The England-born, Yukon-based writer has just released her third poetry collection, Endlings, in which each poem is inspired by a different extinct animal species. The passenger pigeon is there, as is the Labrador duck, the Chinese river dolphin and the great auk. For Lilley the project is an extension of themes that have percolated for years. “Animals …
Howls of the past are echoing again thanks to Joanna Lilley Read More »
My favourite line from Forrest Gump comes near the end. Gump’s beloved Jenny has died and he stands over her grave: “Mama always said that dying is a part of life, but I sure wish it wasn’t,” he says. It’s not often quoted, but I like its honesty. He is faced with a sad truth, …
I joined the What’s Up Yukon editorial team in late September 2012 and the first edition with my name on the masthead was issue #300, dated October 4, 2012. What followed were 33 months of continual employment, bringing me up to this issue, #436. This unbroken string of paycheques from the same outfit breaks my …
Last Friday I met with David Skelton, the artistic director of Nakai Theatre, and DD Kugler, a renowned Canadian dramaturge. A dramaturge, which is an unpleasant word, functions as an advisor to a playwright. Such a person raises concerns, make suggestions, and sometimes draws thick red lines through vast swaths of dialogue. Both the above-mentioned …
It’s funny how a change in geography can alter your perspective on something you’re well acquainted with. My places of residence within Whitehorse had always been above the Alaska Highway — first Hillcrest, then Granger. But that changed in the fall of 2009 when I rented out a room in a small bungalow on Cook …
In early-1993 my mom took my sister and I to see Alive, a film about an Argentinian rugby team that must survive a plane crash in the Andes. But the film was rated R and I was 11, so my mom had to do some research. She phoned our family friend, Hector MacKenzie, who worked …
Fawn Fritzen joined the Big Band in 2008 and took over as its vocalist from Rebekah Bell in 2013, when the latter left the territory. Yet despite seven years in the outfit, Fritzen is keenly aware that she is a newcomer in the grand scheme of things. Indeed, on May 23, the Big Band will …
The discs one uses in disc golf have certain innate properties that allow them to act in a reasonably predictable manner. For example, all else being equal, if a right-handed player tosses a backhand shot, the disc will start by going in the direction it was thrown but as it loses momentum it will dive …
When I was learning to drive, one required skill haunted my dreams. Leading up to my driver’s test in the summer of 1998 I would go down to the Qwanlin “Mall” parking lot, after hours, and set up pylons. Then I’d practice parallel parking in my family’s 1987 Tercel 4wd wagon. It was boring and …
On February 16 I picked up my roommate, Taylor Tiefenbach, from the Erik Nielsen International Airport. His flight was due to arrive at 3:05 p.m. and I was running late. Given this, I decided to park right in front of the terminal, in the area designated, “IMMEDIATE PICK UP AND DROP OFF ONLY”. Taylor’s plane, …
I got my MacBook Pro computer in the spring of 2010 and it has served me well for five years. It has been with me through various drafts and productions of my play, Syphilis: A Love Story, and through my 30-month tenure with What’s Up Yukon. But in the last half-year or so, various behavioral …
Like those who attended the first Sex Pistols concert, I too like to take credit for discovering something revolutionary: the iceberg. In 1996, I attended Grade 9 at the now-defunct Christ the King Junior Secondary on Nisutlin Drive in Riverdale. As the days of spring took hold, it was not uncommon for me to walk …
On September 20, 1993 The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air aired episode one of season four. The show documented the comedic hijinks of Will Smith (played by Will Smith), a street-savvy kid from Philadelphia who went to live in a Los Angeles mansion with his aunt and uncle (Vivian and Phillip Banks), and their children (Hilary, Carlton, and Ashley). Season three ended with …
The following story was my submission for the 1994 Yukon Young Authors’ Conference. There, I got to work with acclaimed Canadian playwright Guillermo Verdeccia, who first sparked my interest in dramatic writing. Happily, 21 years later, this important conference is still going strong. The 35th annual version is being held from April 23-24 at F.H. …
When one walks into Horwoods Mall from the Front Street entrance in downtown Whilehorse it’s hard to miss him. There, in one of the building’s charming nooks and crannies, sits John Houle with greyish hair protruding endearingly from a small, black skull cap. Houle is the owner/operator of ProPass, a one-stop-shop for all your photo …
