Yukon (, ) is a territory of Canada, bordering British Columbia to the south, the Northwest Territories to the east, the Beaufort Sea to the north, and the U.S. state of Alaska to the west. It is Canada's westernmost and smallest territory by land area. third quarter estimates Yukon had a population of 50,356, the most of the territories. Whitehorse, the territorial capital, is the largest city in northern Canada.
Yukon was split from the Northwest Territories by a federal statute in 1898 as the Yukon Territory. The current governing legislation is the Yukon Act passed by the federal Parliament in 2002. That act established Yukon as the territory's official name, although Yukon Territory remains in popular usage. Canada Post uses the territory's internationally approved postal abbreviation of YT. In 2021, territorial government policy was changed so that The Yukon is recommended for use in official territorial government materials.
Although officially bilingual (English and French), the Yukon government recognizes First Nations languages.
At , Yukon's Mount Logan, in Kluane National Park and Reserve, is the highest mountain in Canada and the second-highest on the North American continent (after Denali in the U.S. state of Alaska). Most of the Yukon has a subarctic climate, characterized by long, cold winters and brief, warm summers. The coastal area along the Arctic Ocean has a tundra climate.
Notable rivers include the Yukon, Pelly, Stewart, Peel, White, Liard, and Tatshenshini.
Etymology The territory is named after the Yukon River, the longest river in the Yukon. The name itself is from a contraction of the words in the Gwich'in phrase chųų gąįį han, which means "white water river" and refers to "the pale colour" of glacial runoff in the Yukon River."Dear Sir, I have great pleasure in informing you that I have at length after much trouble and difficulties, succeed[ed] in reaching the 'Youcon', or white water River, so named by the (Gwich'in) natives from the pale colour of its water. ..., I have the honour to Remain Your obt Servt, John Bell" Hudson's Bay Company Correspondence to George Simpson from John Bell (August 1, 1845), HBC Archives, D.5/14, fos. 212-215d, also quoted in, In Gwich'in, adjectives, such as choo [big] and gąįį [white], follow the nouns that they modify. Thus, white water is chųų gąįį [water white]. White water river is chųų gąįį han [water white river].
Historically, the name of the Yukon Territory has been abbreviated to "The Yukon" in informal speech. In 2003, the territorial government announced that the territory should be referred to as "Yukon", but the change in name sparked discussion amongst Yukoners. In the 2021 election, the leader of the Yukon NDP, Kate White, campaigned on returning to using "The Yukon". Following the election, the Yukon Liberal Party government announced that "The Yukon" would again be used by the government.
Geography
The territory is the approximate shape of a right triangle, bordering the U.S. state of Alaska to the west and northwest for mostly along longitude 141° W, the Northwest Territories to the east and British Columbia to the south mostly along latitude 60° N. Its northern coast is on the Beaufort Sea. Its ragged eastern boundary mostly follows the divide between the Yukon Basin and the Mackenzie River drainage basin to the east in the Mackenzie mountains.
Most of the territory is in the watershed of its namesake, the Yukon River, which flows across the territory in a northwesterly direction. The southern Yukon is dotted with a large number of large, long and narrow glacier-fed alpine lakes, most of which flow into the Yukon River system. The larger lakes include Teslin Lake, Atlin Lake, Tagish Lake, Marsh Lake, Lake Laberge, Kusawa Lake and Kluane Lake. Bennett Lake on the Klondike Gold Rush trail is a lake flowing into Nares Lake, with the greater part of its area within Yukon. Other watersheds in the territory include the Mackenzie River, the Peel Watershed and the Alsek–Tatshenshini, and a number of rivers flowing directly into the Beaufort Sea. The two main Yukon rivers flowing into the Mackenzie in the Northwest Territories are the Liard River in the southeast and the Peel River and its tributaries in the northeast.
Canada's highest point, Mount Logan (), is in the territory's southwest. Mount Logan and a large part of the Yukon's southwest are in Kluane National Park and Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Other national parks include Ivvavik National Park and Vuntut National Park in the north. A second UNESCO World Heritage Site, Tr'ondëk-Klondike World Heritage Site, was designated in 2023.
Notable widespread tree species within the Yukon are the black spruce and white spruce. Many trees are stunted because of the short growing season and severe climate.Carl Duncan, "The Dempster: Highway to the Arctic " accessed 2009.10.22.
Climate
While the average winter temperature in the Yukon is mild by Canadian arctic standards, no other place in North America gets as cold as the Yukon during extreme cold snaps. The temperature has dropped down to three times, 1947, 1952, and 1968. The most extreme cold snap occurred in February 1947 when the abandoned town of Snag dropped down to .
Unlike most of Canada where the most extreme heat waves occur in July, August, and even September, the Yukon's extreme heat tends to occur in June and even May. The Yukon has recorded three times. The first time was in June 1969 when Mayo recorded a temperature of . 14 years later this record was almost beaten when Forty Mile recorded in May 1983. The old record was finally broken 21 years later in June 2004 when the Mayo Road weather station, located just northwest of Whitehorse, recorded a temperature of . +Average daily maximum and minimum temperatures for selected locations in YukonCityJuly average highJuly average lowJanuary average highJanuary average low Whitehorse Dawson City Old Crow
History
Long before the arrival of Europeans, the central and southern Yukon was populated by First Nations people, and the area escaped glaciation. Sites of archeological significance in the Yukon hold some of the earliest evidence of the presence of human habitation in North America.Services, Cultural. Archaeology Program. Department of Tourism and Culture. [Online] March 8, 2011. [Cited: April 7, 2012.] The sites safeguard the history of the first people and the earliest First Nations of the Yukon.
