Yukon: Adapting to Growth and Change
Amanda Graham, Sara McPhee-Knowles, and David Silas
Introduction
The Yukon, perhaps best known in popular culture for the Klondike Gold Rush, is largely defined by its remoteness and rugged landscapes. For those who live Outside (a local colloquialism referring to anywhere out of territory), the areas they often imagine are the overwhelmingly remote and rural: mountain ranges, fast-flowing rivers, and grand vistas empty of people but bustling with wildlife. The reality of Yukon life, however, takes place in communities. This chapter explores the unique challenges and opportunities facing the Yukon, from its rapid population growth and complex governance structure to its efforts in addressing climate change and fostering sustainable development. We examine how the territory’s remoteness, rich Indigenous heritage, and evolving social landscape shape its present realities and future prospects.
Yukon Overview: The What and the Where
The geographically vast territory (land and water together encompass 482,443 km2) is home to 45,148 residents,i 79% of whom live in the capital city, Whitehorse.ii As of December 2023, the Yukon surpassed the Northwest Territories as the most populated territory.1 All Yukon communities are both northern and remote by most standards. However, in local contexts, there are significant differences between Whitehorse, the capital city where most residents live, and the smaller, more far-flung communities.
Beyond Whitehorse and area, there are 17 communities: Beaver Creek, Burwash Landing, Carcross, Carmacks, Dawson City, Destruction Bay, Faro, Haines Junction, Johnson’s Crossing, Mayo, Mendenhall, Old Crow, Pelly Crossing, Ross River, Tagish, Teslin, and Watson Lake. Fourteen are small with fewer than 600 residents, ranging from 60 in Destruction Bay to 596 in Carmacks. Overall, about 22% of the Yukon’s population identifies as Indigenous, many of whom live in the communities.iii Ten have majority Indigenous populations, half ranging from 70–80% and half from 50–60%.iv Four have Indigenous populations below 30%.4 Three have more than a thousand: Dawson City, located 538 km northwest of Whitehorse on the Klondike Highway, is home to about 2,370 residents; Watson Lake has just over 1,500 people and is located 454 km south-east of Whitehorse on the Alaska Highway; and Haines Junction, 159 km up the Alaska Highway at the edge of Kluane National Park, has about 1,050 residents.v
Interestingly, the word rural is rarely used to describe those living outside of Whitehorse; instead, these smaller settlements are referred to collectively as “the communities.” Over time the Yukon has become increasingly urbanized; between 1956 and 2020, the percentage living in rural areas declined from 78.9% to 21.7%.vi Most of this shift is due to population growth in Whitehorse; the populations in the smaller communities have tended to be relatively stable over time.4 The average population change over the past five years in communities outside of Whitehorse (including Mendenhall and Johnson’s Crossing) is 1.2%, with the largest losses in Beaver Creek (–14.0%), and the five “other” communities (–14.1%), and with the greatest gains in Faro (10.5%), Mendenhall (9.4%), and Haines Junction (8.8%). The remaining communities averaged about 2.7% growth.vii Whitehorse, as the capital and hub for services, increasingly skews overall Yukon data, and dominates the conversation about territorial needs — even though day-to-day life in the communities looks very different.