In autumn 2009 I slipped on a frosty stair and broke my left humerus. Before the accident my left arm had an angle of 20°, meaning that when it was fully extended it reached 160° instead of the normal 180. When the dust finally settled after my injury — including one botched healing attempt — …
In the wake of Boyhood’s lackluster haul at the recently held Academy Awards — it won only one Oscar, despite six nominations — I’ve been thinking about the film’s writer/director Richard Linklater. Boyhood was a momentous task in which Linklater gathered the same group of actors together for a few days each year, for a …
Enzo Ferrari emerged from World War II with a bold plan to design and build automobiles under his own name. At first, he favoured the construction of racecars and had little interest building street-legal sports cars, but economic realities necessitated he pitch his products to a somewhat wider demographic. So he compromised; he built cars …
The Overland Trail was a transportation corridor between Whitehorse and Dawson City constructed by the White Pass and Yukon Route at the turn-of-the-century. Spanning 530 kilometres, it took five days to navigate by horsedrawn sleigh or carriage — if the weather co-operated, that is. If not, the journey could double, or even triple in length. …
When I was a kid I rarely got mail. And when I did, it was usually a card from a relative or a note from a pen-pal. These letters came in packages of different shapes and sizes and would usually have an off-kilter, hand-written address adorning the centre of the envelope. Such addresses provided clues …
Here’s my dilemma: it’s 9:30 on Thursday night and I need to “put the paper to bed” by the end of the night. Everything else in complete, except my Jabbering. It’s been a long week for me (as I’m sure it has been for many) and I’m not feeling very inspired. On top of that, Ben …
When I arrived in New York City on December 19 and found my room in the apartment I was subletting, I dropped my bags and investigated the habitat. I had been warned about the kitchen from the girl I was renting the room from (who is also named Kitchen), and sure enough there was a …
Street Level Cuisine in the City that Never Sleeps Read More »
I’m grateful for my Canadian citizenship. I’m grateful for the constant support of my family. I’m grateful for the serving staff at the Gold Rush. I’m grateful for my job and my co-workers. I’m grateful for the dogs in my life. I’m grateful for quiet moments of truth in literature. I’m grateful for frozen pizzas. …
My office and my bed are 10 feet apart, which means that my morning commute takes between 15 seconds and one minute, depending on whether I put on pants. I have amused myself with thoughts of what Cary Grant’s dapperly dressed editor in His Girl Friday would have thought about a weekly newspaper put together …
When I was 16 years old I went to Hawaii with my family. We stayed in a modest but clean hotel with easy access to the beach. Because I hadn’t spent much time by the ocean I was hesitant to try surfing, but bodyboarding seemed learn-able so I made haste for the beachside rental shop …
When a play hits the stage for its first full production , it’s travelled a long way. Often a playwright begins showcasing her work by reading a scene or two in front of friends. After that, perhaps she recruits actors and presents those same scenes in a coffeehouse setting, then there might be a staged …
Terrence McNally’s Dedication or the Stuff of Dreams, playing at the Guild Hall until December 6, is a love letter to theatre in an era when it needs all the love it can get. Set in the dilapidated remains of a once-grand playhouse — the kind with balconies — Dedication focuses on the aspirations of …
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard. Because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone. And one we intend to win.” — …
I am, by nature, a sentimental son of a gun. I wear old shirts until they are threadbare because they remind me of certain times, places, and people; I listen to old songs just to feel wistful; I cloak the past in a golden sheen. I sometimes even catch myself feeling tender towards the most …
Last night I watched episode 1 of the Sopranos, the mafia-family television series that became hugely popular at the turn of the century . It was fun, funny, violent, and vulgar; and I liked it a lot. I haven’t watched The Sopranos before, but it’s often cited as instgating “the television revolution”, wherein television began …
The Sopranos, the Camino de Santiago, and How the World Hangs Together Read More »
