Let There Be Light
The longest night, the shortest day. Either way you measure, if you celebrate during or near midwinter, or Winter Solstice…
Take a Chance on Happiness
In the Wheel of Fortune, we see a giant wheel turning in a blue sky while curious winged creatures upon clouds watch…
Listen To Your Grandmothers, Mothers, Aunties And Sisters This Winter!
Ruled by Venus, The Empress brings our core values to the table. Heading into winter, we are encouraged to reflect on our deepest values.
The Beast In Me
The Devil Tarot card says we all have a beast inside of us that can erupt without warning and make us our own worst enemy.
Keep the Humanity in the Work
In a world where there is now a mix of work environments, here are some tips for working from home — for employees and employers (and family)
Pride: It’s Time to Shine, Yukon!
August is Pride month in the Yukon with smaller events planned throughout the territory from Whitehorse to Watson Lake and beyond.
Adäka Cultural Festival Comes Back Into The Light—Renewed and International
The Adäka Cultural Festival returns with the light of many suns, in full swing and in person this year! June 29 to July 5 2022
Honesty and recognizing folks’ value is hot this summer
Don’t immediately assume you are in a love triangle or that your partner is having an affair, each time you see the Three of Pentacles
Mary Caesar: An International Artist Continues to Shine
Splashes of lavish roses, bared teeth of an outraged woman, portraits of people stick gambling—all appear in the paintings of Mary Caesar.
The Transformation of Waste
Is it weird to lick your fingers while you’re making Chocolate Poop? Use a dark high-percentage chocolate, ideally locally ground if available.
Born on May the 4th (be with you)— Destined to be a Fan
“For me, now, Star Wars (SW) is a familiar universe where you know the rules,” reflected Mackenzie Grant. Mackenzie’s birthday is May the 4th.
Take the Long View
How can we best support our fathers? Card: Three of Wands, Minor Arcana. I smiled when this card appeared about supporting our fathers.
Three voices on the love of snowmobiling
Notes from ‘Sled Head Lane’ Three voices on the love of snowmobiling “You need to have an intimate relationship with your snow machine.”
Amelia Merhar, on Meanings within Pysanky
To me, pysanky, Ukrainian Easter eggs, is messy memories of making eggs with wax and dye, with my Baba or at Ukrainian Easter events.
Tarot: Seek Justice with Perspective
Tarot Question: How can we best support Ukraine? The Cards: Justice, Major Arcana XI. The Deck: The Rider-Waite Coleman-Smith
Tarot: Homecoming for the heart
Tarot: Six of Wands, Minor Arcana Rulerships: Leo. Element: Fire. Colours: Orange, Red. Time: Noon. Direction: South. Season: Summer.
Celebrate the great outdoors!
Yukon Rendezvous Festival has planned four possible versions of the festival this year, to quickly adapt to changing health regulations.
Advice on dealing with bullies and bullying?
TAROT: Advice on dealing with bullies and bullying. Two of Pentacles reminds us, change is possible, not linear and often unpredictable.
Breathe with Perspective: Advice on dealing with anxiety
Question: What will help us deal with anxiety? The Card: Queen of Swords, Minor Arcana Rulership: Scorpio. Element: Air. Colours: White, yellow. Time: Dawn. Direction: East. Season: Spring. The Deck: The Rider-Waite Coleman-Smith, first published in 1910. Card illustration here by Aimée. Astrological Circumstances: I cast the reading during the Waning Crescent in Leo, in …
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Tarot: Nurturing Children in Intense Times?
Tarot: The Card: Major Arcana VI, The Lovers Rulerships: Gemini, Mercury. Element: Air. Colours: Blue, Orange, Yellow.
Take Care of your Experiment
Asking the Tarot for a wild card opens a window. Tarot readings offer you fresh perspective and realistic tools for change and re-balancing.
For those who need to reconcile
Tarot Question: may we please have advice for residents of Canada who need to reconcile?
