This article is to acknowledge the contribution to Yukon history that former Yukoners Mike and Jocelyn Rourke, along with their children Matthew and Gillian, have provided in their guidebooks for travellers on Yukon rivers. These books are excellent sources of information for anyone interested in Yukon history, particularly along the rivers. I use them as references for my own history research.
A few years ago when looking for historical remnants along the Yukon River, my travelling partner Ron Chambers and I stopped at a house to meet the owners, Andrew and Laurie Barker. In the course of the conversation about what Ron and I were doing, Andrew brought out Mike Rourke’s Yukon River guidebook. I have looked at other river guidebooks over the years, but for some reason had never picked up one of the Rourkes’.
In thumbing through the book, I was impressed with what I was seeing. There were descriptions and historical photos of people, places and activities along the river, as well as photos the Rourkes had taken of the landscape and historical remnants. There was information from interviews they had done with a number of people who had personal knowledge of the river and its history.
In the Yukon River guidebook I recognized some of the same history information that I had researched in archives and other sources. The Rourkes had also made the effort on their river trips to investigate the sites they had researched, some of which were the same places I was now exploring. Furthermore, they had done research and site visits on most of the popular boating rivers in the southern half of the Yukon, and much of it without benefit of the wealth of information now available on the internet and helpful technologies such as GPS and Google Earth.
I eventually contacted Mike and learned that he and Jocelyn had lived in the Yukon for 10 years in the 1970s and ‘80s, about half of it in Faro. During this time, they spent many hundreds of hours in the Yukon Archives researching the history of places along the rivers.
Over the past 40+ years Mike estimates he has travelled more than 30,000 kilometers on rivers in the Yukon as well as the Northwest Territories, northern British Columbia, and Alaska. Jocelyn joined him on many of the trips and has logged about 18,000 of these kilometers. Their son Matthew started going along at the age of six weeks and daughter Gillian at age three.
Mike and Jocelyn, now living near Prince George, BC, formed a company called Rivers North Publications to produce the river guidebooks, beginning in 1983. Their daughter Gillian also contributes to the production of them, primarily in the mapping. The Rourkes have produced guidebooks for the following Yukon rivers:
Nisutlin River
Teslin River (including Yukon River to Carmacks)
Big Salmon River (including Yukon River to Carmacks)
Ross River
Pelly River
Stewart River (from Fraser Falls and including Yukon River to Dawson City)
South MacMillan River (from North Canol Road and including Pelly River to Pelly Crossing)
Yukon River – Marsh Lake to Dawson City
Yukon River – Marsh Lake to Carmacks
Yukon River – Carmacks to Dawson City
Yukon River – Dawson City to Circle, Alaska
All the Yukon River books are also available in versions with maps only to make it more affordable for all members of a group to have a copy of the maps with them. The river guidebooks are occasionally updated with new or additional information.
The guidebooks are produced on 7” x 8½” paper that is surlox-bound at the top for easy flipping of pages. This format allows the maps to be in strip form, the river shown down the pages with downstream at the top so they are oriented in the same direction you are travelling (assuming downstream). The maps have about 15 river kilometers on a page, so you can have the book open in front of you showing the charting of the river up to 30 kilometers ahead. The image below shows the sort of information contained on the map pages.
For me, what makes the Rourkes’ guidebooks exceptional is the historical information contained in the large section titled ‘Site Histories’. These tell the stories of what occurred at various places along the river and of the people that were part of the history. In addition, the site investigations describe what might still be seen at these places. The image below is an example of the information contained in the site history pages.
Near the back of the guidebooks is found general information about safe and respectful travel and camping practices, a list of rental and guiding companies that provide services for river trips, and a bibliography of the sources consulted for the historical information. As a personal touch, in the Yukon River book there is a tribute to Mike’s great-grandfather Colonel William Rourke, who came to the Yukon in 1897 as a building contractor and stayed for five years.
The Rourkes’ research, writing and production of the guidebooks is a valuable contribution to the documentation of Yukon history and making it available to interested people. This is particularly so for travellers on Yukon rivers, who might otherwise be oblivious to the activities that occurred at places they are passing by. Much of this is now hidden from the rivers due to vegetation regrowth, but the guidebooks enable these places to be learned about and explored. I don’t know of anything comparable to the work the Rourkes have done.
Their guidebooks are available in Whitehorse at Up North Adventures, Mac’s Fireweed Books, Kanoe People, Wolf Adventure Tours and Yukon Wide Adventures. In Dawson City they can be purchased at Maximilian’s Gold Rush Emporium and Dawson Trading Post. The books are also available online at www.riversnorthonline.com.