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Date of birth: Place of birth:
Calling:
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Photo : Les Archives du Yukon
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When Emilie Tremblay,
née Fortin, was fifteen, her family
emigrated to Cohoes, New York (U.S.). There, she
met Nolasque Tremblay whom she married on December
11, 1893. On June 16, 1894, after an eventful and
funny five-thousand mile journey, Émilie
Tremblaly arrived in Fortymile, in the Yukon. She
was the first white woman to have crossed the
Chilkoot Pass. The couple spent the winter in
Miller Creek in a little log cabin. That year,
Émilie decided to invite the miners to share
their Christmas dinner. On the menu was stuffed
rabbit, roast caribou, boiled brown beans, King
Oscar sardines, dried potatoes, butter and
sourdough bread and prune pudding. Her reputation
quickly spread throughout the Yukon. In the spring,
Émilie and her husband made a garden on the
roof of their cabin and harvested an abundance of
radishes and lettuce. From the fall of 1895 to the
spring of 1893, the Trembleys visited their
families in the United States and Quebec. They came
back by the Chilkoot pass in the middle of the Gold
Rush. In 1906, they travelled in Europe for four
months. Until 1913, Mr. and Mrs. Tremblay walked
from one mining claim to another in the Klondike.
Later, they settled in Dawson. She opened a women's
clothes store that is now an historic
building.
Émilie Tremblay was a
very courageous woman who distinguished herself by
her social involvement and her devotion to others.
She was the founder of the Ladies of the Golden
North, President of the Yukon Women Pioneers and a
life member of the Daughters of the Empire. The
numerous medals that she received and some of her
souvenirs were placed in the Saguenay Museum in
Quebec. She was godmother to 25 children in
addition to raising the daughter of her sister who
was a widow with 9 children to feed. Émilie
kept open house for travellers, missionaries and
widows. Msgr Bunoz called Émilie the "mother
of the Klondike missionnairies". During the war,
Émilie knitted 263 pairs of socks for
soldiers, in addition to the ones she gave as
gifts. A year after the death of her husband, in
1935, she visited her family and friends in Quebec
and the United States (1936-1939). In 1940, she
returned to Dawson and at the age of 68 married
Louis Lagrois in Dawson. She left her store and
moved into Mr. Lagrois's house at Grand Forks in
the Yukon. In August 1946, she went to San
Francisco to participate in the annual reunion of
old Yukoners. She spent the last years of her life
in a retirement home in Victoria, B.C.
Émilie Tremblay died on April 22, 1949, at
the age of 77. In 1985, to commemorate her
exceptional devotion to others, the authorities
named the first francophone school in the Yukon
École Émilie-Tremblay. And this is
how little Émilie from Saint-Joseph d'Alma,
the little francophone girl, marked the history of
the Yukon.
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