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Claire Barnabe was born on November 13, 1940 in Eastview (now Vanier), Ontario. She attended Our Lady of the Presentation in Overbrook for elementary school and Eastview High School in Vanier for secondary school. Claire was a member of the religious order of Holy Cross for four years. She attended Ottawa Teachers' College and obtained a permanent Ontario Teachers' Certificate. She taught at an elementary school in Alexandria, Ontario, Iona Academy in St. Raphael’s West, Ontario, for the Catholic School Board in Montreal, and for the Separate School Board in Ottawa before moving north.

In 1965, she accepted a teaching position at Fort Franklin (now Deline), where she worked until 1967. During her time in Deline, she was also Secretary of the Community Club. In 1968, after spending a year in the south and touring Europe, Claire returned to the north to work as a teacher in Fort Providence. She was also President of the Community Club there and Chairman of the NWT Centennial Planning Committee for Fort Providence.

In 1969, she left her teaching position in Fort Providence and moved to Norman Wells where she worked at the Mackenzie Mountain Lodge. She moved back to Fort Providence later that year to work for Alex Arychuk, also in the hotel business. In the 1970 Territorial election, she ran as a candidate for the Lower Mackenzie riding. Following her defeat in the election, she applied to work as a Settlement Manager.

In May 1971, she accepted the position of settlement manager in Port Burwell on Killinek Island, where she remained until May 1973. After a very brief time as Settlement Manager at Large for the Baffin Region, she became the Settlement Manager at Repulse Bay (now Naujaat, Nunavut). Also in 1973, she was appointed to be a member of the NWT Historical Advisory Board. In 1974, Claire returned to Norman Wells as Settlement Manager there. She ran in the 1975 Territorial election and the 1976 by-election for the riding of Mackenzie Great Bear, but was defeated both times.

She took leave from the GNWT in 1976 to work on a Master’s degree in Public Administration at Carleton University, Ottawa. In 1978, she joined Bud Drury’s office as a policy analyst. She ran again in the 1979 Territorial election for the riding of Yellowknife Centre and was again defeated. Claire remained in the north for many more years, before retiring to the south.

Josephine Castonguay was born in 1879 in a small rural community on Quebec's South Shore in the Kamouraska region, Sainte-Helene. She attended convent school, l'Academie des soeurs du Bon-Pasteur, in Riviere-du-Loup, then know as Fraserville. She became a teacher and spent nearly two decades in Canada's North teaching. She ventured to the North in approximately 1920 and left in the late 1930s. After leaving the North, she moved to Ottawa and then worked in Quebec City for the government until her retirement when she moved back to her hometown. Josephine Castonguay died on December 30, 1966 at the age of 87.

Maxine Roberta Colbourne was born in Wyvern, Nova Scotia in 1934 and grew up around that area, near Oxford, Nova Scotia.

By July 1957, she had moved to Aklavik, Northwest Territories and was working at the Aklavik Federal Day School, where she taught Grade 4 during the 1957-1958 school year. In 1958 she returned to Halifax to attend a summer course and obtain her remaining credits for a permanent teaching license. That fall, she returned to Aklavik to teach Grades 4-5 at the Federal Day School for the 1958-1959 school year and became involved with the school radio station. From at least September-December 1959 she was teaching Grades 3-4 at the Aklavik Federal Day School.

She then moved to Inuvik to teach at the newly-opened Sir Alexander Mackenzie School (Inuvik Federal Day School), where she taught Grade 4 from 1960-1962, and Grade 6 from 1963-1965.

As of 1963 she became involved with the Local Association of Guides and Brownies, specifically as a Brown Owl with the second Brownie Pack. She has been remembered as an accomplished curler who also spent a lot of time dog sledding. In 1965 she travelled to Fairbanks, Alaska to attend a curling Bonspiel.

She became involved with Daniel L. Norris, who was later Commissioner of the Northwest Territories from 1989-1994. Their son, Danny Lee Trevor Colbourne, was born in 1966 in Edmonton. In January 1968 she had a second son (Sean Gregory Harrison Colbourne) with A. Biggs; she continued to live in the Northwest Territories until at least that time.

In 1968, she and her two sons moved to British Columbia, where she worked at Lower Post Indian Residential School. She then taught at Lejac Residential School for several years in the early 1970s. Her sons attended school there as well. They then moved to Chetwynd, British Columbia, where they lived from about 1974-1977. While living in British Columbia, she took summer courses to upgrade her teacher’s license.

In 1977, she died of an aneurysm, and her sons went to live with her brother in Nova Scotia.

