themes.

Media outlets are extensive, despite the low population. Whitehouse has two daily newspapers: the Whitehorse Daily Star (published since 1900) and the Yukon News. The Klondike Sun (Dawson City) and TREDMill (Haines Junction) are published less frequently. Monthly publications include the aboriginal newspaper Raven’s Eye, published by the Aboriginal Multi-Media Society (AMMSA). Broadcasting outlets include numerous radio stations and several television stations, with many programs available in native languages.

ENVIRONMENT & GEOGRAPHY

The Yukon is approximately 483,450 square kilometers (186,661 square miles) in area, of which 478,970 square kilometers (184,931 square miles) are land area and 4,480 square kilometers (1,729.7 square miles) are covered by fresh water. Forests account for 281,030 square kilometers (108,506 square miles).

Topography: The western part of the Yukon Territory is largely mountainous, covered by the Canadian Cordillera range running along the Pacific coast. At 5,971 meters (19,590 feet), Mount Logan, located in the southwest, is Canada’s highest point. East of the coastal ranges lies the subarctic Interior Plateau. To the east of the plateau are the Selwyn and Ogilvie Mountains. The northern region, along the Arctic coast, is covered by tundra. About half of the territory’s surface is covered by forest.

Around 65 percent of the territory belongs to the Yukon River watershed. At 3,185 kilometers (1,979 miles), the Yukon is Canada's second longest river. Other important rivers are the Klondike, Snake, White, Alsek, Liard, the Peel; the latter two belong to the Mackenzie River watershed. The Yukon contains many large lakes, including Bennett, Laberge, Kluane, and Teslin.

National Parks: The Yukon has three national parks. Ivvavik National Park contains the calving ground for the Porcupine caribou herd. Kluane National Park and Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the location of Mount Logan (5,959 meters/19,545 feet), Canada’s highest point. Vuntut National Park is a wilderness area in the northern Yukon.

Natural Resources: The Yukon is rich in natural resources, particularly minerals, forest products, and wildlife. Mining is the territory’s major industry, and the most important minerals are gold, zinc, lead, and silver. The Yukon is home to large populations of big game. The territory’s beautiful scenery and wildlife have been important in drawing visitors northward.

Plants and Animals: Alpine or sub-arctic species of plants grow in the Yukon. Around 60 percent of the Yukon is covered by "boreal" or northern forest, home to species including pine, spruce, and birch. About 15 percent of forested land is suitable for wood products. The Arctic Coastal Plain is above the treeline, where little vegetation grows.

The Yukon is a haven for many wildlife species, including big game such as moose, caribou, Dall sheep, grizzlies, black bears, and wolves. Small furbearing mammals include the arctic fox, beaver, and lynx. Bird species include trumpeter swans, peregrine falcons, and other migratory species. The territorial government protects Yukon’s wildlife by means of national and territorial parks, and game sanctuaries and preserves.

The rivers are full of fish, another reason for the territory’s popularity with tourists. Common species include salmon, northern pike, and whitefish.

Climate: The Yukon is largely sub-arctic, with cold winters and short, hot summers. January temperatures are usually between -17 degrees Celsius to -32 degrees Celsius, while July temperatures are usually around 14 degrees Celsius. The western mountains generally prevent Pacific winds and rain clouds from reaching inland, making the central Yukon a somewhat dry place. Average precipitation varies widely by elevation. The mountains can receive as much as 600 millimeters (about 24 inches), while valleys and other low-lying areas receive as little as 250 millimeters (almost 10 inches).

Yukon has experienced a change in its climate, with the territory's average temperature increasing by 2.3 degrees Celsius and winter temperatures increasing by 4.3 degrees Celsius between 1948 and 2016. Yukon's rate of temperature increase is nearly three times the rate of increase of global temperatures. As a result of increasing temperatures and global climate change, the territory faces damaged infrastructure due to permafrost thaw, increasing concerns about food security, more frequent extreme weather events, more severe forest fires, and glacier melt. By the 2020s, the Yukon government had made improving the territory's climate resiliency a major priority.

