Chapter 1 My Yukon Story

Me with my sons on our way to Anchorage Alaska!! Standing in the middle of the road!! But hey….no shortage of snow!

It feels fitting to begin this multi‑part Yukon series in February — the month when Whitehorse always seemed to come alive just to help everyone push through the long, cold winter.

This will be a story of courage, community, beauty, hardship, and the unexpected gifts that come from saying yes to a wild northern adventure.

There’s no way to tell the whole story in one post, so I’m sharing it chapter by chapter.

Settle in — this is where it all begins.

I arrived in Whitehorse after spending the summer working at a lodge (now closed). After the summer in the Yukon, I had no desire to go home, so I talked to my then‑13‑year‑old son. He agreed to come with me on one condition: if he absolutely hated it, we would leave. Fair enough.

Landing in Whitehorse, knowing not a single soul, was honestly pretty scary. Thankfully, my boss had introduced me to a friend of his who happened to have a place for us to rent. That’s where our Yukon chapter began. We were both nervous, both unsure… and both a little braver than we realized. To this day, we laugh about how wild that decision was — and how he actually agreed to it!

After unpacking on our first night, we went to McDonald’s for dinner. Much to my son’s horror, they were out of fries. Imagine being 13, in a strange new city, and that is your welcome. Now it’s another one of those laughable moments, but at the time it felt really bad.

Lucky for me, getting a job was the easy part, so my first priority was settling in and making sure my son felt safe and comfortable. I still marvel at how quickly he adapted. On his very first day of school, he met a boy who very quickly became his best friend. I met the parents, who immediately offered to help since I’d be working long hours. As a mom, I was terrified about how hard this transition might be for him — but I needn’t have worried. Those two boys were inseparable. When he wasn’t at their house, his friend was at ours. To this day, I don’t know what I would have done without that family. I am forever grateful.

I’m not here to say everything was perfect — far from it. I’ll never forget the day it started to snow. I worked on the opposite end of town from where we lived, and I had no idea how dramatically the weather could change from one side of Whitehorse to the other.

I called my son and asked him to shovel the driveway. He phoned me back several times, sounding more and more overwhelmed by how fast the snow was piling up. I glanced out the window at work and thought, Yes, it’s snowing… but nothing to panic about.

Well.

When I finally drove home at 11 pm, I realized very quickly that the amount of snow at our place was easily triple what we’d gotten at work. My poor boy was cold, exhausted, and completely frustrated — and suddenly I understood why.

We made hot chocolate, had a few laughs once the shock wore off, and called it a night. It was our very first introduction to the Yukon’s way of keeping you on your toes… and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

And with that, our Yukon adventure truly began.

Stay tuned for Part 2. coming Monday, Feb 9

Until next time,

Darlene