Turns out, being just and fair is hot
Tarot Reading: This summer, seek love aligned with your core values
Sometimes less is more
Spring fever may feel overwhelming this year. Thank-you to my dear Taurus friend who helped me create the questions for this collective Tarot reading.
Just as Bruce Lee advised, water is powerful
An anonymous friend helped create the question/s for this collective Tarot reading: What kind of leaders do we need right now? What kind of leaders do we need to be?
Sometimes we need to surrender
I’ve seen The Hanged Man provoke fear, but this Tarot card (mostly) comes in peace. Take note of your initial response to the hanging figure and keep that response in your back pocket.
Do not drown in nostalgia this holiday season
No matter your spiritual practice, chances are there is a special holiday in December for you, celebrated with gatherings, rituals, and traditions. Of course, this year will be different and I surely need not tell you why.
Recognize one another and act in ways worthy of recognition
The Tarot continues to fascinate and amaze. Sometimes we ask a big question, and brace ourselves for a challenging or lofty answer, yet the advice given feels surprisingly achievable.
Little by little
With the Full Moon in Pisces, I decided to cast our collective Tarot reading about compassion. In Astrology, Pisces is the soul of compassion and represents (among other things) an expansive sea of empathy and understanding for others.
Let The Sun Shine on Your Work
This reading is for all of us, collectively and as individuals, with a special dedication to all the Earth signs out there – Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn.
The Empress Will Lead the Way
I sought a message for us, collectively and as individuals, about our relationships to the some of the current events in the world. My heart was lifted by the card we were given. The Empress.
Pace Yourself, You Animal
Welcome to the first edition of “Traveling Light,” my new column for What’s Up Yukon. To begin, I’d like to launch the column by drawing one Tarot card for the human community of the Yukon, and beyond, at this moment.
Local squared
Chef Robert Brouillette, of the storied Gold Pan Saloon in Whitehorse, is passionate about showcasing local ingredients. Brouillette began working in restaurants at age 16. After working in his family’s Québec vineyard for six years and studying in fine French bistros with chefs from Paris, Bretagne and Alsace, Brouillette’s sense of adventure brought him from …
Ramble in T.O.
My dance practice is rooted in uncultivated, wild, outdoor spaces. I often perform site-specific dances outdoors for audiences and/or camera. However, my latest collaborative project, Ramble (45 min), was performed last month inside a black box theatre in a busy city (Toronto), within a busy theatre and dance festival (the 25th edition of SummerWorks). …
Perspectives on the Whitehorse Extra Foods (aka Yellow Store) Renovation
I usually keep a cool head in chaos. This was not the case one fine Friday when I stopped by the Whitehorse Real Canadian Superstore (Superstore) after work to pick up a few things for dinner. Superstore is a large Loblaws-brand grocery store, and since the closure of Extra Foods (the only other large grocery …
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Do I look Enlightened to You?