ECONOMY

Yukon’s economy is based largely on mining. Tourism, forestry, fishing, fur production, and government activities are other important sectors. Mining focuses on gold, silver, lead, zinc. Other important minerals are tungsten, molybdenum, gold, and nickel. Oil and natural gas are other important resources. The territory's dependence on resource extraction, particularly mining and fossil fuel production, makes the economy prone to booms and reversals based on global market prices. For instance, major mines closed in the 1980s following a decline in demand, severely impacting the entire Yukon economy and leading to population loss.

Tourism: Tourism is a major employer in the Yukon, employing around 3,500 people in 2015 according to the Yukon Department of Tourism and Culture. An estimated 334,000 overnight visitors traveled to Yukon in 2017. However, the sector was impacted by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada in 2020 and subsequent travel restrictions.

Tourists come to the Yukon to enjoy the magnificent scenery, hunt big game, fish, or enjoy winter sports. Others come to relive the Gold Rush era, in historic communities such as Dawson City and Whitehorse. Many visitors can enter the territory by means of the Alaska Highway.

Agriculture: Because of the subarctic climate and limited precipitation, agriculture is a very small economic sector in the Yukon. Farming focuses mostly on locally-sold produce.

Transportation: Since World War II, the Yukon has become increasingly connected with the rest of the world. Until the 1940s, most travel was by river, in sternwheeler steamboats. The construction of the Alaska Highway during World War II made automobile travel more important. As of the early twenty-first century, the Yukon has over 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) of all-weather roads. Around 1,600 kilometers of these are covered with gravel, while another 1,900 or so are covered with a bituminous surface. Only about 250 kilometers are paved.

The Alaska Highway’s surface is completely covered with pavement or a bituminous surface, making it suitable both for commercial traffic and casual tourists. Other main roads include the Dempster Highway and the South Klondike Highway; the latter connects the Yukon to the port city of Skagway, Alaska.

Water travel remains important; mining companies can use rivers to transport their products to market on the Pacific coast. The Alaska Marine Highway System carries vehicular and passenger traffic aboard ferries to British Columbia and Washington State.

There are four major airports and many aerodromes and bushplane strips throughout Yukon, as well as numerous aerodrome radio stations. The largest airport is Whitehorse International Airport, which handles tens of thousands of passengers each year.

GOVERNMENT & HISTORY

Government: The Yukon received territorial status in 1898, at the height of the Klondike Gold Rush. As a territory rather than a province, the Yukon does not have full self-government. In the 2000s and 2010s, however, the Canadian government has given greater responsibility for local matters such as health care and natural resources management, social services, and education.

The elected territorial legislature is the nineteen-member Legislative Assembly. Major political parties include the Yukon Party, the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Liberal Party. The territory is represented in the federal Parliament in Ottawa by one Member of Parliament and one Senator.

The head of state, appointed by the Prime Minister, is the Territorial Commissioner. The Commissioner formerly served as chief executive, but this role has now been taken over by the Premier.

A key political issue is whether the Yukon should become a province. Another important issue relates to the various First Nations’ land claims and desire for more self-government.

History: For thousands of years, the area now known as the Yukon Territory has been home to the various native groups known as First Nations. These groups were all part of the Na-Dene language group, and belonged to the Tlinglit and Athabaskan cultures. Major tribes included the Gwitch'in, or Loucheaux, who gave the name "Yuk-un-ah" ("great river") to the territory’s namesake river. They emigrated from Asia to North America between 10,000 and 25,000 years ago, during the last ice age, over the ancient land-bridge known as Beringia.

Europeans arrived in the eighteenth century. The first to arrive were the Russians, exploring the Pacific Northwest and stopping along what is now the coast of Alaska. Naval captain Vitus Bering visited Alaska in 1741. The Russians eventually established fur trading posts and other colonies throughout the region.

Alexander Mackenzie (1764–1820), who worked for the North West Company of Montreal, explored the Yukon region in the late 1780s. In 1789, using information from natives, he traveled down the river which now bears his name and discovered the Arctic Ocean. Another important early explorer was Sir John Franklin, who reached the Yukon’s Arctic coast in 1825.

