PAM GODIN
Crocus Botanicals, Whitehorse
Crocusbotanicals.ca
Creativity collides with science in Pam Godin’s skin-care line. When she realized she had a sensitivity to ingredients in commercial skin-care products, she decided to make her own. She built a “lab” in her home and played with recipes, much like a chef. With her first product, a hand balm, she used lavender, which is soothing and calming, and rose, which contains antioxidants and hydrates the skin. They also produce a lovely fragrance. This floral combination remains a staple for Godin, together with a boreal-inspired scent (featuring frankincense and myrrh) called Sacred Forest.
Godin’s continued explorations in the lab have yielded many more products, including a relief bar for aching muscles and other pains, salves for cracked skin and even a paw balm for pooches. She strives to keep a small footprint and is committed to using refillable packaging. As the owner of the Yukon Refillery, a Whitehorse shop that sells bulk and refillable body and household products, she supports other local makers by carrying their brands alongside her own, Crocus Botanicals. She’s keen to share knowledge about ingredients and sustainable practices and is ambivalent about growing too big. “For me,” she says, “growth is being able to do this really well.”
AMY MAUND
Laughing Lichen, Yellowknife
Laughinglichen.ca
Rose hips and cranberries, tamarack and fireweed, Labrador tea and wild mint. These are just some of the botanicals that Amy Maund harvests in the wilderness around her family’s off-grid farm to make teas, serums, salves and more for Laughing Lichen.
Since Maund relies on the local ecosystem for her ingredients, the products she offers depend on the plants that are available. This means adapting to uncertainty caused by climate change. For example, in a drought year when there are no cranberries, she might substitute them with another berry.
Born and raised in Yellowknife, Maund’s interest in foraging stems from a childhood spent in nature. This evolved into a passion for medicinal herbs and plants, which she shares with others by hosting workshops on how to gather plants respectfully and sustainably. One of her greatest rewards is seeing her former students enjoying land-based activities with their families. She believes that by spending time in nature, people are more likely to value and care for it. Some of them end up working for Maund, supplying her with botanicals they’ve foraged. “It’s really nice for people in remote communities to be able to do that,” she says, “because they don’t have to leave home.”
BERNICE KUUTUU CLARKE
Uasau Soap, iqaluit
Instagram.com/uasau_soap
As an Inuk, Uasau Soap founder Bernice Clarke always listens to her Elders. When they took her aside at craft markets and shyly suggested that she use bearded seal oil in her products, she followed their advice. Her entrepreneurial journey has always been about more than selling soap. It’s about instilling Inuit values into her business and connecting people to her culture and the Arctic that inspires her work.
Many ingredients are sourced from supportive community members. A friend gathers lichen used in the brand’s I Lichen You soap bars, and Clarke gifts her with a supply of bars. The bowhead whale, which has long sustained the Inuit, is harvested by hunters during their community hunt. They save blubber for Clarke, and her child, Crow Kootoo (who acts
KIM JOYCE KOYCZAN
Nature Spirit Soaps, Whitehorse
Nature-spirit-soaps-123.myshopify.com
Kim Joyce Koyczan started researching medicinal plants to make herbal teas when her grandmother was undergoing cancer treatments. That’s how Koyczan learned that the wild botanicals she gathered for internal ailments could also be applied topically to treat conditions such as eczema, psoriasis and joint pain. She introduced her first soap in 2022 and is now a full-time entrepreneur. Her products are distinguished by their signature shapes: polar bears for soaps and bear paws for lotion bars. Koyczan, who is of Tahltan ancestry, also makes face creams, salves, serums and massage oils, often from tree extracts, including balsam, spruce, fir and cedar.
As a vendor at the Fireweed Market in Whitehorse, she enjoys sharing her products with visitors from around the world and would like to expand her market beyond the Yukon. In 2025, she was a semi-finalist for the Pow Wow Pitch competition, which celebrates Indigenous entrepreneurial excellence. She’s most fulfilled when she’s on the land and gathering wild plants with her children and says, “The landscape itself provides healing in many ways.”
MEGAN COOPER
Harvest 62, Yellowknife
Harvest62.ca
Planning a hiking trip in northern Quebec, where black flies and mosquitoes are “apocalyptic,” Megan Cooper knew she needed something that could repel the bugs without irritating her sensitive skin. So, she made it herself. Before long, her travel companions dumped their DEET in favour of Cooper’s non-toxic alternative.
Since then, she has refined the product, which she calls Thyme Off. To make it, she uses neem oil, derived from a tree native to India. Not only does it combat northern bugs, it’s also a kind of cure-all for an array of skin conditions, from eczema to psoriasis. In fact, the secondary benefits of the repellent were so noticeable, her customers moisturized with it even during frigid, bugless winters. This prompted Cooper to re-jig her formula to be better suited for daily use. This time, she learned about the medicinal qualities in the forest botanicals near Yellowknife. She applied her new-found knowledge to develop her Valkyrie line, which uses local yarrow and rose hip oil and arnica she sources from Fort Smith. It cleans and moisturizes while protecting the skin and promoting cell growth.
LÉAN NÍ CHURRÁIN
Creams of the Forest, Haines Junction
Instagram.com/creamsoftheforest
Léan Ní Churráin tried 82 different recipes before she landed on the perfect blend for her signature face cream. Originally from Ireland and now living in Haines Junction, she wanted to emulate luxurious, high-end skin-care products without the toxic ingredients that show up in a lot of commercial creams. Her early attempts were too greasy, which led to four years of research and advice from a mentor she found online who’d retired from a career in the skin-care industry.
Now, Churráin’s Creams of the Forest face cream is infused with local rose and yarrow and sells out at Yukon markets and shops. She has since expanded her line to include bath salts, lip butters and roll-on fragrances. Everything, including the hand-drawn illustrations on her packaging, is inspired by the Yukon. As a home-based entrepreneur, she’s grateful to be present with her two young daughters and show them that women can “create something meaningful and build a life that we love.”