Contemporary Yukon life features a high level of services despite its remoteness, particularly when compared to the other two territories. This is largely because of its land and air links and its digital connectivity. There is an established and extensive highway network with connections to Alaska, the Northwest Territories, and Northern BC; every community has road access except for Old Crow, which is fly-in only but occasionally linked by winter road. Public commercial transportation between Whitehorse and the communities is quite limited. There is no regular commercial bus line running to the communities, though summer service runs between Whitehorse, Carcross, and Skagway, and local companies may offer service on a charter basis. To overcome the lack, for example, Liard First Nation and Champagne and Aishihik First Nations both operate bus services: one on a regular schedule and the other when there is sufficient demand. There is year-round scheduled air service to Calgary, Edmonton, Kelowna, and Victoria, and seasonally to Yellowknife, Ottawa, and Toronto directly from Whitehorse, with more local links to Dawson City, Old Crow, and Inuvik.viii Other airlines connect Whitehorse to hub cities like Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver. For some 20 years, Condor has offered summertime non-stop flights between Whitehorse and Frankfurt, Germany. This service is suspended until 2026 while the main airport runway is repaved.ix
Online connectivity is improving; every community has cellular and data services within its limits and several communities have fibre to homes. In mid-2024, Northwestel, the foremost telecommunications provider in the North, announced it would soon be owned by Sixty North Unity, a consortium of northern Indigenous communities, becoming the “largest telecommunications company worldwide with full Indigenous ownership.” There is enthusiasm for the change and its goal “to bridge the digital divide and … address the regional disparities in accessing high quality telecommunications services.”x Recently, Starlink satellite Internet has become available, which has broad implications, especially for remote work and education. Yukon University’s Ayamdigut campus in Whitehorse offers the largest selection of programs, in person and online. Its 13 community campuses, including one at the Whitehorse Correctional Centre, offer academic, vocational, and continuing education programming and link community students to Whitehorse academic programs and supports.xi
Other essential services are sometimes limited. Yukon Government (YG) maintains offices for a wide variety of services in the communities. These include territorial agent, school, public library, nursing station, social services, etc. The post office is an important service, particularly in the age of Amazon. The challenge is, of course, the same as for other remote and rural areas: the cost of providing services, the difficulty of attracting suitable providers and the challenge of high employee turnover in some fields. Energy is expensive and electricity easily disrupted. Food and food security is an issue. Several communities have trading-post-style general stores, where prices are higher and selection less than in full-service grocery stores. All these deficiencies lead to long and expensive treks into Whitehorse for essentials. In the communities, incomes tend to skew lower, and costs of essential goods and services (other than housing) are often higher. First Nations and municipal governments are working to lower the cost of living in various ways including local farms and solar electricity projects.
One area where the erosion of services is particularly acute in the communities is in access to health care. Staff shortages over the summer and fall of 2023 prompted rolling closures in health centres in Beaver Creek, Teslin, Pelly Crossing and Ross River.xii Apart from Whitehorse General Hospital with a full range of services, only Dawson City and Watson Lake have small community hospitals. Otherwise, communities are served by 12 community health centres staffed by nurses offering clinic hours for primary care and 24-hour emergency services. They serve as points of delivery for many community health programs, such as well-baby programs, immunizations, adult health, etc., and provide space for visiting doctor clinics. They are under pressure.
The consequences of limited and disrupted health care services have made adequate mental health supports difficult to secure, a potential tragedy in the face of a persistent opioid crisis in many communities. YG released a mental wellness strategy in 2016 and, in 2018, established four mental wellness and substance use “hubs” in Dawson City, Carmacks, Haines Junction, and Watson Lake to make response and counselling services more accessible.xiii In 2024, after consultation with First Nations and health agencies, legislation passed that will create a new health authority, Shäw Kwä’ą/Health and Wellness Yukon/Santé et mieux-être Yukon, to offer health services in ways intended to “put people first,” as the report title states.xiv
For much of its time as a territory, the Yukon was governed by a distant federal government, and there were competing movements in the 1970s YFNs for land claims and a settler political movement for provincial-style government.xv Governance in the Yukon could now be characterized as hyper-local. As of 2003, there are eight municipal governments, 11 self-governing First Nations, and a territorial government with province-like devolved powers.xvi About 42% of those working in the territory are employed by one of the four levels of government present here,xvii which contrasts with about 21% in the provinces.xviii This complex map of entities has resulted in governance structures involving multiple jurisdictions including federal, territorial, self-governing First Nations, Indian Act First Nations, and municipal governments, governing a small population. This has led to collaboration challenges for wicked problems such as the opioid crisis, climate change, and emergency planning and response.xix
An Overview of Remote Realities in the Yukon
The Yukon, then, is facing a tangle of challenges whose origins are natural, — climate change comes immediately to mind — social, and economic. The effects of climate change have been many in the North: melting permafrost, changed and changing precipitation and moisture regimes, earlier onset of spring and later start of winter. We are seeing more forest fires, more flooding, more landslides and ground slumping, the treeline is moving up the mountains and getting denser, the tundra is becoming shrubbier, roads are getting bumpier. At the time when the pressures on the land and on the renewable resources that we hope will sustain us are increasing, more people are coming to the Yukon. Meeting the needs and supporting the aspirations, visions, and goals of all Yukoners — First Nations, settlers, and newcomers — will challenge the territory’s physical and social infrastructure.
