Hundreds set to paddle in Yukon River Quest for healing or cash prizes

WHITEHORSE — A Yukon cabinet minister is among the hundreds of participants taking part in a gruelling paddle as the 21st Yukon River Quest launches from Whitehorse.

Pauline Frost holds the portfolios of environment, health and social services in Yukon’s Liberal government, but she’ll be just another paddler in one of 118 teams using canoes, kayaks or stand-up paddleboards in the race.

Competitors launch from Whitehorse on Wednesday and will finish in Dawson City, 715 kilometres down river.

Frost and three others are competing on an Indigenous women’s canoe team representing missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

Another team member, Melissa Carlick, whose aunt and cousin are both victims of unsolved homicides, is competing in the quest for the third time and says it always leaves her feeling healed. 

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The race awards more than $50,000 in prizes and allows competitors to paddle day and night, with the first finishers expected to arrive in Dawson City as early as Friday afternoon. 

Frost says the canoe carrying her, Carlick and team members Alice Frost and Emily McDougall, will bear a special logo honouring missing and murdered women. 

“We’re doing it because we are all Indigenous women and we really want to encourage other Indigenous women to speak out and be a part of the … positive journey, looking forward to making our society a better place.” (CKRW)

Tim Kucharuk, The Canadian Press