Mayo is a village in

Yukon Yukon (; ; formerly called Yukon Territory and also referred to as the Yukon) is the smallest and westernmost of Canada's three territories. It also is the second-least populated province or territory in Canada, with a population of 43,964 as ...

, Canada, along the

Silver Trail The Silver Trail, officially Yukon Highway 11, is a highway in the Canadian territory of Yukon connecting the communities of Mayo and Keno City with the Klondike Highway at Stewart Crossing. It was originally built in 1950-51 as the Whitehorse ...

and the Stewart River. It had a population of 200 in 2016. The Yukon Bureau of Statistics estimated a population of 496 in 2019. It is also the home of the

First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun The First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun (English: "First Nation of the Big River People") is a First Nation band government in Yukon, Canada. Its main population centre is in Mayo, Yukon, but many of its members live across Canada and the United Stat ...

, whose primary language is

Northern Tutchone The Northern Tutchone are a First Nations people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group living mainly in the central Yukon in Canada. Language and culture The Northern Tutchone language, originally spoken by the Northern Tutchone p ...

. ''Na-Cho Nyäk Dun'' translates into "big river people." The community, formerly called Mayo Landing, is serviced by

Mayo Airport Mayo Airport is located north of Mayo, Yukon Yukon (; ; formerly called Yukon Territory and also referred to as the Yukon) is the smallest and westernmost of Canada's three territories. It also is the second-least populated province or ter ...

. The village was named after former circus acrobat turned settler and explorer Alfred Mayo. Its only school is J. V. Clark School, which is named after James Vincent Clark (1924–1994). The school had about 70 students in 2012. As of the 2020/2021 school year, the acting principal is Nicholas Vienneau.

History

Before Europeans came there were in the area two communities of the Na-cho Nyäk Dun people, who lived by hunting and trapping. The river now known as the Stewart River was known as the "Náhcho Nyäk" ('Great River'). The people lived across the Stewart River from the main focus of today's Mayo, in a district today called "Old Mayo village". The old settlement was reinstated on the initiative of a missionary, but in 1934 the river burst its banks and flattened much of the old village, destroying the church and many cultural treasures. The first

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...

discoveries in the area were made in the 1880s:

silver Silver is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₂erǵ-, ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, whi ...

was also discovered some time later. Till the mid-twentieth century Mayo was connected with the outside world by the river and received any supplies by boat. In the 1950s the construction of the

Klondike Highway The Klondike Highway is a highway that runs from the Alaska Panhandle through the province of British Columbia and the territory of Yukon in Canada, linking the coastal town of Skagway, Alaska, to Dawson City, Yukon. Its route somewhat pa ...

and the

provided Mayo with a road link to Stewart Crossing. Between 1973 and 1984 negotiation took place between the government and the northern Tutchone leaders over land rights and self-government. A breakthrough came only in 1993 with a treaty between the residents and the lawmakers concerning an area of and a payment, over fifteen years, totalling C$14.5 million. Together with the Tr'ondek Hwech’in First Nation an agreement has been made with

Yukon Energy Yukon Energy Corporation (YEC; french: Société d'énergie du Yukon) is a Crown corporation which is the primary producer of electricity in the Canadian territory of Yukon. It also distributes electricity to a small number of locations not s ...

to supply electricity to

Dawson City Dawson City, officially the City of Dawson, is a town in the Canadian territory of Yukon. It is inseparably linked to the Klondike Gold Rush (1896–99). Its population was 1,577 as of the 2021 census, making it the second-largest town in Yuko ...

using the Mayo-Dawson Power Line. May 2008 saw a preliminary agreement with Alexco Resource Corp concerning

extraction in the Keno Hill Silver area near the far end of Mayo lake where the corporation operates approximately 40 silver mines.'No cloud' over mining plans after Alexco, Yukon First Nation sign deal, in: CBC News, 26 May 2008
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Geography

Climate

Mayo has a

subarctic climate The subarctic climate (also called subpolar climate, or boreal climate) is a climate with long, cold (often very cold) winters, and short, warm to cool summers. It is found on large landmasses, often away from the moderating effects of an ocean, ge ...

(

Koppen Koppen is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Dan Koppen (born 1979), American football offensive lineman * Erwin Koppen (1929–1990), German literary scholar * Luise Koppen (1855–1922), German author * Wladimir Köppen (1846� ...

: Dfc), with generally warm summers and severely cold winters lasting half the year. Spring and autumn are very short transitional seasons between summer and winter, with average temperatures rising and falling very fast during these times. The temperature difference between the record low in February () and the record high in June () is (), one of the largest temperature differentials ever recorded. It has some of the warmest summers in the Yukon with a mean average summer temperature of .

Demographics

In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by

Statistics Canada Statistics Canada (StatCan; french: Statistique Canada), formed in 1971, is the agency of the Government of Canada commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and cultur ...

, Mayo had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.

References

External links