Old painting stirs memories of recently demolished Burwash Landing lodge
Published 5:00 pm Thursday, May 14, 2026
A weathered painting pulled from a basement in Haines Junction is reviving memories of a Yukon lodge and raising new questions about the woman who painted it nearly 70 years ago.
Bob Geddes, 75, says the 1957 acrylic, signed Irene Brown, shows the Burwash Landing building as it stood when it was still known as the Kluane Inn. He was given the painting by a staff member at the Kluane Park Inn in Haines Junction, who found it while clearing out old equipment in the basement.
The building was constructed in 1948, Geddes said, citing conversations with former owner Ollie Wirth.
It replaced earlier trading cabins established by the Jacquot brothers, French newcomers who arrived during the gold rush and later built Burwash Landing’s first trading post. Geddes said the brothers became well‑known outfitters and hired local First Nations residents as guides and wranglers.
The Jacquot brothers, Louis and Eugène, arrived from France in 1898. Geddes said they first worked as chefs before turning to fur trading, guiding and eventually establishing the Burwash Landing post that anchored the shoreline community.
Their trading operation grew into a hub for travellers, hunters and Kluane Lake families moving seasonally through the region.
Geddes said the brothers later helped transport supplies during early Alaska Highway construction, long before the lodge took its 1948 form.
He said the Burwash trading post later became a key waypoint during Alaska Highway construction in 1942, when a government boat known as the Turtle hauled supplies back and forth across Kluane Lake. The trading site helped move equipment toward Burwash Landing as the road pushed north.
By the time Brown made the painting, the former trading post had only recently become the Kluane Inn.
Geddes believes she may have worked or stayed there, though he has been unable to confirm her identity.
“The only Irene Brown the archives could locate was photographed in Dawson City in 1916,” Geddes said. “But I don’t think that’s the same woman.”
The painting itself had deteriorated badly by the time it reached him.
Geddes said he spent a week sanding and restoring the oak frame by hand, while Whitehorse artist Leah Hutchinson, a young painter he met through his wife, cleaned and retouched the acrylic surface.
The lodge it depicts no longer exists. Geddes said Wirth and his wife ran it for 31 years before selling it to the Kluane First Nation. The building was demolished about a year ago, he said, after falling into disrepair.
“It’s gone,” he said. “You can’t even find the driveway now.”
For Geddes, the painting is now one of the few surviving images of a place that shaped generations of travellers and residents along the Alaska Highway. He hopes to donate it to a museum in Whitehorse or Haines Junction once he can attach a proper plaque, ideally with accurate information about the artist.
He’s hoping someone in the territory might recognize the name, remember the woman, or recall seeing the painting hanging in Burwash or Haines Junction decades ago.
“Maybe she worked there,” he said. “Maybe she passed through. Maybe she had family here.”
Geddes said the painting may have hung in the lodge itself before being moved to Haines Junction, where it sat for years in storage.
“Nobody I’ve talked to is old enough to remember it,” he said.
Geddes describes Burwash Landing as central to his own family history.
He said he was baptized there in 1951, in the small Catholic church built on the property in 1944. His father, an Air Force pilot, had been stationed in Whitehorse after the Second World War, flying into remote sites to remove wartime radio equipment.
Contact Jake Howarth at jake.howarth@yukon-news.com