I recently heard the term “supermarket spiritualism” to describe folks walking down the proverbial aisle picking and choosing bits and pieces from every spiritual practice imaginable. And then paying for it all at the checkout. Emelia Symington Fedy, a Vancouver-based theatre artist, performer, writer and yoga teacher uses the term, “spiritual capitalism” in her lovingly …
Second Sunday Dance Shakes it Up in Whitehorse
The body is mysterious; it is intricately linked to all that we do, and the ways we think. I’m a dancer; this is my perspective. And there are as many perspectives on the body as there are bodies. I also believe memories are stored in our bodies — that our experiences deeply affect the ways …
Canadian Indie Filmmaker Heads Our Way
The Animal Project, a new feature film by prolific Canadian indie filmmaker Ingrid Veninger, began as a leap of faith. To begin creating the film, Toronto-based Veninger met 100 actors, one at a time, with no script in hand, no concept for the plot, and no characters. “The project was born out of a desire …
It’s Not About “Shushing” Anymore
Books really get around in the Yukon. On a behind-the-scenes tour of the Whitehorse Public Library, with Joyce Kashman, librarian, and Julianne Ourom, director of the Yukon Public Libraries Branch, I saw hundreds of books in the shipping room, neatly shelved and organized. These books were passing through the library in Whitehorse (“the hub”) to …
Collecting songs of the North
Songs tell the stories of places, and the Whitehorse Community Choir Yukon Song Project reflects the stories of the North. The WCC choir director Barb Chamberlain, and Susanne Hingley are collecting poems and writings of the Yukon. The goals: to compile a library of Yukon songs, and to set Yukon poetry/writing to music. “We really …
Rubber Gloves Required
I recently found myself on my knees, in front of a toilet in Home Hardware, being taught how to install a toilet by Megan Fuller, plumbing and electrical supervisor. Fuller fell in love with the “Lego aspect” of plumbing and electrical work while working part-time at a hardware store in Forest, Ontario. She recommends calling …
Finding the Essence of Experience in Nature
Yukon artist Helen O’Connor’s textural, organic, large-scale sculpture, assemblages, and installations beg the viewer to reach out and touch them. The works seem as though they are part of the natural world, not made by human hands. Indeed, O’Connor’s works are made with reverence to nature. However, instead of literal depictions, she tries to find …
A Testament to the Disappearances of Aboriginal Women
International Women’s Day is Saturday, March 8, it’s a day to pause and consider women’s health, dreams, and safety — worldwide, and in Canada. It’s a perfect time to see The Hours that Remain, a play by Ontario Métis artist Keith Barker. The play explores the love, loss, and grief for families and communities surrounding …
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Bush is coming back?
Why do people get so fired up about a little bush? In January, the British newspaper The Telegraph ran an article by Louisa Peacock describing the public response to a pubic display. Clothing manufacturer and retailer American Apparel is known for their controversial advertising campaigns, and this year the New York American Apparel’s Valentine’s Day …
The Natural, Bizarre, and Heart-Wrenching
Three luscious, solo visual art exhibitions are coming to the Yukon Arts Centre (YAC). Rosemary Scanlon’s The Rose Parade, Helen O’Connor’s Salutation, and Michèle Karch-Ackerman’s Foundling each open at YAC’s Public Art Gallery on March 6, and run until May 10. Scanlon and O’Connor are Whitehorse-based artists and Karch-Ackerman is visiting from Ontario. All three …
Emily Nishikawa Makes Tracks for Sochi
I’m certain I’ll never speak to a more grounded Olympian than Whitehorse born-and-raised Emily Nishikawa. I caught Nishikawa on the phone the day before her flight to Toblach, Italy. There, she will train at high altitude and compete in a World Cup on February 1 and 2. It’s Nishikawa’s last stop before Sochi, Russia, where …
Take Caroling a Step Further
Attention hearty Yukon yuletide carolers: prepare to step up your game. Whitehorse’s choir collective, Messiah Chorale, invites you to sing-a-long this solstice weekend. And not just to “O Come All Ye Faithful.” For the first time in Whitehorse, the audience will be singing along to Handel’s Messiah. Messiah is a mesmerizing English-language Baroque oratorio composed …
Parking Meter Attendants Have Feelings, Too
There are some jobs that appear thankless. To name a few, collection agents, nurses who take blood samples, and dentists. Parking meter attendants surely get their fair share of grief from the public, as they walk the streets in all weather, five days a week, issuing tickets that make people angry, day in and day …