Traders, missionaries, and whalers all began arriving in the mid-nineteenth century. The Hudson’s Bay Company set up several trading posts (Fort Yukon and Fort Selkirk) in the 1840s, hoping to trade with the First Nation groups for furs. The HBC faced fierce rivalry from other European traders, the Americans, and occasionally with the First Nations. Catholic and Anglican missionaries began arriving in the 1860s, often using trading posts as their headquarters. In the late 1880s, American whalers from Alaska began operating off of Herschel Island.

Gold prospectors began arriving in the late nineteenth century. In 1895, the Dominion Government sent the North West Mounted Police (NWMP) to the Yukon to maintain order among the prospectors. The NWMP were already policing the Northwest Territories, which included present-day Alberta and Saskatchewan. Thanks to the influx of people from the Gold Rush, the Yukon was organized as a separate territory in 1898, with the mining town of Dawson as territorial capital.

The Gold Rush had ended by the early twentieth century, however, and population declined from around 16,000 to below 10,000. Yet even after the Gold Rush ended, the Yukon’s economic importance remained. Large-scale mining operations used dredges to obtain precious metals, such as silver, from the ground. Fur trapping became an important industry as well.

The Yukon’s next great boom came during Canada's involvement in World War II (1939–45), when the United States began building the Alaska Highway as a strategic route for troops and war materials. Whitehorse, located on the highway’s route, became a major economic center. After the war, it became the new provincial capital. The aboriginal peoples became a minority population in their own homeland, due to the arrival of non-native workers. The Canadian Oil (CANOL) pipeline, another US wartime project, helped improve military supplies of petroleum.

Mining continued to grow in importance after the war, though the industry suffered from low prices and the general economic depression of the 1980s. Though mining remains the major industry, tourism, forestry, and fur trapping remain important as well.

Another important post-war development has been the issue of self-government: both for the territory as a whole, and for First Nations living in the territory. The territorial government has gradually received more autonomy from Ottawa, including control of natural resource management through the Devolution Transfer Agreement in 2001. Another major step in this process was the Yukon Act of 2003. The First Nations in the Yukon have been negotiating their land-claims with the federal government since the 1970s. The 1993 Umbrella Final Agreement put in place terms for establishing finalized land claims giving First Nations greater autonomy.

Interesting Facts

• The Yukon International Storytelling Festival was first held in Whitehorse in 1988. Native Tagish speaker and storyteller Angela Sidney, a co-founder, was inducted in 1986 into the Order of Canada.
• The Yukon has one of the longest histories of Indigenous settlement in North America. Artifacts around 20,000 years old have been discovered near the Vuntut Gwitch'in community of Old Crow, in the far north.
• The Aurora Borealis, or "northern lights," are clearly visible in the Yukon’s winter sky for much of the year.

Bibliography

Alcantara, Christopher, Kirk Cameron, and Steven Kennedy. "Assessing Devolution in the Canadian North: A Case Study of the Yukon Territory." Arctic 65.3 (2012): 328–338.

"Climate Change in the Yukon." Yukon, Government of Yukon, 2021, yukon.ca/en/climate-change-yukon#adapting-to-climate-change. Accessed 7 Jul. 2022.

Clynes, Tom. "Yukon." National Geographic 225.2 (2014): 96–119.

Government of Yukon. Government of Yukon, 2022, yukon.ca. Accessed 7 Jul. 2022.

"The History of Yukon." Travel Yukon, www.travelyukon.com/en/discover/about-yukon/history. Accessed 7 Jul. 2022.

Population Report: Second Quarter, 2021. Department of Finance, Yukon Bureau of Statistics, Government of Yukon, Nov. 2021, yukon.ca/sites/yukon.ca/files/ybs/populationq2‗2021.pdf. Accessed 7 Jul. 2022.

Wonders, William C., Nathan Coschi, and Leanna Fong. "Yukon." The Canadian Encyclopedia, Historica Canada, 5 May 2017,www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/yukon/. Accessed 23 Aug. 2018.