Anna Frances (Kipp) Watson

Frances Kipp was born in Chilliwack where she entered nurse training at the Vancouver General Hospital. Because that was the year the Spanish influenza epidemic broke out, Frances witnessed some tragic deaths during her training.

In 1919, upon graduation, she needed a change so responded to a posting of a nursing vacancy in Whitehorse hospital. In April of 1919 she headed to the Yukon aboard a steamship.

On the way aboard the train to Whitehorse, she and about 100 other passengers were told by the Northwest Mounted Police, that they were all quarantined. They spent eight days in the police barracks just outside the city.

Frances began to work in Whitehorse in April, 1919, at the hospital, which had been built in 1915 at the corner of Second Avenue and Hanson Street. It had a staff of one doctor and two nurses.

As there was still no influenza in Whitehorse, Frances was sent to Champagne where she was to work with the First Nation people who had come down with the influenza.

An open-topped Ford car was loaded up with Frances, a man to cook for her, a RNWMP member, and some groceries including a box of fruit, a luxury at that time, and a quarter of beef strapped to the back of the car. The 64-mile trip, first on the Whitehorse-Dawson Overland Trail and then on the Kluane Wagon Road, took eight hours due to time spent filling holes in the road and clearing it of fallen trees and brush.

In Champagne Frances was given use of the police sergeant’s cabin, which was very comfortable and located next to the Kluane Wagon Road and eventual Alaska Highway. She took her meals in Harlan (“Shorty”) and Annie Chambers’ roadhouse, a short distance away. (From a story by Gordon Allison, based on a Watson family memoir.)

About forty people were ill. She attended a funeral for an elderly couple and then attended the potlatch. She also helped a ten-month old girl to recover by sponging her and holding her to keep the mustard plasters in place that were part of the treatment. She also witnessed the birth of a baby and was impressed with the care given to both mother and baby by the attending women.

While at Champagne, Frances knew an eight-year-old, Ida Chambers, who became the first Yukon First Nation woman to become a nurse. She went on to become Charge Nurse of the Operating Room at Vancouver General Hospital.

Eventually Frances, who was relieved by another nurse, returned to Whitehorse in the same open-topped Ford in which she arrived.

In 1920, the influenza struck at the Chootla School in Carcross and Frances was asked to attend. It was described as an emergency and there were no trains scheduled for a few days. After much discussion about how to get her there, a message finally came from White Pass headquarters in Skagway for one train engine and a car to be readied to take Frances to Carcross. She then went as the only passenger on an unscheduled train ride, and years later she said it had felt like she was on Air Force One. (From a story by Gordon Allison, based on a Watson family memoir.)

Frances had become engaged to a man in Whitehorse who had to leave for work reasons and while gone, contacted the influenza and died. A telegraph message was sent to notify her of his death. lt happened to be delivered by Bill Watson, who had been a motorcycle dispatch rider during the war, and whom Frances had met before he had gone overseas during the war.

They became reacquainted and, on January 2, 1922, married in Chilliwack where both of their families lived. They returned to Whitehorse and later had a daughter Dorothy. They decided to leave Whitehorse for a warmer climate and moved to Chilliwack in late 1923. Not long after that they moved to Washington.

Bill and Frances Watson, along with their daughter Dorothy, son-in-law Robert Moles Sr. and granddaughter Kathryn returned to Yukon in 1965 for a visit. However, they lived the remainder of their lives in Bellingham, Washington, where Bill passed away in 1984 at the age 92 and Frances in l990 at the age of 95.