Tom the backroads traveller hosts this weekly meme.
August 2023 - Whitehorse Yukon
Whitehorse has these great sculptures scattered around the city.
Again I had never heard of Edith Josie, but when we met our fellow tour participants, one woman was especially delighted that our flight from Inuvik would make a stop in Old Crow. She went on to explain about Edith Josie.
Edith Josie CM (December 8, 1921 – January 31, 2010) was a Canadian writer, best known as a longtime columnist for the Whitehorse Star.
A Gwich'in, Josie was born in Eagle, Alaska, and moved to Old Crow at age 16. She earned a living selling animal skins, which her father had taught her at an early age how to trap and prepare. In her later years, Josie contributed to a community website, oldcrow.ca.
Her columns began appearing in the Whitehorse Star under the banner "Here are the News". Generally, the news consisted of when the plane came and what it brought...who was out on the trapline...where the caribou were running...and what the berry season was like. Pretty mundane stuff until you realize that for a people with only an oral tradition, this material is really as complete a record of their times as possible.
One hundred twenty miles south of the Arctic Ocean and eighty miles north of the Arctic Circle, the Yukon village of Old Crow straggles along a bluff above the Porcupine River. The 200-plus people who live there are mainly Loucheaux Indians of the Vuntut Gwich’in tribe – the “People of the Lakes.”
Old Crow is a village in transition these days but access is still only possible by air and, in summer, a riverboat named Brainstorm. At times, some of the men will leave the village to work in a mining camp but the life of the Loucheaux people has been much the same as it was a century or more ago. They pick berries. They hunt caribou for food, trap muskrats and martens and wolves for pelts to sell; in winter they put nets under the ice of the Porcupine River to catch the fish which feed the dogs which pull the sleds which take them to hunting and trapping grounds.
In summer, Old Crow is the hottest place in the Yukon, often reaching temperatures in the mid-30s C and infested with black fly. In winter the temperature can drop to -50 C before windchill. The sun does not rise at all for three weeks in winter; it does not set for two months in summer.
Her columns began appearing in the Whitehorse Star under the banner "Here are the News". Generally, the news consisted of when the plane came and what it brought...who was out on the trapline...where the caribou were running...and what the berry season was like. Pretty mundane stuff until you realize that for a people with only an oral tradition, this material is really as complete a record of their times as possible.
Edith began writing for the Star in late 1962, when Reverend James Simon and his wife came to town. His wife Sarah has been asked by Harry Boyle, then editor of the Star, to look for someone who would handle the job of “Old Crow correspondent.” Sarah Simon asked Edith Josie, because “most of the ladies had someone to look after them. Edith Josie didn’t have a husband to look after her, so I gave Edith the job.”
She wrote the way she spoke...in straightforward Gwichin-influenced English.
The editors of the Star, after a startled double-take at the items scrawled diary-style on white stationary, decided that to edit Edith Josie at all would be to destroy her journalistic charm. The column ran whenever an airplane brings it into Whitehorse from the hinterlands. Its appearance was highly dependent upon the weather in the territory.
One of her first newsletters reported on the arrival of an Anglican Bishop and his wife to hold Easter services in Old Crow. Edith writes just as she talks.
"AT 1:30 THE SERVICE WAS ON AND SURE GLAD TO HEAR EVERYTHING ABOUT JESUS, WHAT THEY DID TO HIM ON GOOD FRIDAY."
One of her first newsletters reported on the arrival of an Anglican Bishop and his wife to hold Easter services in Old Crow. Edith writes just as she talks.
"AT 1:30 THE SERVICE WAS ON AND SURE GLAD TO HEAR EVERYTHING ABOUT JESUS, WHAT THEY DID TO HIM ON GOOD FRIDAY."
Shortly thereafter she reported on the state of things at the “ratting” (muskrat trapping) grounds at Crow Flats, in muskeg country 50 miles upriver (south) form Old Crow.
JOHN JOE KAY AND HIS FAMILY AND DICK NUKON AND FAMILY CAME INTO TOWN FROM THEIR RATTING CAMP. THEY REPORTED NO RATS AROUND THERE BUT THEY SAY TOO MANY MOSQUITO. TOO BAD NO PRIZE ON MOSQUITO.
Edith lived in a two-room uninsulated log cabin at the east end of the village. The cabin was starkly furnished with a table, a couple of chairs and three beds pushed up against the rough wooden walls. It was heated by a wood stove that also is used for cooking, “and in winter it gets as cold inside as it does outside most of the time.”
Edith never married but she raised three children. For many years she shared her cabin with her two sons and daughter, her blind mother Mrs. Elizabeth Josie, her brother and his wife and their two children.
Like the other women in the village, Edith butchered and cooked the meat brought home by the men, dried spring meat for the summer, gathered berries, and tanned skins for sewing. She carried up water from the river and gathered willow branches for kindling. She was a faithful member of the Anglican Church and was active in the Women’s Auxiliary which played an important role in the community. She wrote her “News” at a huge plywood table.
