She’s being remembered as a woman with principles, a champion of the little guy and a fighter who didn’t mind telling you what was on her mind.

Author and columnist Jane Gaffin died Wednesday evening at Whitehorse General Hospital after a lengthy battle with lung cancer.

Though the 73-year-old wasn’t a miner or prospector, she was the first woman to sit on the executive of the Yukon Chamber of Mines.

She’s on the honour roll for the Yukon Prospectors Association.

And she remains in the hearts of those who knew her.

The prospectors association and the chamber of mines will be holding a celebration of Gaffin’s life at 3 p.m. next Friday in the General Store at the Gold Rush Inn.

“I’ll tell you one thing: she fought to the end,” Mike Power, president of the prospectors association, said in an interview Thursday.

“If you get marks for fighting to the end, she gets them.”

Power said Gaffin didn’t advertise she was in the hospital, because that wasn’t her.

But when he heard in June, he began visiting her regularly.

In 1966, Gaffin left her home in Kentucky and headed north to Alaska. She got as far as Whitehorse.

She worked for a time at the Whitehorse Star as advertising manager.

Gaffin’s passion, however, was writing and mining, sharing the stories of those who lived in the North, who toiled for gold, or any other metal for that matter.

Over the years, she chronicled everything from the discovery of the Faro mine to the story about a rich trapper who once bought a truckload of Corn Flakes to lay across the floor in a barroom down south so he could demonstrate how they snowshoe up north.

In 1980, she authored Cashing In, a collection of short stories about the mining industry in the Yukon.

Gaffin wrote Edward Hadgkiss – Missing in Life in 1989.

It was the true story about her friend Hadgkiss, a pilot who went missing when his airplane disappeared in the mountainous region of the B.C. coast.

She learned of the tragedy while in Anchorage working on her commercial pilot’s licence.

Over the years, Gaffin penned stacks of columns about mining and prospecting.

In 1974, she researched and wrote an extensive history published as a supplement to the Whitehorse Star, under the heading the LodeSTAR edition.

In her introduction to the 22-page supplement, Gaffin writes when she agreed to do it, “I must have had lead in my head,” summing up how what was supposed to be a simple affair turned into an exhaustive and extensive research project.

“I think she had a soft spot for the little guy out there taking a risk, putting everything on the line,” Power said.

“She really stuck up and did a lot of work for the prospectors.... She was loyal to her friends.”

Power said Gaffin had that frontier spark, and wasn’t afraid to let you know what was on her mind.

“She never pulled any punches,” he said.

“It’s not a frontier anymore, and part of the reason is people like Jane are leaving.”

Local artist Jim Robb, Power pointed out, used to call her Old Kentucky.

Allen Carlos first met Gaffin in 1970. He was prospecting in the Ross River area and ran into her at a local coffee shop.

She had an interest in the mining scene, and over the years they became friends, he said Thursday.

Carlos said Gaffin stood by his side when he got into a legal tangle with the RCMP in 2000 after he was charged under the new firearms legislation with improper storage of guns.

The scrap lasted four years and went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. Gaffin stayed aboard for the whole ride.

“She wrote quite a number of articles about the whole issue, the firearms issue, and how what the justice system was doing was not right, and it was not right,” Carlos said.

Many were published in the Star.

He said at one point, the federal Crown threatened her with a libel lawsuit, but Gaffin did not back down.

She was a woman who stood her ground, Carlos said.

He said she believed in independence from the state and the freedom to allow people to live their dreams.

“She was very principled in her views about things,” said Carlos. “She was a good friend.”

“It’s another one of the Colourful Five Per Cent gone, that is for sure,” said friend and prospector Ron Berdahl, who was also visiting Gaffin during her last days.

Berdahl recalled how as a freshman prospector in the late 1980s, Gaffin took him under her wing for some reason, and sort of became his marketing department.

Gaffin is in a better place now, he said, adding the illness was tough on her towards the end.

“I think her legacy, I think it would say she was someone who stood up for civil liberties, consequences be damned.”

“She was a great lady,” said Robb. “She was a good buddy, and we sat and chatted every time we met.”

Gaffin did a lot of important research and recorded stories in a colourful way of the people who were central to the mining industry in the territory, he said.

“She unearthed a lot of interesting history and brought it to light,” said Robb. “She contributed a lot to the Yukon because of her research and stories.”

Old Kentucky was inducted into the honour roll of the Yukon Prospectors Association in 2005.

The association’s website says: “The Prospectors’ Honour Roll recognizes the efforts of individuals, companies, and organizations, who have helped prospectors, had faith in prospectors, and shared their visions along the way.”