In the late ’70s or early ’80s, a woman arrived in Whitehorse after hitchhiking across the country.

Her first night in town, she had nowhere to go so she curled up on a street curb and went to sleep.

Police woke her up and suggested she go to the Victoria Faulkner Women’s Centre, which was closing shortly for the day.

There, the centre’s co-ordinator was on her way out the door, but she told the woman: “OK, I’m not supposed to do this, but I’ll let you in, you can sleep on the couch, and you can get up in the morning before anyone else comes.”

It’s stories like these that Mackenzie Barnett has been uncovering as she interviews women involved with the centre since it opened in 1976.

“After that, she found her place and she found her network, and she was totally fine,” says Barnett, the centre’s summer student.

Next year will be the 40th anniversary of the Victoria Faulkner Women’s Centre, and Barnett is working on a project to commemorate its history.

She’s been digging through old newsletters and documents at the Yukon Archives and talking to women about their experiences working for or attending the centre over the years.

“There are these beautiful stories that we don’t get a chance to hear all the time,” she says, clutching a mug of tea, seated next to program co-ordinator Hillary Aitken on a couch in the centre’s basement.

As part of the anniversary celebrations, Aitken says the centre wants to reflect on its past and its victories.

For instance, it’s a little-known fact that women involved with the centre and the Yukon Status of Women Council were behind Whitehorse’s first transit system – they bought buses and drove them around town. The city later purchased the system.

The centre has moved around to several downtown locations over the years, but it started in a tiny office.

The co-ordinator at the time was the only paid employee, and she worked out of a closet, with a hot plate, a kettle and “a bunch of books” around her, Barnett says.

“But it was the place where women would come to congregate, to hold their meetings, to find out what was available to them, to go in times of crisis,” she says.

Aitken describes Faulkner as an early feminist.

Born in Washington, she came to the Yukon as a small child with her parents during the Gold Rush.

Faulkner worked as a secretary for nine Yukon commissioners at a time when it was unusual for a woman to hold such a position.

“She played an important role in the administration of the territory in the post Gold Rush era,” historian Michael Gates wrote in the Yukon News earlier this year.

“She was in fact, the power behind the throne, no small feat for a woman in the first half of the 20th century.”

Faulkner died in 1981, and is buried in Grey Mountain Cemetery.

Leafing through a folder of old documents she’s found around the centre, Barnett pulls out a July 1994 newsletter that looks much like a modern-day zine, full of drawings and doodles, comics and handwritten notices about upcoming events, including a walk-a-thon and Take Back the Night march.

A flyer advertising hot lunches was created by cutting out letters from a magazine, gluing them onto a page, and photocopying it.

Aitken says many of the issues raised in the centre’s pamphlets have been similar over the years: childcare, access to abortion, health care.

But the women’s centre has come a long way from the tiny, one-woman show it once was. Located in a house on Hanson Street since 1997, it offers regular programming and has a crew of staff members and an even larger crew of volunteers.

“Women just can’t believe it,” Barnett says of people she’s spoken to from years past.

“They are so happy that we’re still here and we’re doing all these things that they wish they could have done and they were just struggling to survive.”

Aitken hopes that Barnett’s research and interviews can be turned into a full-length film to document the centre’s history.

She admits they don’t have the means to do this anytime soon – and Barnett heads back to Ottawa in the fall, where she’s a psychology student – but the dream is a documentary that could be unveiled at the local film festival.

There are a couple filmmakers who are “intrigued,” Barnett says.

For now, though, she’s interviewing as many women as she can, asking them to sign waivers in case the footage is used one day for a film.

Barnett has been tracking down women in the phone book and through Facebook. Many have left the Yukon and are unreachable.

Fortunately, though, some of her interviewees have been able to give her names and contact information for other past staff members and volunteers, friends they’ve kept in touch with over the years.

“That’s what this place was for me, a place where I built life-long friendships,” Barnett has heard from several women.

“That’s such a wonderful thing because I think really that’s what the women’s centre should be – building that network,” says Aitken.

Barnett is still looking for people who were involved at the centre, particularly in the ’70s, either as volunteers, co-ordinators or attendees.

She’s trying to locate the first co-ordinator, Cheri Hendricken, and hopes someone may know how to reach her.

To contact the Victoria Faulkner Women’s Centre with information, call 667-2693 or visit victoriafaulknerwomenscentre.blogspot.ca