The best summer job in the Yukon
It’s early July and the Blue Crew is packing for a road trip to Mayo.
The crew leader, a confident post-secondary student, is filing their remote travel emergency plan while a crew of four high-school students arrange all the equipment in the dusty pickup truck.
It’s hot out and they’re eager to get on the road and beat the RV traffic headed north on the highway. It’s not your usual packing job, though, and it’s tricky to find space for the food coolers between the gas-powered brushcutters, steel-toed boots, tents, stoves and a hockey bag full of personal protective equipment. This isn’t a summer vacation. It’s just another day at “the office.”
It’s one of eight weeks of work for the Blue Crew with the Yukon Youth Conservation Corps (Y2C2). In Mayo, they’ll help refurbish the viewing platform at the Devil’s Elbow interpretive site on the Silver Trail. They’ve been hired by the Yukon government’s Fish and Wildlife Branch, to work on conservation projects across the territory this summer.
The program has been running since the early 1990s and, over the decades, has benefited hundreds of Yukon youth. This week is Mayo, and next week they head southeast to Watson Lake to count snowshoe hare pellets before returning to Whitehorse for a week of water sampling with the Yukon government’s Water Stewardship and Science Branch. The program aims to give students a breadth of experiences and a solid foundation as they look at future career options.
Three crews are zooming around the Yukon, this summer, supporting conservation and community projects. Clad in either red, blue or green team T-shirts, crews arrive with their own tools, camping gear and a solid foundation of training to contribute to a local project.
Projects range from building boardwalks, to surveying vegetation plots, creating salmon habitat and pulling up invasive sweet clover. Students get hands-on experience working in the field, building their resumes and gaining exposure to a variety of different careers in the environmental sector.
It’s win-win: projects get accomplished that benefit the environment and the community, and the students work and learn together.
These students are budding ecologists, future conservation officers, and leaders navigating that moment in life where everyone is asking them what they want to be when they grow up. They learn about risk management, get hands-on training and do meaningful work outdoors. They live in tents for the duration of each week-long project, cook their own meals and play cards around the fire at night.
When they come back to Whitehorse on Friday afternoon, they clean up and take a weekend to enjoy some downtime. They gather up with a frozen treat before ending the day, to debrief what they’ve learned and then check in about anything to change for the next week. High fives all around and they are off for the weekend.
The Blue Crew finishes piling their truck high with gear and ensures that everyone has a full cup of coffee for the drive. They have a plan: they’ve got coolers full of groceries and a playlist to enjoy for their long commute. A quick circle-check of the truck and then the crew leader makes sure everyone has their personal gear and what they need for the week. Suddenly one of them runs back inside to grab the Dutch oven; they’re perfecting their campfire lasagna.
It’s just another Monday morning for this crew but as I wave goodbye to them, I can’t help but wonder, rain or shine, if this is in fact the best summer job out there.
Visit Yukon.ca/y2c2 to learn more about working with Y2C2 or how to submit your environmental project for consideration.
