Falling in Love with the Territory, and Each Other

Christina Kaiser first fell in love with the Yukon in 1998, long before she set eyes on the man she would marry.

Christina, who was living in her native Germany at the time, took a trip to Canada and drove from Vancouver to Fairbanks and back that year.

“I came to Whitehorse and decided this is where I want to be,” she says.

During her midwifery studies back in Germany, she decided to try and do her internship in Whitehorse. A friend from school mentioned she knew someone who had emigrated to the Yukon already and gave Christina his phone number. When she could not find a midwife to intern with, she contacted him for help.

“I called Axel and the first time we were on the phone we talked for an hour,” she says.

While she ended up doing her internship in Edmonton instead, they stayed in touch by phone.

“I was very much in love with him by December of 1998,” Christina says. “Then the next spring he came to Germany and I met him in person. I was even more in love then.”

She did not know if Axel felt the same way, however, so she kept quiet. When he returned to Germany for a visit later in 1999, she says she finally figured out that he saw her as more than a friend.

“That’s when we got together, but he was just visiting and left two weeks later,” she says. “He was working as a dog mushing guide in the winter and we were apart until March when he came to see me for a surprise visit.”

The long-distance lovers only saw each other for a week, but then Christina travelled to the Yukon in May for a month. It was during that trip that Axel proposed.

Now a bride-to-be, Christina returned to Germany to prepare for their September wedding – and her move to the territory – while Axel spent a busy season guiding canoeists and hikers.

Since September 6, 2000 the two have lived their life together – happily ever after, Christina says – in their beloved Yukon. They have moved three times, built two houses, and are raising six children, ranging in age from 12 and a half to 5 and a half year old twins.

“We’re a really good team,” she says. “Axel’s a great father and husband. I thought I was totally nuts for being in love with him all those years ago on the phone, but we’ve been married for 14 years. God gave me everything I ever wanted.”

Amen to that.

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