Yukon Tears and Laughter
by Joyce Yardley
Review in Island Tides newspaper by: Trysh Ashby-Rolls
Nanaimo Author Looks Back
The Nanaimo author's third book, it is a memoir of her life within the context of Yukon history, and presently in BC. As Arlene Sæun writes in her foreword, 'Ms. Yardley feels no need to define or defend her Canadian identity. She is a comfortable Canadian…'-as well she might be. In the same way as Dylan Thomas evokes memory, lived or not, in his Child's Christmas in Wales, or Charles Dickens removes us to Victorian London in A Christmas Carol, so Yardley gives us a glimpse of quintessential Canada circa 1925. In some respects it hasn't changed all that much: sausages, pancakes and maple syrup for breakfast on Christmas morning; turkey dinner with all the trimmings; friends and neighbours dropping by for a glass of wine.
In other ways the book provides a peek into history: 'Mother always had plenty of homemade ginger ale and root beer lined up in the cold room, and a delicious lemon drink she made. She kept the concentrate in gallon jars, and we added water and cream of tartar to it before drinking,' writes Yardley. 'I would still give a right arm for that recipe, but somehow it got lost over the years.' The recipe may be gone, but the author's memory remains sharp. Like being allowed to blow out the candles on the tree, fascinated by the silvery tinsel that arrived overnight thanks to Santa Claus, in whom she implicitly believed. On New Year's Eve she remembers her parents, dressed up in evening clothes, going off to a formal dance. They were, she writes, 'a stunning looking couple' who had met in England while her father was touring with a group of actors. Meeting again in Calgary after her family immigrated to Canada in 1912, the couple married in 1913.
Arriving in Whitehorse (population 300) in 1925, four children in tow, ranging in age from 7 to 10, Joyce was born a few weeks later at the old Whitehorse General Hospital. As the book progresses, Yardley takes the reader through her adolescence, when she met Gordon Yardley, whom she married at age 16 in the old log church. They would be together until his death 58 years later. During that time she raised 3 children, became a postmistress, ran a tourist lodge and trapped wolverine and lynx-all in remote places in the Yukon. This is a fascinating read, never heavy nor dull, full of humour and sorrow in the anecdotes of old timers, personal memoir, complete with black and white photos and a superbly happy ending.
'Yukon Tears and Laughter: Memories are Forever,' Joyce Yardley, Hancock House Publishers, 2005, $16.95