The volcanic eruption of Mount Churchill in approximately 800 AD in what is now the U.S. state of Alaska blanketed the southern Yukon with a layer of ash which can still be seen along the Klondike Highway, and which forms part of the oral tradition of First Nations peoples in the Yukon and further south in Canada.
Coastal and inland First Nations had extensive trading networks. European incursions into the area began early in the 19th century with the fur trade, followed by missionaries. By the 1870s and 1880s, gold miners began to arrive. This drove a population increase that justified the establishment of a police force, just in time for the start of the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897. The increased population coming with the gold rush led to the separation of the Yukon district from the Northwest Territories and the formation of the separate Yukon Territory in 1898.
Demographics
The 2021 census reported a Yukon population of 40,232. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2011, the highest among Canada's three territories. Statistics Canada has estimated Yukon's 2024 population to be 46,948, an increase of 17.5% from the 2016 census. This is the largest percentage increase for any Canadian province or territory.
Unlike in other Canadian provinces and territories, Statistics Canada uses the entire territory as a single at-large census division.
Ethnicity
According to the 2021 Canadian census the majority of the territory's population was of European descent, although it has a significant population of First Nations communities across the territory. The 2021 Census examined the Yukon's ethnocultural diversity and immigration. At that time, 83.2% of residents were Canadian-born and 22.3% were of Indigenous origin. The most common countries of birth for immigrants were the Philippines (26.1%), the United States (9.8%), and the United Kingdom (9.7%). Among very recent immigrants (between 2016 and 2021) living in the Yukon, 56% were born in Asia.
As of the 2021 census, the top ten ancestries in the Yukon were: RankEthnic groupPopulation (2021)Percentage1English9,10523.02Indigenous8,81022.33Scottish8,37521.24Irish7,44018.85German5,32513.56Canadian4,68011.87French4,24511.88Ukrainian1,9755.09Dutch1,825 4.610Filipino1,490 4.5
Language The most commonly reported mother tongue among the 39,840 single responses to the 2021 Canadian census was English at 31,995 (). The second-most common was 1,455 () for French. Among the 1,355 multiple respondents, 440 of them () reported a mother tongue of both English and French, while 785 () reported English and a " language" and 15 () reported French and a " language".
The Yukon's Language Act "recognizes the significance" of the territory's aboriginal languages in the Yukon, and permits their use in Legislative Assembly proceedings, although only English and French are available for laws and court proceedings.
First Nations linguistic groups by tribes/clans Linguistic group Tribe/clan Gwich'in Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, Old Crow Hän Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in First Nation, Dawson City Upper Tanana White River First Nation, Beaver Creek Small communities near Tok (Alaska) Northern Tutchone Selkirk First Nation Little Salmon/Carmacks First Nation First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun, Mayo Southern Tutchone Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, Haines Junction Kluane First Nation, Burwash Landing Ta'an Kwach'an Council, Lake Laberge Kwanlin Dün First Nation, Whitehorse Kaska Ross River Dena Council, Ross River Liard River First Nation, Watson Lake Inland Tlingit Teslin Tlingit Council Tagish Carcross/Tagish First Nation
Mother tongue, 2021 censusRank LanguagePopulationPercent1.English31,99580.31%2.French1,7854.48%3.Tagalog9852.47%4.German6001.51%5.Punjabi4101.03%6.Spanish2350.59%7.Cantonese (Yue)2000.50%8.Japanese1350.34%9.Mandarin1300.33%10.Tuchone Languages1150.29%
Religion
The 2021 Canadian census reported that 59.7% of Yukoners reported having no religious affiliation, the highest percentage in Canada. The most frequently reported religious affiliation was Christianity, reported by 35.0% of residents, followed by Sikhism at 1.0%. Religious beliefs in Yukon (2021 census) Religion Adherents % of the populationNo religion and secular perspectives23,640 Christian 13,860Sikh380Traditional (North American Indigenous) spirituality 325Hindu 265Buddhist 260Muslim 185Jewish 70Other religions and spiritual traditions600Total39,590
Economy
The Yukon's major industry is mining (lead, zinc, silver, gold, asbestos and copper). The federal government acquired the land from the Hudson's Bay Company in 1870 and split it from the Northwest Territories in 1898 to fill the need for local government created by the population influx of the gold rush. Thousands of these prospectors moved to the territory, ushering a period of Yukon history recorded by authors such as Robert W. Service and Jack London. The memory of this period and the early days of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, as well as the territory's scenic wonders and outdoor recreation opportunities, makes tourism the second most important industry in the territory.
Manufacturing, including furniture, clothing, and handicrafts, follows in importance, along with hydroelectricity. The traditional industries of trapping and fishing have declined. As of 2012, the government sector directly employs approximately 6,300 out of a labour force of 20,800, on a population of 27,500.