Yukon College (YC)

About

Yukon College traces its history to the founding in 1963 of the Whitehorse Vocational and Technical Training Centre (soon after renamed the Yukon Vocation and Training Centre), located on the banks of the Yukon River just southeast of downtown Whitehorse. College status was granted in the spring of 1983 when the Yukon Vocational and Technical Training Centre became Yukon College.

In June 1988, the College moved its Whitehorse campus to the new facility at Yukon Place, alongside the Yukon Arts Centre and the Yukon Archives.

The new campus was officially opened with a potlatch in October 1988, at which the College was given to the people of the Yukon. First Nations people of the territory were represented by Mrs. Angela Sidney and Mr. George Dawson.

Mrs. Sidney, whose mother tongue was Tagish, was asked to give the Whitehorse campus a First Nations name. She began by describing how her father’s people had built a killer whale house on the banks of a river, and then had to move it when they discovered that the house was too close to the river bank. Observing the similarity between the killer whale house and the main campus, she named the College, Ayamdigut (Ay Am Da Goot), a Tlingit name which means “she got up and went.” (Excerpt from the YC Website)