Stan Zuray on 'Yukon Men' Left Boston to Live in Solitude for 40 Years

Publish date: 2024-06-08

The 'Yukon Men' star Stan Zuray left Boston to live a life of solitude some 40 years and is now a solid member on the Discovery channel display.

Mustafa Gatollari - Author

There are some individuals who yearn to live existence out in the desolate tract and never flip back, and I will remember that. For the most phase, people are awful. Think about how time and again you let your self down on a day-to-day foundation, and now multiply that by the entire human population. It's just one massive unhappiness fest day after day. So I get why other folks like Stan Zuray from Yukon Men would want to move "into the wild."

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Stan grew up deficient in Dorchester as a child. His family ceaselessly struggled to make ends meet, which helped flip him into a phenomenal money manager. According to this interesting Dot News exposé on the outdoorsman, Stan's mother said of his saving abilities: "You give Stanley a nickel, he’ll turn it into a quarter.”

But after amassing a ton of quarters, Stanley wouldn't keep them or give them to his family, he'd throw them into the sewer.

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Stan Zuray from Yukon Men blamed money for his father's absence. 

He grew to hate money, as he viewed it as the reason why he was never able to spend time with his father: 

"It took me some time to comprehend it. My father worked with the fireplace department as a blacksmith... He would paintings on the tire store in the evenings on Friday nights and Saturdays and then he would additionally work as a cab dispatcher and he’d sleep so much so he was once by no means [expletive] home... He was long gone such a lot and I believe I blamed it on cash. On the search for money."

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I have to say,  I can relate to Stan on this one. His desire to be financially secure got him to thinking, "Boy, wouldn’t it be nice in the event you lived on a farm or one thing and you could raise your kids and paintings with [them], and when they got sufficiently old they might pass get their own farm… But you’re along with your kids in your work."

What really spurned his desire to leave for Alaska was seeing the growing levels of violence in his neighborhood.

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With friends dying around him, and zero interest in taking a 9-5 job, Stan headed for Alaska and never looked back. He had an interesting journey getting there and even stayed illegally in British Columbia for a while, but ultimately settled on Tanana, where he bought some property and lived out in the wilderness freely.

Stan's not the only focus of Yukon Men however, his children, Kate and Joey also appear on the show.

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Stan's kids love growing up in Alaska.

He had his oldest daughter, Monica, with his first wife — the two live together in Boston. While he did remarry, his wife Kathleen is camera shy and doesn't appear on Yukon Men too often. However, his other children, Kate, Ariella, and Joey, are featured on the Discovery show.

In a recent interview, Kate talks about what it's like growing up in Alaska with her father, and some of her earliest memories. It's like something out of a Disney movie:

"One of my first recollections was right through iciness time being bundled in a dozing bag very early in the morning sooner than daylight. My dad put a long cardboard box in his canine sled, where I'd lay there for hours whilst we drove 40 miles to my dad’s trapping cabin. I would sleep after which wake up and I may just pay attention the dogs mushing whilst my dad whistled or hummed a track. I think like I was a good passenger."

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The rest of her interview is value testing — you can see it here. Joey wishes to observe in his father's footsteps — like Stan and everybody else in the small neighborhood, he loves living off the land and adhering to the Athabascan way of subsistence residing as a hunter and survivalist. Pretty badass, when you ask me. All I know is it is folks like Stan I need to live with and be told from as soon as the poop hits the fan. Here's hoping that never happens.

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