Dawson loses a tireless volunteer

Dawson City has lost a colourful individual and an important source of volunteer energy with last Sunday’s passing of Madeleine Gould.

DAWSON CITY – Dawson City has lost a colourful individual and an important source of volunteer energy with last Sunday’s passing of Madeleine Gould.

At 88, Gould succumbed after a brief struggle with cancer.

During the last several weeks, she had been at home, surrounded by a constant flow of family and friends.

Tributes have been arriving from all over the country as people have become aware of her passing.

From Australia, musher and geologist Peter Ledwidge wrote to say, “Madeleine was one of the good souls in this world….”

Midnight Sun Hotel owner Nancy Wing wrote “her spirit and her style will be missed…”

Former Berton House writer Charlotte Gray recalled her as “a vivid personality.”

One-time town administrator Andre Carrell called her “a true Yukon Pioneer – and she had the moxie to be recognized as such.”

Carrell was referring to Gould’s nine-year struggle to become a recognized member of the Yukon Order of Pioneers (YOOP), a battle which began in 1987 and went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled against her in 1996.

During all this time, she was supported by her husband, John, who offered this tribute to her on the occasion of his 90th birthday last June.

“This lady here has been my wife, and she’s been fantastic, allowing me to do all these things and helping tremendously.”

He described the difficult life they lived out on the creeks while he was still mining regularly during the summers for 23 years at Nugget Hill, where there were no amenities.

“She raised three children ... was a great mother and she cooked for the people who were working with myself and my father – and she’s not a pioneer? I don’t believe it.”

Pierre Berton didn’t believe it either. When Madeleine Gould was a guest on the TV show Front Page Challenge, on which he was a panelist, at the height of her national notoriety in the early 1990s, he stripped off his YOOP insignia in protest.

Gould was a tireless volunteer, as evidenced by the citation on her Commissioner’s Award for Volunteer Service, given in 2000.

It was presented “for her immeasurable volunteer contributions to the boards of the Dawson City Radio Society, Dawson City Library, Robert Service School and the Klondike Sun.”

It could also have mentioned the Humane Society Dawson and half a dozen other organizations.

One of her many volunteer tasks was to monitor the elementary halls of the school during lunch breaks, feeling the teachers deserved some time to eat their lunch too.

She was a member of the Dawson Community Library Board for many years and a founding member of the Sun.

Through the late 1990s and until as recently as last fall, Gould could be seen canvassing the town for recyclable bottles and cans.

She donated the money she made to a number of worthy causes, or gave the points she earned to children she felt needed some help.

When she began this task, she was riding a tricycle and towing a small trailer behind her. More recently, she used a motorized scooter for her forays around the town.

A funeral service will be held for her at 2 p.m. Saturday at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, with a reception to follow in the main floor hall.