Beyond the aurora borealis that have made the Yukon region in Canada’s Far North famous, other lights appeared in 2025: those of Yukon Early Music, an emerging music scene, and a small community determined to promote early music in these freezing cold lands (-55°C!), making a different kind of name for the territory. 
By Ivy Lerner-Frank
The Yukon has the highest mountains, the coldest cold snap temperatures, and some of the oldest evidence of human habitation in North America. Grizzly bears, polar bears, wolves, lynx, eagles, and caribou still abound, in a breathtaking landscape first peopled by indigenous tribes. Fur traders, missionaries, and gold miners followed, and now the vast majority of the current population is from elsewhere. Contrary to what some might think, in cities like Whitehorse, folks don’t live in igloos, and they drive cars, not dog sleds. If the Yukon plays a role in Canada’s imagination, early music has never been part of it. Until now.
Starting from different places, ending up in Whitehorse
“We all ended up here for different reasons,” says C.D. Saint, one of the founders of Yukon Early Music. Saint, a University of Alberta music graduate and music pedagogy alumnus of the Kodály Institute (Hungary), came to Whitehorse, Yukon (population approximately 30,000) to work for the government as a mediator and conflict negotiation expert—but found music still calling him.
Saint is now the artistic director of the Yukon Community Choirs; there are five currently under his direction. And there’s more music in the growing city. With a chamber orchestra, a band, and at least twelve different choirs by Saint’s count, Whitehorse’s engagement with the arts is a big draw for its residents. There’s a state-of-the-art performance centre and the community is characterized by enthusiastic support and generosity, both financial and creative.
The music scene also includes Vincent Larochelle, a lawyer from Québec, who came to the territory to work in Legal Aid and became a trapper—and a tenor soloist—on the side, and Ben Johnston-Urey, a symphonic composer and everyone’s “go-to-keyboard performer,” according to Saint. Johnston-Forey made his way to The Yukon during the pandemic to take on the position of music director at the local Lutheran Church.
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