In 1965, Eleanor Millard came to the Yukon for a summer job as a barmaid in Dawson City. Entranced with the Yukon's beauty, history, and its First Nations, she stayed.

 

 She was Northern Area Social Worker covering several communities, one accessible only by plane. In 1974, she was elected MLA for the Northern Yukon and became Minister of Education. Now with two Master's degrees, one in adult education and one in teaching English as a second language, Eleanor works in social and educational positions and in consulting, mostly with First Nations in small communities. She lives in Carcross, a First Nation community south of Whitehorse.

 

 

Her first book, River Child, was published in 2002 and is a collection of nineteen linked stories that explore cross-cultural conflicts in the Klondike.

 

 

Summer Snow is a novel set in the powerful geography of Northern Canada and in the ambiguity of cross-cultural relations. It is peopled with vibrant characters who form a large part of the lead character Amanda's life, and who are entangled in Amanda's dedication to her daughter. It is a story of love, hope, and acceptance.

 

Eleanor published a second printing of Journeys Outside and In in 2015. Her candid memoir explores subjects ranging from her travels to the Caribbean and Central America to her time spent as a social worker, adult educator, MLA, and Minister in the Yukon Government.

 

 

Crossroads is Eleanor's latest writing, published in 2017. It is fiction based on her experience working in an addictions treatment centre in Whitehorse. The setting is 1983. This sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic story has cross-cultural complications with the beginning of land claims and self-government negotiations by First Nations and theories of addictions being tested.

 

 

Eleanor has presented fiction writing workshops and has done readings in the Yukon, NWT, B.C., and Alaska. Contact her for more details.