Help a Brother, Sister, or Animal Out
I came across this tidbit in the government study “Volunteering in Canada” by Mireille Vézina and Susan Crompton: In 2010, 88 per cent of Yukoners polled volunteered informally by doing things like shovelling a neighbour’s walkway, or taking tea to auntie. Meanwhile, 45 per cent said they did not volunteer formally in their community because …
The Cut-Throat World of Forest Real Estate
Sometimes it’s tough to find the perfectplace to live, or even a place to live at all. During these times of scant housing, have you ever considered moving into an occupied house? Why not just set up camp in the third floor of someone else’s nice home? Whitehorse’s Dr. Kathryn Aitken, instructor/coordinator of the BSc …
Celebrating Death:Roots of Hallowe’en symbols and traditions
“Here it is, the tobacco. I am certain that you, O ghost, are not very far away, that you are in fact, standing right in back of me, waiting to reach for the pipe and tobacco, that you might take it along with you, that you are likewise waiting for your food to take on …
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Things That Go Bump in the Night
I’ve got the creeps, the willies, and the jim-jams. I’ve just heard ghost stories from Heidi Bliedungand Aaron Burnie from the love-worn, historic Westminster Hotel in Dawson City. I’m also relieved that Bliedung and Burnie, who both work at the Westminster, were willing to talk to me about ghosts. Recently, another fellow told me he …
Courageously Putting your Voice into the World
Whitehorse-based theatre company Open Pit is on a mission. In addition to creating new performance works and fostering collaboration between local creators, Open Pit co-artistic producers Geneviève Doyon and Jessica Hickman endeavour to offer at least one workshop a year on different theatrical disciplines. “It is very important to Open Pit to offer professional training …
The History Hunter
Helene Dobrowolsky found her vocation as an author and historian by happenstance. “After a few years of camp cooking, a friend told me about a job researching and writing points of interest signs along the Yukon River,” says Dobrowolsky. “I got the job partly because I was the only applicant who had actually paddled down …
Clean Underwear, Job Ads, Ride Shares, and, of course, Art
When I moved to the Yukon, a friend gave me a tip, “Join the ArtsNet internet mailing list. It’s the information pipeline for the arts community.” I quickly understood what she meant. With the “Daily Digest” version of the ArtsNet listserv arriving in my email inbox once a day, I promptly had zero-cost access to …
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Naming and Renaming History
Change sometimes takes time, even if the change means a return to the familiar. On July 26, 1978, the Whitehorse Star reported that, “a beautification scheme for downtown Whitehorse which would make Main Street a road for shoppers and the waterfront a historical attraction is approved in principal by the Downtown Whitehorse Businessmen’s Association. The …
Hard Work, Long Days and Satisfaction in the Arctic
In a memorable scene in the 1983 movie Never Cry Wolf (adapted from Farley Mowat’s 1963 book), a biologist is dropped by floatplane in the middle of the high arctic tundra. He is completely alone, except for a small collection of wooden crates packed with his research and living supplies. The camera pans out until …
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Friends with Benefits
It’s easy to remember the three kinds of symbiosis if you apply them to your past relationships. Parasitism is where one species benefits and the other is hurt. Commensalism is where one species benefits and the other is neither hurt nor helped. Mutualism occurs when both species benefit. In addition to human romance, symbiosis is …
Syphilis Spreads like Wildfire: Peter Jickling’s Play Syphilis: A Love Story wins comedy award
It’s difficult to resist making puns about the title of the award-winning play Syphilis: A Love Story by Whitehorse playwright, and What’s Up Yukon assistant editor, Peter Jickling. Jokes like, “I caught syphilis at the Guild Hall last week,” or, “I caught syphilis with your mom.” Or how about, “I wanted to catch syphilis, but …
Yukon Roller Girls: Rolling into an Adrenaline Rush
Roller derby is a fast-paced contact sport, mostly for women, where players are known by cheeky monikers such as “Ruff Tuff Creampuff,” and “Fonda Spanks.” Fishnet stockings are welcome, punk-y fashions are appreciated, and mouth guards are required. Featured in movies such as Drew Barrymore’s Whip It (2009), roller derby requires a high level of …
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Wild Berry Picking In Your Own Backyard