The population of the Yukon increased by 3.3% between December 2022 and December 2023. This is not a new phenomenon. In the decade between 2013 and 2023, the Yukon population grew by 26.1% (about 9,500 people). That influx resulted in an increase in the Whitehorse area of just over 29%. Dawson City saw a 20% increase, and Haines Junction one of 25%. Small communities, too, saw gains, though they were less dramatic. Some of the increase is international migration in the form of family reunification or international students. In 2023, Yukon gained 234 people that way.xx And population growth will continue. According to Yukon Bureau of Statistics population projections through to 2045, while annual growth is expected to slow over the next 21 years, forecasts predict a population of between 48,280 and 55,340 by 2030. In the longer term, projected population could range from 55,150 to 80,340.xxi
The population pressures are already being felt, most notably in limited availability and cost of housing, amplified by higher interest rates. Employers point to the lack of housing and expensive rents as a barrier to attracting and retaining suitable staff. Homelessness is worsened by high costs of living. There is much talk and some action. Regular Yukon Housing Summits of builders, officials, and activists have discussed such issues as the housing supply, building challenges and housing vulnerable individuals. Since 2019, hundreds of units have been planned and built. New neighbourhoods are being platted and zoned in communities across the territory. Affordable housing projects are underway in Whitehorse and in the communities, many of them projects of First Nations or partnerships with Indigenous housing developers. For example, federal funding supported three First Nations to build or renovate homes.xxii The case study below highlights the remarkably successful housing program of one of them, the Liard First Nation (LFN).
Health care is deeply affected. The Department of Health and Social Services, Health Human Resources Strategy, with its five pillars — Retain, Recruit, Plan, Innovate, and Learn — is the latest step in the larger plan “to better ensure that Yukoners have access to the health care services they need, when and where they need them” in the communities and in the city.xxiii There is, as elsewhere, a critical shortage of family doctors. The health care system needs people, particularly in the communities, but the lack of housing and, often, the realities of a move to a small community where your patients are your neighbours, are formidable barriers. People live with inadequate primary and mental health care. Demand for Yukon University health-care programs is high, and the university is part of the Strategy conversations, especially those about enhanced training and education of health-care professionals.xxiv Long wait times and overburdened emergency rooms are challenges to overcome here, too.
Increasing population in a time of climate change stretches the capacity of civil infrastructure, including the energy system. Demand for electricity, for buildings, vehicles and industry is increasing. YG’s climate change policy relies on renewable energy to give the territory its “clean future,”xxv and historically, renewables, primarily hydro, have provided more than 90% of Yukon’s electricity annually, but the winters are the problem. Yukon Energy aims to partner with YFNs and development corporations to fill the “winter gap” with alternative sources.xxvi Planning is underway to reduce the territory’s reliance on rented diesel generators and to secure the electricity needed in the communities for years to come.
Case Study: Liard First Nation Housing
The LFN is providing sustainable livelihoods for its 1,400 citizens. One of the four Kaska Nations, the LFN has long occupied a vast region in Northern British Columbia and southeastern Yukon. The region lies between the Coast and Rocky mountains. Known as the Kaska Dena, the nation and its people reside primarily in the towns of Watson Lake, YT and Lower Post, BC. The LFN are not signatories to the Umbrella Final Agreement (May 29, 1993), the framework for finalizing the individual comprehensive modern agreements with the 14 Yukon First Nations.xxvii,xxviii They, along with White River First Nation and Ross River Dena Council, are still governed under the federal Indian Act (1867).
In Northern Canada, adequate housing in Indigenous communities has always been a problem. LFN is taking advantage of federal funding to take a visionary approach to addressing the housing crisis in their communities. Chief Stephen Charlie has a vision and a plan to become the “1st First Nation North of 60 without a housing crisis.”1 This is important to him and to his community members. Seeing this as a call to action, LFN leadership established their own Indigenous housing company, aptly named Heartland Timber Homes, created and guided by Kaska First, their business corporation. The housing project is intended to meet the needs of citizens and eventually eliminate the need to wait for external funding. Chief Charlie and his leadership see this as an act of self-government without the label.
