Ellen (Porsild) Davignon

Born in the old St. Mary's Hospital in Dawson, Yukon, in 1937, Ellen Davignon, nee Porsild, claims to be the “best damn cleanup” her prospector father had in 37 seasons on the Sixty Mile River. 

A veritable Klondike Nugget, he insisted, in spite of the fact that through most of her early years the little girl peered at the world from behind a fringe of wispy blond bangs, scowling ferociously at any and all attempts of friends and family to determine how her father had come to that conclusion. 

Living a somewhat isolated lifestyle in “the bush” as her people describe those years - subsisting on hunting and trapping, and yes, a dint of placer mining - did nothing much to socialize Ellen out of her suspicious view of the world. Even her outgoing older sister, Betty, and brother, Aksel, were unable to coax her out of her distrust.

It is probably a testimonial to her father's belief in her aureate value that she was never removed, in moment of great exasperation, from the bosom of the family and left in the woods with orders not to return until she had developed a better outlook on life. (The most surprising aspect of all her early disenchantment with her surroundings is that Ellen progressed, eventually, from this unprepossessing persona into a pleasant woman with a well-rounded personality, a rollicking sense of humour, and a penchant for launching into song and/or stories without the slightest bit of encouragement.)

Her younger sister, Johanne, was delivered by her father in January, 1940, and later that year, the family moved into Dawson so that the older children could attend school. 

From there, they took passage on the first boat of the year, the Aksala, to Whitehorse in 1943 and, subsequently, to Johnson’s Crossing four years later. There on a wide space on the Alaska Highway, her parents, Bob and Elly Porsild, built Johnson’s Crossing Lodge, one of the first businesses catering to the public traveling over the newly opened road. 

The Lodge was a completely family-run business and in l955, the practical Ellen married Phil Davignon, an Alberta farmer who had majored in cows and grain production but had an all-important minor in vehicle repair and carpentry. Ten years later, the couple bought the Lodge from Ellen’s parents and operated it successfully for the next 27 years, along with their five children (who were “raised in the business” much as Ellen had been.) 

The Davignons altered their services from time to time to better accommodate the needs of Highway travelers. In their last renovation, they closed the hotel and restaurant part of the business at the end of the 1977 season and reopened the following spring as a campground, complete with service station, convenience store and bake shop.

For the ensuing 14 years, Ellen delighted highway travelers with her variety of breads, elegant pastries, hand-held meat pies, and cinnamon buns, baking up as much as seven tons of flour in a season.  She is delighted and humbled when total strangers, after her 30 years absence from business, still stop to tell her that they remember how much they had enjoyed her baking.

During their years at the Lodge, Ellen began a writing career, a spare-time thing that allowed her a creative outlet when building soup and cinnamon buns and pumping gas and cleaning toilets palled.

For five years she wrote for the Whitehorse Star, a gossip column called Teslin News. In 1964 she left the Star and began her Lives of Quiet Desperation for the Yukon News, a column filled with wry and self-deprecating humour that attracted a wide following. She says of her journalistic offerings, which often served up the peccadilloes of her customers, her husband and their children: “The column were sort of a catharsis,” she says. “Being able to write down whatever frustrated me or made me mad and then put a lighter spin on them probably saved my business, my marriage, and my children's lives, not necessarily in that order!”

Ellen continued writing her column on a regular basis until 2005. During an hiatus in the late ‘80’s, she wrote about growing up on the Alaska Highway in a book entitled the Cinnamon Mine. Recently reprinted by Harbour Publishing, the book remains a regular on local bookstore shelves.

Ellen and Phil sold their Johnson’s Crossing Lodge/Campground in 1992, and moved to Whitehorse to be near their five children, whom they had unleashed into the fabric of the Yukon tapestry, one at a time until they alone remained holding the fort, as it were.  After a brief flirtation with retirement, Ellen went to work at Mac’s Fireweed Books in 1994.

Phil passed away in 2002 after a short bout with cancer and a few years later, Ellen retired (again), this time from her job at Mac's and also from writing her column. In fair good health – some arthritis plagues her - she returns to public life from time to time to tell her stories and a set of rules beside her door includes the admonition: You must be prepared to listen to her stories. DON'T INTERRUPT.

She travels a bit, writes a bit and interacts with her large family, which includes eleven grandchildren and four greats. Ellen continues to make meat pies and cinnamon buns for friends and family and is delighted to be able to bring her baking, and especially, her stories and songs to a whole new generation of beautiful – and mostly appreciative – youngsters, none of whom seems to have inherited her genes for viewing the world with suspicion.