The Shape of Things, which runs every night at the Guild Hall in Porter Creek until October 11, continues playwright Neil Labute’s reputation for blunt depictions of men and women at war with each other. Four students, played by Santana Barryman, Jeff Charles, Rowan Dunne, and Andrea Bois, navigate their way through gender politics and …
As she reached for his arm she saw it become tense; it was an involuntary reaction on his part, caused by the palsy affecting his left side since birth. She paused for a second, and he hoped she wouldn’t stop. Finally she continued, placing her hand just below his elbow. She felt the tension in …
Whitehorse-based singer-songwriter and comedian Claire Ness is right in her element; the local performer is releasing a new live album called Jackfish Girl, which will drop with a celebratory concert on September 26 at the Old Fire Hall. For Ness the concept of a live album contains a certain excitement not present in the studio …
Imagine Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico Philosophicus was a person. He was a young man — driven, entrepreneurial, and shaved clean. He woke early, without setting an alarm clock. He ate quickly, dressed quickly, and always arrived at work on time. His colleagues appreciated his punctuality and said positive things about him; some tried to imitate his …
I’ve consumed coffee nearly every day of my life since I was 20 years old and I still don’t have a favourite mug.I’ve drank from mugs that bragged “#1 Lover” and “Life is richer in New Westminster”; I’ve drank from mugs that had little porcelain moose turds at the bottom; and I’ve even drank from …
If you ask visitors for adjectives describing the northern lights, they might say beautiful, mysterious, auspicious, captivating, haunting, inspiring, and magical. But I’m no visitor. I’ve been craning my neck skyward towards the aurora borealis since I was knee-high to a grasshopper and gradually I began to lose interest in their ghostly sky-dance. Last winter, …
Keno. The tiny mining town 60 km north of Mayo is just far enough off the beaten track to possess exotic appeal. Ask Lara Lewis, vocalist and keyboardist for the Whitehorse band, Black Iron Blossom.“Keno has a certain allure to it,” says Lewis. “It’s the town at the end of the road.”It’s an allure that …
In April 2002 I was lying on my bed in Lethbridge, Alberta listening to the same clock radio that is still perched on my dresser today. The local DJ took to the airwaves and announced that Layne Staley — lead singer the seminal Seattle grunge band, Alice in Chains — had died of an apparent …
Preemptive clarification: The targets in disc golf look like baskets. However, due to the culturally dominant influence of regular golf, disc golfers will often refer to these targets as holes. I have done that throughout this piece. When playing the Mt McIntyre disc golf course in Whitehorse, the nastiest piece of business is reserved for …
The opening image of The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) provides a valuable portal into the mind of director Wes Anderson. Accompanied by dream-like music, we see a book placed on a wooden desk. The book is rotated, opened, and the library card within is stamped. The book is then closed — revealing its title, The Royal …
In the winter of 1995 my family headed south to spend Christmas with our relatives in Denver, Colorado. Our accumulated crew amounted to eight cousins and four parents, and in accordance with an ancient family tradition one evening was set aside for a talent show; I was tapped to be the MC. Amidst the singing …
Forget the Generation Gap, let’s Talk About the Tooth Gap Read More »
RZA had an embarrassment of riches on his hands. It was the early 1990s and the New York City rapper had just consolidated some of the finest, young East Coast hip-hop talent into one group. Beyond himself, the lineup included Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, U-God, Method Man, Inspectah Deck, Masta Killa, GZA, and Ol’ Dirty Bastard …
In Praise of 7th Avenue It’s not on the way to anywhere. It’s a world removed from the fast food congestion of 2nd and the self-conscious business of 4th. And it has nothing in common with the arrogance of 6th. You just want to wipe the smirk of the face of 6th Avenue when it …
Anthropologists need not travel to New Guinea to research the subtleties of human societies; plenty of culture can be witnessed at the local saloon. Among the chivalrous traditions, the bar-set prides itself on is its refusal to let a compatriot drink alone. “Want another one, Hank?” the bartender says. Hank, casts a glance at Stu …
A few days ago I met Cam Webber for an after-work drink at the Roadhouse. Cam is a gravedigger for the City of Whitehorse, and had already set up camp with a couple of colleagues under a patio umbrella when I traipsed in. The sun shone down uninhibited by clouds, warming both our bodies and …