June Helm was born on September 13, 1924 in Twin Falls, Idaho to Julia Frances (nee Dixon) and William Jennings Helm. Her family moved to Kansas City in 1930 where she attended public and high school. She graduated from high school in 1941 and attended the University of Kansas City until 1942 when she transferred to the University of Chicago. In 1945, Helm married Richard S. "Scotty" MacNeish, an archaeologist.

In 1949, Helm and MacNeish moved to Ottawa where he held an appointment at the National Museum of Canada. During his summer archaeological survey of the Mackenzie River, MacNeish learned that the small community of Jean Marie River required volunteer teachers. In the summer of 1951, June Helm and fellow graduate student, Teresa Carterette went to Jean Marie River as volunteer teachers, however, Helm also started to compile ethnographic field data at this time, which became the basis of her PhD dissertation. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago in 1958. In 1959, the Tlicho (Dogrib) people became the focus of Helm's fieldwork, which entailed ten trips to the Northwest Territories between 1959-1979. Ultimately, she edited the Subarctic Vol. 6 of the Handbook of North American Indians that was published by the Smithsonian Institute in 1981 and wrote several books, monographs, articles and chapters about her fieldwork in the Northwest Territories with the Dene. In the 1970s, she served as an expert witness and land claims researcher for the Indian Brotherhood (Dene Nation), and as a consultant to the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry.

During the years that Helm lived in Canada, she was a sessional lecturer at Carleton University in Ottawa (1949-1959) and at the University of Manitoba (1953). After she and MacNeish divorced in 1958, she became a professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the University of Iowa in 1960. In 1968, she married architect Pierce King. In 1969, the University of Iowa established the Department of Anthropology, where Helm, at intervals, served as department chair. Between 1993-1996, she chaired the American Indian and Native Studies Program. She was also the president of the American Anthropological Association (1985-1987), served as editor of American Ethnological Society publications (1964-1968), was president of the Central States Anthropological Society (1970-1971), chaired Section H of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1978), was associate editor of American Ethnologist (1979-1981) and was president of the American Ethnological Society (1982-1983). She was also elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994. June Helm was professor emerita at the University of Iowa, having retired in December 1999 after 40 years of teaching. June Helm died on February 5, 2004.

Alfred E. Preble was born on August 11, 1880 in Wilmington, Massachusetts. He attended Tufts College in Medford, Mass. from 1900 to 1904, graduating with the degree of Bachelor of Science. While in College, he was an assistant on three surveys organized by the Bureau of Biological Survey of the United States Department of Agriculture, led by his brother, Edward A. Preble. The first survey in 1900 was to Fort Churchill, the second in 1901 to Fort Resolution and the third in 1903, to continue a survey of the Athabasca and Mackenzie river regions to Fort Good Hope. The expedition, consisting of Edward Alexander Preble, Alfred E. Preble and Merrit Carey left Washington in May 1903 and arrived in Athabasca Landing mid May. The party traveled to Fort Resolution and then split with Merrit Carey and Alfred E. Preble traveling to the Mackenzie River and northward towards Fort Wrigley. They reached Fort Wrigley on July 20, 1903 and set out for the return trip on July 22, 1903. During the course of their trip, they made numerous observations on both flora and fauna. Alfred Preble was also a participant in a faunal survey to Fort George, James Bay in 1912. This survey was sponsored by the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh and led by W.E. Clyde Todd. He devoted the majority of his life to teaching high school chemistry and physics. He died at Center Ossipee, New Hampshire, July 11, 1950.

Joan Ryan was born in 1932 in Montreal. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at Carleton University in 1957 and a Master of Education in Psychology in Fairbanks, Alaska in 1959.

Ryan spent her early career employed as a Northern Service Officer and teacher with Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. She taught in Whatì (Lac La Martre) from 1957 to 1959 and George River (northern Quebec) from 1959 to 1960. In 1964 she left government service and enrolled as a PhD student at the University of British Columbia. In 1967 she accepted a professorship at the University of Calgary in anthropology, a position she held until retirement in 1987.

Upon retirement she was affiliated with the Arctic Institute of North America (AINA) for many years, pioneering participatory action research (PAR) projects. She was involved in several NWT projects including working as a trainer, coordinator, and researcher for community development projects in Fort McPherson from 1988 to 1990. She returned to Whatì (Lac La Martre) from 1990-1993, publishing 'Doing things the right way: Dene traditional justice in Lac La Martre N.W.T.' (1995). She later worked with the Deline Uranium Team. Joan Ryan died October 29, 2005, in Calgary. She was survived by two adopted daughters.

David Scott Wilson was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia in 1912. He was the principal of the Federal Day School in Coppermine (Kugluktuk) from September 1954 to June 1956. He also taught in Frobisher Bay (Iqaluit) from September 1956 to June 1957. He died in Halifax, Nova Scotia on October 29, 1990.