AT 8:30PM I HAD BABY BOY AND HE’S 6LB. MISS EDITH JOSIE HAD BABY BOY AND I GIVE IT TO MRS. ELLEN ABEL TO HAVE HIM FOR HIS LITTLE BOY. SHE WAS VERY GLAD TO HAVE HIM CAUSE HE’S BOY. I WAS IN NURSE STATION AND MISS YOUNGS SURE TREAT ME VERY NICE. MYSELF AND BABY I REALLY THANKS HER VERY MUCH FOR HER GOOD KINDNESS TO ME.
HELICOPTER BEEN TO OLD CROW AND WENT DOWN RIVER TO CAMP.
SINCE LAST WEEK ALL THE LEAVES ARE GETTING YELLOW. THAT MEAN AUTUMN IS COMING. WHEN THE LEAVES GROW GREEN SURE NICE BUT AT FALL TIME IT’S TURN TO YELLOW – MORE BEAUTIFUL.
Eighteen months later, Edith was solvent enough to reclaim her baby son Kevin, from Mrs. Abel.
JOHN JOE KAY AND HIS FAMILY AND DICK NUKON AND FAMILY CAME INTO TOWN FROM THEIR RATTING CAMP. THEY REPORTED NO RATS AROUND THERE BUT THEY SAY TOO MANY MOSQUITO. TOO BAD NO PRIZE ON MOSQUITO.
Edith lived in a two-room uninsulated log cabin at the east end of the village. The cabin was starkly furnished with a table, a couple of chairs and three beds pushed up against the rough wooden walls. It was heated by a wood stove that also is used for cooking, “and in winter it gets as cold inside as it does outside most of the time.”
Edith never married but she raised three children. For many years she shared her cabin with her two sons and daughter, her blind mother Mrs. Elizabeth Josie, her brother and his wife and their two children.
Like the other women in the village, Edith butchered and cooked the meat brought home by the men, dried spring meat for the summer, gathered berries, and tanned skins for sewing. She carried up water from the river and gathered willow branches for kindling. She was a faithful member of the Anglican Church and was active in the Women’s Auxiliary which played an important role in the community. She wrote her “News” at a huge plywood table.
"Even now the spring has come cause it is daylight around 11 o'clock p.m. Pretty soon we won't use light for night time. Everyone glad to see plane every day. Even the same plane come in one day, they all have to go down to see what is going on and what come in on plane."
"ALBERT ABEL WENT UP RIVER SET TRAP AROUND DRIFT WOOD. HE CAME BACK. HE CAUGHT 9 MARTINS, 1 WEASEL. GEE, HE’S LUCKY MAN."Soon, the Edmonton Journal began running the News from Old Crow and, soon after that, the Fairbanks Daily News Miner took up her columns, all hand-written.
But times can be tough. Sometimes there was neither food nor money enough to make ends meet.AT 8:30PM I HAD BABY BOY AND HE’S 6LB. MISS EDITH JOSIE HAD BABY BOY AND I GIVE IT TO MRS. ELLEN ABEL TO HAVE HIM FOR HIS LITTLE BOY. SHE WAS VERY GLAD TO HAVE HIM CAUSE HE’S BOY. I WAS IN NURSE STATION AND MISS YOUNGS SURE TREAT ME VERY NICE. MYSELF AND BABY I REALLY THANKS HER VERY MUCH FOR HER GOOD KINDNESS TO ME.
HELICOPTER BEEN TO OLD CROW AND WENT DOWN RIVER TO CAMP.
SINCE LAST WEEK ALL THE LEAVES ARE GETTING YELLOW. THAT MEAN AUTUMN IS COMING. WHEN THE LEAVES GROW GREEN SURE NICE BUT AT FALL TIME IT’S TURN TO YELLOW – MORE BEAUTIFUL.
Eighteen months later, Edith was solvent enough to reclaim her baby son Kevin, from Mrs. Abel.
She was the subject of a story, "Everybody Sure Glad," by Dora Jane Hamblin in Life magazine in 1965. In 1995 Josie was made a member of the Order of Canada. The National Aboriginal Achievement Awards, now the Indspire Awards, honoured Josie for her achievements in arts in 2000.
Click here to read her autobiography.
One hundred twenty miles south of the Arctic Ocean and eighty miles north of the Arctic Circle, the Yukon village of Old Crow straggles along a bluff above the Porcupine River. The 200-plus people who live there are mainly Loucheaux Indians of the Vuntut Gwich’in tribe – the “People of the Lakes.”
Old Crow is a village in transition these days but access is still only possible by air and, in summer, a riverboat named Brainstorm. At times, some of the men will leave the village to work in a mining camp but the life of the Loucheaux people has been much the same as it was a century or more ago. They pick berries. They hunt caribou for food, trap muskrats and martens and wolves for pelts to sell; in winter they put nets under the ice of the Porcupine River to catch the fish which feed the dogs which pull the sleds which take them to hunting and trapping grounds.
In summer, Old Crow is the hottest place in the Yukon, often reaching temperatures in the mid-30s C and infested with black fly. In winter the temperature can drop to -50 C before windchill. The sun does not rise at all for three weeks in winter; it does not set for two months in summer.
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