Jackie Pierce, the Star’s owner and publisher since 2002, died Wednesday at Whitehorse General Hospital. She was 83.

Pierce’s ties to the newspaper go back more than half a century, and she blazed a unique trail in the Canadian newspaper industry.

In 1967, with two big dogs, a nine-year-old daughter and a toddler and baby, both in diapers, Pierce and her then-husband, Mike, made the move north from Hayward, Calif.

They drove the Alaska Highway in a ’65 International Scout and a flatbed truck with a hand-built camper on it. Destination: Alaska.

Along the way, they were held up in Whitehorse, awaiting the arrival of parts for their truck. There were job offers left and right, and the people were very friendly to the travellers.

When the truck was fixed, they carried on to Alaska. After about a week, they decided to return to the small Canadian town they fell in love with – Whitehorse, becoming landed immigrants several months later.

With a completely new lifestyle, using a wood stove and hauling water, they survived the first winter, and made Whitehorse home.

In 1972, with four kids at home and another winter coming, Pierce decided it was time to go to work.

She knocked on then-Star publisher Bob Erlam’s door and convinced him he needed her – and would not regret hiring her on the spot.

He added her phone number to the “hundreds and hundreds” of others he had written up on the wall, and she left the building thinking she would have to begin her job search once again the next day.

“I thought, ‘there’s no way this guy is going to hire me,’ ” she said.

Instead, she received a phone call the next day that saw her become the Star’s manager of advertising – the only person in the department at that time.

As the years passed, Erlam became a mentor as she watched him run the business. He passed on plenty of advice – which, admiringly, she didn’t always take.

He had his own way of telling people what he thought, Pierce said, recalling him saying at one time how much he could get done by coming to work at 5:30 a.m.

“That was his little hint,” she said.

As she told him at the time, she came into work on Saturdays. Through the week, she had to make sure her kids got to school, and she couldn’t make it to the paper until 8:45 a.m.

Suggestions were also made to the reporters, and in some cases, they were harsher than others.

In 1979, Pierce was offered a 25-per-cent share in the company.

In 1982, she took over as managing editor when Erlam and wife Rusty decided to move south, trusting Pierce with the day-to-day operation of the business.

Erlam was always supportive of Pierce’s decisions.

She recalled in the mid-1980s, as the economy was starting to pick up following the 1982 closure of the Faro lead-zinc mine, Erlam gave her the go-ahead to purchase $200,000 worth of computer equipment for the Star.

“We had to do something to keep up,” she said.

In 2002, Pierce bought out Erlam to become the only woman in Canada to be the sole owner/publisher of an independent Canadian daily at that time, when there was just a handful of independent dailies left in the country.

She had purchased a newspaper that’s been publishing in three different centuries.

Always hands-on, keeping up with ever-changing technological advances, Pierce was once told by a Star sales representative: “Jackie, you are the most tech-savvy great-gramma I’ve ever met!”

She had a lot to be proud of, grateful for the dedicated employees who kept everything going, even in the most difficult circumstances.

The Star has a handful of employees who have been on staff for 35 to 45 years.

The late newspaperwoman was always proud that the Star never missed an issue “come hell or high water”; the paper had to get out.

One day in the 1980s, that meant the pressman being long-distance on the phone to Chicago for several hours, trying to sort out the repairs to a breakdown. There was a Star that day, albeit late.

Pierce always viewed the task of delivering the current news and events to her community as a profound responsibility she never wavered from.

She liked to proudly boast about her large, growing family.

Her five children went on to add 16 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren, most of whom still reside in Whitehorse.

In 2020, Pierce offered some reflections upon the paper’s 120th birthday.

“In my 48 years at the Whitehorse Star, I have seen six editors and countless reporters, advertising staff members, production personnel and paper boys and girls pass through our doors,” she said.

“I’ve been at the Star since 1972, and have gone through a few economic booms and busts over the years. Spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, this is another one.

“As far as surviving goes, it’s been rough, but we’re doing our best under the circumstances, and, during this time, so is everyone else.

“I commend all of the employees at the Star for making it possible to stay safe at their jobs while continuing to put the newspaper on the street. They’ve all handled the COVID situation very well.”

