Identity area
Type of entity
Family
Authorized form of name
Ryder family
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
History
Roland Ryder (d. 1923) came to the Yukon from the Hope-Chilliwack area of British Columbia in 1900. His 16-year-old son George (1893?-1950), came up around 1909 to help run the draying, woodcutting and water-delivery business his father had established. George fought overseas in the First World War and returned to the Yukon. On November 15, 1919 he married Edith (1895-1980) a woman he had met through his sister Agnes. George and Edith settled in Whitehorse and had five children, Lloyd (1922-2009), Audrey (1924-1996), Harold (born and died 1928), Howard (b. 1931) and Gordon (b. 1936). The Ryder family operated the majority of the wood camps in the Whitehorse area until 1965. The sternwheelers on the Yukon River used wood as their chief fuel source and residential houses used wood for heating and cooking. The Ryders had 8 major locations in a 30-mile radius of Whitehorse. In 1934 Lloyd joined his father in the wood cutting business and in the mid-1950s Howard and Gordon joined the business. By the late 1940s Lloyd had also established Ryder Fuel and his brother Howard was delivering the home-heating oil. Gordon attended high school in Regina and returned home after graduating in the early 1950s. The city of Whitehorse was incorporated June 16, 1950 and a mayor and four-member council, including George Ryder, were elected. He died unexpectedly four months later at the age of 57. Edith Ryder was very good with numbers and had worked with her husband, George, for over thirty years. She owned property on Jarvis Street and in the spring of 1960 she and Gordon began construction of the Stratford Motel. The Ryders ran the hotel until 1991 when it was sold. In the mid-1960s Gordon started Builders Supplyland which he was still operating in 1999. Lloyd sold his fuel-oil business in 1965 and embarked on a thirty-year career as a bush pilot. Lloyd died in Whitehorse in December 2009. His wife Marny is now retired from a career in the health care field which included years as a community health nurse, a nursing instructor for Yukon College's Nursing Assistants Program and a staff development consultant in Yukon government's Public Service Commission.