Jean (Walmsley) Johnson

A pioneer with a wonderful “joie de vie”

Ada and Henry Walmsley lived in England in a small mill town called Hibden Bridge. It is in a beautiful Yorkshire setting of woods and moors. The area is often referred to as “Little Switzerland.” Henry had a farm and then later ran a grocery business. The family home was a stone block house.

Henry’s son, Garnet, married Clara and they had four children: Nancy (living in Lyon, France); John (living in Ilminster, England); John’s twin sister Jean (living in Whitehorse, Yukon), and David (living in Upswich, England).

Jean was born on April 7, 1933. The war had a huge effect on all of their lives. Jean’s father was an air-raid warden. Every night the family sat down together and counted up their ration coupons. Jean remarked that they had war evacuees and prisoners of war in their town. The school was sandbagged and they used to see flying bombs soaring overhead and hitting the moors.

Jean and her siblings amused themselves during those years when they were young with riding bikes, playing ball, hiking up the creeks and skipping. The family had a shack on the moors where they went each Tuesday and stayed overnight.

Jean attended a central school and then a grammar school. While in grammar school, she and her friends played field hockey and tennis. They climbed in the lake district and stayed in youth hostels.

Jean then went on to the University of London in 1951, where she attained her teaching degree. She taught in Halifax Town from 1953-1957. She took time off then to ski in Austria. While there, she met a number of New Zealanders, who convinced her to go to New Zealand to teach. She and a friend sailed through the Panama on a cruise ship and landed on the South Island of New Zealand.

Her passport was taken away for two years while she put in her two-year stint. She started to teach in a rural area on the Canterbury Plains, where she boarded on a sheep farm. She remembers “mutton for breakfast, mutton for dinner, mutton for supper.” She taught there for eight months and then moved into Christchurch to live and teach. She and her friend lived in a rustic cottage. She climbed in the summer and skied in the winter. There were eight ski clubs for downhill in the Southern Alps. During the holidays, she helped people on the glaciers and worked in a photography shop.

Jean’s brother was getting married so Jean headed for home via Ceylon and Laos. In 1962, she saw an ad in the paper, which called for teachers in Canada. It was submitted by Northern Affairs. Jean applied and set sail for Canada.

She arrived in Alert Bay, B.C., which was a Kwakiutl Tribal area. There was a residential School and Jean was given Grades 1-3. When Jean and her friends wished to visit some of the other islands in the area they travelled by gill netter and seiner. She loved the students and beautiful scenery there, but she remarked that it rained at some time every single day.

Someone told her it would be a shame to go back home and not see the scenic beauty of the Yukon. She applied to teach there and arrived in 1962. She taught in Porter Creek and had 46 students in Grades 1 and 2. She taught there for three years. The town had a big military presence at that time. Also, there were almost no rental blocks; the teachers lived in teacherages. She had a busy three years with teaching, joining the drama club, playing hockey and skiing.

A group, which called itself Ski Exploring, was begun by some Scandinavians. The group, including Jean, would go out on weekends to cross-country ski and explore the valleys, lakes and slopes of the Yukon.

One time seven cross-country skiers, again including Jean, made an historic trip from Windy Arm to Glacier, Alaska, going through the Warm Pass. Their goal was to see if it would be feasible to build a road to Skagway. They did the trip in three days of hard skiing.

One of Jean’s lengthy jaunts was to travel around the world, staying the longest in New Zealand and Paris, France. The tour took her to Uganda and Kenya through the Rift Valley to Nairobi. Then she experienced Tanzania where she climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.

Jean also explored Iceland with a trekking group.

One time, Jean travelled with a British group to Nepal where they climbed White Peak at nearly 18,000 feet high.

Jean had always planned to go back to New Zealand, but when she finally did she found it very different from what she remembered so she decided to return to Whitehorse. First, she went to Paris to help her sister with her small children for three months.

Finally, in 1968, she arrived back in Whitehorse and went to Whitehorse Elementary School where she had a special education primary class and then became learning assistant.

Jean was always active in sports and community activities. She joined the drama club, which would present three plays a year. In 1966, she was on the very first can-can line for Rendezvous. It was an all-teacher line.

In 1970, Jean met her future husband, Darrel Johnson, at a badminton club. They were married December 12, 1970. The family, including Darryl’s two daughters, Aileen (6) and Tanya (4), immediately moved to Faro where Darryl managed a store. The store was a series of nine trailers. She loved their busy years in Faro where she returned to teaching. There was a wonderful staff who kept in touch in the succeeding years. The family did hunting, fishing, exploring and skiing.

In 1974, the family returned to Whitehorse where Jean and Darryl increased their family with the birth of Bernadette in 1975 and Andrew in 1977. In 1979, they built a beautiful log house on three acres of land in the Wolf Creek subdivision. They cut their own logs and peeled them. They moved in on January 12, 1980. It was 40 below zero. The beautiful landscaping was done by Darryl and there were hanging baskets around the outside of the house.

Jean returned to teach as a learning assistant in special education. She transferred to Takhini School where she taught Grades 3 & 4 and retired in 1998.

During their retirement years, Jean and Darryl have travelled a lot. They went to Africa, Greece, Myanmar, Japan, and to the Arctic as well as a trip by camper across Canada. They also visited and researched the Civil War areas in the United States. They went with the FH Collins students on a battlefield tour in Italy and also retraced Darrel’s father’s footsteps in Sicily. His father had been killed there in the Battle of Ortona.

In retirement, Jean has been on the Board for Whitehorse Concerts and the Board for Teen Parents; she sings in the church choir and helps with the Line of Life and the Road Relays.

In 2012, they sold their house and moved into a duplex on Rhine Way in Takhini.

Jean has four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.