As her immediate family describes her, Pierce was a strong, independent woman, determined to live life on her own terms, right to the end.

Jim Butler, who Pierce appointed as editor 35 years ago this month, said his easygoing relationship with the longtime publisher was one of the elements that has kept him with the company for 42 years.

“Like all editors with their publishers, I often pestered her for more resources for editorial purposes over the years, but I can honestly say we never had a major quarrel in all those 42 years,” he said Thursday.

“I worked with media managers with a very exaggerated sense of self-importance during my Quebec days, and it was a breath of fresh air to make the transition to someone who had no ego and was so down-to-Earth.

“We were always in complete agreement on the importance of publishing as much local news as possible for the community we serve, and in making Friday’s op-ed section a fiesty forum for a wide spectrum of sharply divergent views, no matter how we may have personally regarded those opinions.”

The Star family, Butler added, “is in mourning, because we’ve lost the type of true leader and strong, dedicated newspaperwoman you simply won’t see anymore in the evolving social media world of 2023.

“It takes absolute grit and determination to manage a company in such a turbulent industry, in such a remote and high-cost location, with so many incredible economic challenges in the territory over the decades.”

In a personal sense, Butler said, he always admired Pierce’s fierce devotion to her family, adding he will miss her unassailable sense of humour and their discussions of historic and contemporary U.S. presidential politics.

“We were so saddened to hear of Jackie’s passing,” Bob Erlam’s son, Paul, and his partner, Maryann Campbell, said Thursday.

“She was such a central figure in so many people’s lives. Proud matriarch of the entire Pierce clan, of course, but she also played a pivotal role at the Star.

“Over the years, she touched the lives of countless up-and-coming young people,” the couple added.

“Budding journalists, graphic designers, sales agents, pressmen … she gave them all a chance to learn and progress.

“We have so many great memories of working with Jackie back in the day … early mornings, late nights, bad coffee and lots of laughs.

“And always, Jackie projecting her calm but resolute, ‘let’s get this done by deadline’ vibe. I think we just thought she would be there forever.

“She will be missed by everyone who knew her.”

Former Star production manager Linda Burns began working with Pierce in the early 1970s.

“Jackie was from California and looked the part … some sort of hybrid hippie earth mother, laid-back Bay area girl,” Burns said today from Vancouver.

“She was a young mother with four of her five children by this point and a long braid down her back. Later, she cut her hair, and the intact braid hung above her desk at the Star for years.”

The pair would often lunch together at Mimi’s Pizza across from the old Star building on Main Street.

“She would amuse me with her stories of her teenage years when she worked in a carwash and hung out with a crowd her folks were not particularly fond of,” Burns recalled.

“I would often stop for coffee at her home at the Carcross Cutoff, which was fairly chaotic with kids and dogs and other pets running around. She shared tales of driving the Alaska Highway in the old International Scout full of kids and ‘throwing bottles into the back seat’ for them.”

In 1978, Burns and Pierce travelled to Honolulu together for a vacation.

“Despite having four sisters of my own, Jackie was an honourary fifth,” Burns said.

“Jackie became an owner of the Star and grew both the business and her family over the years. Counting partners, spouses and friends, our slow-pitch team always had enough players.”

Burns left the Yukon in 1988 and returned for a visit in 2009.

“I was fortunate enough to spend some time with Jackie,” she said. “It was just like old times … we picked up right where we left off.

“I will always remember Jackie fondly, and my heart goes out to her family and all who knew her,” Burns said.

Former Yukon News owner Stephen Robertson and his late father, Dave, were “friendly rivals” of the Star for many years.

“It is the end of a very long and admirable career in a very difficult and challenging industry in what is often a very difficult and challenging community,” Stephen said today.

“In business, we competed vigourously, but I have great respect for Jackie’s endurance in the newspaper business.”

The Star was founded in 1899 by the publisher of the Bennett Sun, Percy Scharshmidt.

Upon the completion of the White Pass and Yukon Route railway from Carcross to Whitehorse, he was prompted to move to Whitehorse, which became the transportation hub of the North.

Although he published both the Star and the Sun at the same time, the Sun finally ceased to exist.

Bob Erlam died in 2009.

The 123-year-old Star will continue to be owned and operated by the Pierce family.

Illegitimus non carborundum.