Franco-Yukonnais
Franco-Yukonnais are francophone and/or French Canadian residents of Yukon, a territory of Canada.
French has full official language status in the Yukon.[1]
Demographics
The Canada 2006 Census identified 1,105 residents of the territory as francophone, 3.69 per cent of the territory's total population. Between 3,500 and 4,000 residents of the territory, or approximately 13 per cent of the total population, are of at least partial French descent.
Flag
The Franco-Yukonnais flag consists of a blue field and three diagonal stripes set from lower hoist to upper fly. The colours of the stripes are white and golden yellow. The effect created by the arrangement of the stripes is meant to represent Yukon's many mountains. Blue is for the French people and the sky. White is for winter and snow. Yellow represents the gold rush and the Franco-Yukonnais community's contributions to history of the territory.
Community
The primary institution of the Franco-Yukonnais community is the Association franco-yukonnaise, a non-profit organization which coordinates many of the community's cultural activities and acts as the community's voice in political and social issues affecting the community.
Franco-Yukonnais are served by the weekly newspaper L'Aurore boréale. The territorial capital, Whitehorse, is served by CFWY-FM, a rebroadcaster of the Première Chaîne station from Vancouver, and by a television rebroadcaster of CBFT, the flagship Télévision de Radio-Canada station from Montreal. Neither of these services originates any programming in the Yukon, nor are they available in the rest of the territory outside of Whitehorse.
Unlike the Northwest Territories and Nunavut the Yukon does not have a French language community radio station. Instead, the francophone community is served by a weekly radio show, Rencontres, which airs on CFWH, the territory's CBC Radio One service, in the Saturday afternoon time slot reserved by the network for local cultural magazine shows.
The annual Festival du solstice is held in June each year, with events in both Whitehorse and Dawson City.