Late summer and early autumn is berry-picking time across the Yukon. Low- and high-bush cranberries, soapberries, Saskatoon berries, blueberries, strawberries, cloudberries and raspberries are each a picker’s delight. In addition to foraging, you can easily cultivate berries in your garden, giving you easy and (hopefully) bear-free access to berries. Raspberries are especially easy to grow. …
The Power of Love: Gwaandak Theatre is committed to Aboriginal, northern and diverse voices
Running a theatre company is not for the faint of heart. Only those who work behind the scenes in theatre truly know the passion, work, determination, dedication, and creativity required to produce theatre, season after season, year after year. Audiences grow and diminish, funding comes and goes, trends in the theatre world shift, venues close …
Seeking the perfect tomato for Northern summers
My grandfather’s backyard was a gardener’s dream. Flat as a postage stamp, with deep, rich soil and daylong exposure to intense southwestern Ontario sunshine. My grandfather, a gentleman and tobacco farmer, had an incredibly green thumb. Among his harvests were tons of heavenly tomatoes. The tomatoes were never mealy or white-fleshed, but deep red all …
Part of the Land, Part of the Water
During early land claim negotiations, respected Teslin elder Virginia Smarch once said of her Tlingit community, “that is who we are: part of the land, part of the water.” This uplifting statement is echoed in the events, feasts, performances and workshops planned for this year’s bi-annual Hà Kus Teyea celebration, hosted by Teslin Tlingit Council …
Increase Your Chances of Communicating with Outer Space
“How big is the space station and do you have enough room to dance?” a Grade 3 Grey Mountain Primary School student asked Chris Hadfield via the do-it-yourself magic of ham radio. “It’s huge,” Hadfield said. “It’s the size of five hockey rinks. Yes, there is room to dance, but I need someone to dance …
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Fertile Ground
From my cabin outside of Dawson City, nature’s transformative power is visible. In the tailing piles left behind by dredge mining, tiny plants push through gravel and beside wheels of abandoned mining equipment. Beavers glide though dredge ponds. Old roads crumble under new root systems. Micro-ecosystems fill in the valleys between industrial gravel piles. Left …
The Wild Abundance of Food
It’s only recently that most people have forgotten how to forage for food. For thousands of years, First Nations communities across Canada lived on food provided by nature. Berries, barks, plants, flowers and herbs were cyclically harvested for food and medicine. Colonization changed the relationship between people, the land, and wild foods but a forager’s …
Taking a Look Your Soil’s Fertility
I’m a transplant.I recently moved to Dawson City from Whitehorse, and I recently moved to Whitehorse from my birthplace in Ontario. In Ontario, I worked full-time as a gardener to the rich and famous for 12 years before hanging up my shovel and coming North. In the Yukon, I have yet to keep a garden …
Yukon Landscape is Poetry for the Eyes
The phone directory: the book that no one reads and everyone uses — no one buys it, but everyone has a copy. Lately, in the age of the Internet and cell phone technology, people are questioning whether phone books are worth the environmental costs of printing, distributing and recycling. The NorthwesTel directory serving the Yukon …
Healing and Transformation: Ravenstail Weaving
“A woman needs to have an art form,” says Tlingit Tutchone master weaver Ann Smith. And she feels a responsibility to pass on the art of weaving to the next generation of First Nations women – which is exactly what she and Alaskan Tlingit Chilkat master weaver Clarissa Rizel will do during the Adäka Cultural …
The Controversial Three Letter Word
We use the word “the” to indicate when something is distinct.This may be why we have used the word “the” in “the Yukon”
Yukon Artists @ Work Painter Neil Graham Unveils a Project Six Years in the Making
Tarot cards are tools for divination and reflection; giving the person receiving the reading insight into past, present and future. The exact origin of the Tarot remains disputed and suitably mysterious. “The Tarot cards in more or less their present form appeared in 15th century Italy, but many believe their origins trace back to ancient …
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Angels, Energy, and Divining
I love stories of miraculous cures that challenge status quo notions of medicine — stories of group prayers healing illness, terminal cancer eradicated by meditation and visualization, angels providing crucial information in times of need. Skeptics claim such stories are instances of the placebo effect. I prefer to consider the mysterious possibilities of holistic healthcare …
