Tourism pioneer remembered fondly
Behchoko resident Joyce Rabesca died on Oct. 17 after battle with cancer; known for many accomplishments including being the first house boater in Yellowknife
John McFadden
Northern News Services
Monday, November 2, 2015
BEHCHOKO/RAE-EDZO
Family, friends, colleagues and the North Slave community are mourning the death of Behchoko tourism operator Joyce Rasbesca.
Behchoko resident and lodge owner Joyce Rabesca is being mourned and remembered by her friends, family and colleagues after her death on Oct. 17. She was known as a strong tourism advocate in the North and is believed to have been the first house boater in Yellowknife. - photo courtesy of Facebook |
The 71-year-old died on Oct. 17 after a battle with cancer. Rabesca, who was originally from Ohio, lived in Lutsel K'e when she first came to the NWT and later owned and ran the Sah Naji Kwe Lodge on Great Slave Lake near Behchoko with her husband Moise Rabesca.
NWT aviation legend Yvonne Quick said her friend Joyce was one of a kind.
"Joyce Rabesca was the first person in Yellowknife to have a houseboat. She had a little A-frame that was built on a floating deck," Quick said. "If you think that the people who are house boaters now had trouble with the city then you should have been here then. They didn't want it down there period. At one point I think they towed it and she towed it back. She fought with the city until they plain gave up."
Quick said her lodge was unique when it opened in the 1970s and that she took advantage of tourism opportunities not in existence yet in the North, such as opening a health spa that eventually became part of her lodge.
"It's an excellent facility but she needed help with it and she needed help with advertising but she just didn't get it," Quick said. "I think that the spa facility that she worked so hard to get going should be named after Joyce. She was a tourism person through and through. She was a good ambassador."
Quick said Joyce and her husband were outfitters for caribou hunting but that Joyce was a visionary because she realized well before the territorial government banned it in 2009 that the hunt would not be sustainable.
"They had proposed quitting hunting before the government ever said this is what we are going to do. They saw that there was a shortage and it was depleting," Quick said.
Joyce Rabesca understood the attraction of on-the-land and eco-tourism long before it came into vogue, Quick said.
"When the mushroom pickers were here she wanted to have tours to take people out to see how the picking is done and see what they do with the morels but just as a tour - not to pick mushrooms but to see how it was done," Quick said.
NWT Tourism is going to miss her being at the meetings, Quick said.
"She always spoke her mind. Joyce would go to the meetings and if she didn't agree with what was being said you can believe that she spoke her mind. She was interested in the country, the outside, the land. (NWT) Tourism is really going to miss her and I'm going to miss her," Quick said.
Greg Robertson, operator of Bluefish Services fishing outfitters in Yellowknife, said that he got to know Joyce through his hunting camp.
"They were big into caribou hunting. They had two camps for many years and that was their pride and joy but of course everything went down the tubes when they shut down the caribou hunting. I sat on a hunting board with them and became friends with them," Robertson said.
"When I first met her she was not pro-hunting but she became one of the biggest operators."
She was one of the first tourism operators in the NWT who developed the on-the-land Dene cultural experience as a tourist attraction.
A private celebration of Rabesca's life was held in Behchoko on Oct. 24.