Liard leadership know that housing is key for Kaska families, because a “feeling of cultural loss [is] apparent for people struggling to find and maintain affordable housing in rural areas.”xxix Good housing supports good lives. Perreault et al., looking at the “relationship between living in overcrowded conditions and the sense of home,” describe the sense of home as a feeling of connectedness, including connection to homeland and community.xxx In 2019, the UN Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, Leilani Farha, wrote that “land rights, which are of critical importance to indigenous peoples and feature prominently in the Declaration, are also connected to the right to housing” and pointed out that as far back as 1991 “the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights […] stated that the right to housing encompasses much more than four walls and a roof and includes the right to a secure place to live in peace and dignity, including access to land as an entitlement.”xxxi The First Nation’s housing project is validated, too, by the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Article 23.2 establishes that “Indigenous peoples have the right to own, use, develop and control the lands, territories and resources that they possess by reason of traditional ownership or other traditional occupation or use, as well as those which they have otherwise acquired.”xxxii
The LFN approach to eliminating their housing crisis was first to reduce supply-chain problems by using local raw logs harvested from their unceded traditional territories. Then, they created 50 new jobs and set up a production plant. Heartland uses the wood and the people to manufacture kit-set timber homes that are affordable and easy to build, strong and long lasting, and, importantly, environmentally friendly.xxxiii Framing can be accomplished in five days. This is development that is sustainable.
Sustainable development is a path forward for rural First Nations as they become more aware, and (re)connected to their culture. For First Nations, sustainable development is not a novelty, but a practice rooted in ancient ways. As the LFN leadership promotes Indigenous-led, innovative solutions for housing their citizens and their families, they secure their rights as Indigenous peoples affirmed in UNDRIP Article 21 where “Indigenous peoples have the right, without discrimination, to the improvement of their economic and social conditions, including in the areas of education, employment, vocational training and retaining, housing, sanitation, health and social security.”32 This community-led approach to housing based on local knowledge and innovations promotes economic development beyond Whitehorse and creates sustainable livelihoods and promotes well-being in the Indigenous communities of Watson Lake, YT and Lower Post, BC.
Conclusion: Future of the Yukon
The popular image of the Yukon comes from historical events like the Gold Rush and expansive landscapes; however, life here takes place in communities. As described above, there is tension between the fast-growing capital city of Whitehorse, where most of the well-paying public administration jobs are located, and the smaller communities, where employment opportunities and services are fewer. Here, as across Canada, health care, opioid use, cost of living and housing, public safety and disaster preparedness, and climate change dominate public conversations about government policy. To support long-term sustainability and well-being in the Yukon, policies at all levels should focus on those common areas that are amplified by the rapid population growth: the shortage of health care providers, affordable housing, the cost of energy, and investing in infrastructure and social programs.
In the Yukon, these concerns are often made more pressing and difficult to manage because of the governance landscape, the small size of the communities that are the seats of First Nations governments, and the largely unavoidable pull that Whitehorse, as city and capital, exerts. So, while high costs of living, for example, are a fact of life across the country, those costs are even higher in the communities, which are particularly affected by high fuel prices and the impossibility of economies of scale, as goods must be shipped long distances and services often cannot reach a critical mass. As well, because of their remoteness and small scale, the communities may not benefit much or quickly enough from typical policy actions like minimum-wage increases, subsidies and relief payments, or new regulations. Multiple jurisdictions complicate matters. In the 25 years since the Umbrella Final Agreement launched the territory onto an exciting new path, the Yukon has been engaged in a complex renegotiation socially and politically. A new landscape is emerging out of the difficult learning that is yet underway, as First Nations governments in the communities and in Whitehorse expand their capacities, elaborate visions for their lands and people, and settle into the jurisdictions and responsibilities the modern treaties established. Developing policy solutions aimed at improving conditions in the communities involves genuine, authentic engagement with the 11 YFN governments. Going forward, it seems likely that the Yukon will see more consultation and collaboration, which could lead to innovative outcomes. Like many Canadian jurisdictions, YG is interested in promoting both broad economic prosperity and Indigenous economic reconciliation.
To achieve sustainability in the Yukon, local, innovative approaches should be encouraged and supported by the larger bureaucracies in Whitehorse, and Ottawa as well. As we saw in the case study on housing in LFN, many truly forward-looking policy solutions are being generated not in the service-rich capital of Whitehorse, but in the smaller, First Nation-led communities, where constraints are encouraging innovative approaches to solving global problems at the local level. Micro-energy projects, solar farms, local food-growing projects, including greenhouses and community farms, entrepreneur promotion, small-business supports, and the like are the hope for the future. Sustainable development has been a First Nations traditional skill since time immemorial. We do well to keep that in mind.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Gord Curran, Instructor/Coordinator for the Teslin campus of Yukon University and the Mayor of Teslin, for his invaluable contributions to this chapter.
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