Creative Arts Therapies Go Beyond Language
Throughout his work, Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche expressed concern with (lambasted, even) people’s preoccupation with language, a system he saw as insufficient to express the complexity and depth of human experience. In his 1873 notes for his incomplete book, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, Nietzsche wrote, “Words are but symbols for the relations …
Finally, some house-building skills to go along with your sweet nunchuck skills
We live in interesting times. International political and energy crises challenge the current North American skill-set. We must ask, ultimately, what is more useful — trapping and harvesting or operating a photocopier? Faced with uncertainty, people seek ways to become more self-sufficient. Communities are relearning traditional skills, including carpentry, through experiments in cob, sod, wood, …
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Shake that Thing
As a dancer, I often hear people say, “Oh, I wish I were a dancer,” or “I wish I had studied dance as a kid,” or “I don’t know anything about dance.” I encourage people to dance, to attend dance performances, to dance in the living room, to sign up for a dance class and …
Viewers play a role in Allegory
Within the striking photographs gracing the walls of Rah Rah Galleryone can observe the weight of the body, the wonder of illusion, silence and visual tensions between movement and stillness. The show, called Allegory, is a collaboration between dancer Monique Romeiko and photographer Alistair Maitland, both based in Whitehorse. These stunning images show the considerable …
At A Moment of Worldwide Controversy
Scrabble made international headlines recently when University of California cognitive scientist and computative data analyst Joshua Lewis suggested changing Scrabble’s age-old scoring system. Here in Whitehorse, the 15-year-old Scrabble Club plans to use the well-loved, original Butts system for their regular Sunday gatherings and the Yukon Scrabble Championships on Sunday, Feb. 24. Alfred Butts, the …
Whitehorse Dating Scene: Hairy, Mysterious, Limited…
Someone recently told my lover, “In Whitehorse you don’t lose your girlfriend, you lose your turn.” It’s a pithy summary of the dating experience in this town and perhaps in the Yukon in general. A quick look at the Statistics Canada 2012 data reveals men out number women in the Yukon by a margin of …
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An Inspirational Elder: Alex Van Bibber
One could easily write a page-turning book about the life and accomplishments of outfitter, trapper, residential school survivor and honoured veteran Alex Van Bibber. I was lucky to have coffee with Van Bibber one morning in January when he was in Whitehorse. His list of errands included picking up his cowboy boots, which he had …
Going Postal
“In the morning it was morning and I was still alive. Maybe I’ll write a novel, I thought. And then I did.” Charles Bukowski, Post Office, 1971 After being a postal worker off and on for several years, gritty American poet Charles Bukowski wrote his first novel in one month: the largely autobiographical, Post Office. …
Contemporary Art Meets History
The storied 53-kilometre Chilkoot Trail crosses the border between Canada and the US and offers spectacular scenery to history buffs and hikers alike. Originally a vital Tlingit trade and travel route, during the Gold Rush it became the “poor man’s route” to the Klondike gold fields. The trail was steep, gold fever was high and …
A Centre Point for New Theatre Works
“A pivot,” David Skelton, artistic director of Nakai Theatre explains, “is the point around which action and movement occurs.” From Jan. 22 – 27 in Whitehorse, the fifth annual Pivot Festival promises to be the centre point of boundary-expanding theatre works featuring local and national talent. With an eye toward bringing new works to Yukon …
Claire Ness Camps it Up in New Solo Show
I confess: as a child I was terrified of clowns. Met with the combination of red nose, garish wig and oversized shoes, I would silently pray in my seat, “please, please don’t throw that bucket of confetti on me.” These days, I understand the centuries-old art of clowning a little better. I see that bucket …
Dawson Group Sowing the Seeds for A Communal Greenhouse
Wintertime in the northern produce aisle can be dispiriting — with mealy tomatoes and tired greens on offer. Even in fair weather, food shortages caused by washed-out roads and landslides (as Yukoners experienced this June), force us to consider our food supply. Even Yukon’s busiest berry pickers, hunters and canners tend to rely on imported …
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