Irrepressible- Yukon's Martha Black

“What I wanted was not shelter and safety, but liberty and opportunity.”

At the age of 32, the unconventional spirit expressed in that statement took Martha to gold-rush-era Yukon while her first husband went off to Hawaii. Pregnant, and exhausted, she struggled over the legendary Chilkoot Pass, she fell in love with northern Canada, “this great big land” with its profusion of wildflowers, its midnight sun, its northern lights. Facing down despair during that first long, dark winter, she gave birth in a tiny Dawson cabin in January. She cooked in a mining camp, managed a sawmill, and went on to marry lawyer-politician George Black. George became Commissioner of the Yukon, making her chatelaine of Government House. In 1916, she headed off to war with the troops, serving as ‘Mother Yukon’ to soldiers in London.

After George was elected to Parliament and named Speaker of the House, she took on the role of grand hostess for Ottawa’s political scene. When George turned ill, Martha stepped in and got herself elected for Yukon, becoming only the second woman to take a seat in the House of Commons.

One of the North’s most tenacious and persevering women, Martha Black was truly irrepressible. Through her story of vulnerability, despair, comedy, joy and tragedy pulses the “Yukon spirit -Mush On!”