When I was a kid I would visit my grandparents at their home in Burnaby, B.C. Their property was three-quarters of an acre and featured exotic treats like apple trees, blackberry bushes, rope swings, and a large garden. The rear of the property bordered a lush, west coast gulley. These surroundings afforded me the opportunity …
At the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick’s science-fiction classic, the audience is introduced to a group of apes at the exact moment when they transcend their ape-ness, and give birth to humanity. One morning, one of these creatures awakens from its dusty slumber to find a strange monolith obstructing its view of …
The robin obviously had a problem with us. I was hanging out on the back porch with my friend Jenny Duncombe — minding our own business — but this little bird was having none of it. At first she squawked from the safety of a pine tree 20 feet away, but things soon grew more …
Seeing a house party through to its conclusion requires stamina, willpower, and a lack of pressing activities the following day. And the only way ensure that the last drop of life has been squeezed from the function-in-question is to further impose upon the gracious hosts and find an empty piece of furniture to sleep on …
They ate my soul at the summer parade They drenched it first in marinade They cut it into little bits They served it with a couple of Ritz The mayor raised his glass of Spanish wine Said, “My, my, my, this soul is fine” The crowd roared with its approval At my soul’s untimely removal …
Alpacas See them in yarn-form at this year’s Fireweed Community Market
Collecting material possessions fills me with ambivalence. If anything, the accumulation of objects causes stress, and the old adage “the things you own end up owning you” rings true for me. However, I’m inconsistent in applying this principle. The most noticeable exception is my attitude towards books. I love them. I love owning them; I …
The first time I hitchhiked was with my father, when I was 12 years old. We exchanged what-would-mom-think smirks as we boarded an empty cattle car towed by a semi-truck and then clanked our way through the Kalahari Desert to Lobatse, Botswana. Even from that young age I understood the appeal of throwing up your …
Larry Bird President, Indiana Pacers 125 S. Pennsylvania Street Indianapolis, Indiana 46204 Dear Larry Bird, Do you know the series 30 for 30? It’s a bunch of documentaries about different sports things. My favourite episode is about Spike Lee and Reggie Miller, and how Spike was rooting for the New York Knicks and Reggie was playing …
Tamara Neely, the stalwart editor of What’s Up Yukon since October 2012, is having a kid. As assistant editor, I’ve watched her grow rounder month-by-month as the fetus inside her womb laid waste to the second trimester and dove into the third. And through it all she’s been there — packing her birthing bulk around …
Dear balloon, We crossed paths one night as I walked up Two Mile Hill. I was heading home to Takhini; I’m not sure what you were doing. Perhaps you had escaped your party duties and were making a break for it. There was a joy and freedom in the way you fluttered, and sank, and …
An Open Letter to the Green Balloon that Followed Me Up Two Mile Hill Read More »
I believe hot sauce is the best condiment. I believe a good hat can set the mood. I promise to buy Sarah MacDougall’s next album. I believe YouTube got way less cool when it started putting commercials in front of clips. I believe perfect teeth are overrated. I believe Charles Manson ended the ’60s. I …
25 Beliefs, 15 Promises, and One Rhetorical Question Read More »
On March 8, 2004, in a game between the Colorado Avalanche and the Vancouver Canucks, Todd Bertuzzi punched Steve Moore from behind and then drove his head into the ice. I was watching TSN on the 10th anniversary of this incident, and they kept playing the clip over and over again. It was, frankly, sickening. …
My Obviously Simple Minded Idea to Reduce Cheap Shots in Hockey Read More »
As my big red beard attests, I’ve got Scottish heritage in my DNA. On my mother’s side of the family, I’m derived from Clan Donnachaidh, also known as Clan Robertson. My mom’s maiden name is Robertson, which also happens to be my middle name. Peter Robertson Jickling. The clan’s first leader was a fellow by the name of Stout Duncan, a fireeyed warrior who displayed fierce allegiance to Robert the Bruce during …
Marlon Brando, Forrest Gump, Mary Ellen Read, David Foster Wallace (obviously), Catherine O’Donovan, Roger Federer, Roberto Bolano, Robert Pirsig, Bob Dylan, Kurt Vonnegut, Wes Anderson, Joel Coen, Theoren Fleury, Winston Churchill, Tommy Douglas, Terry Fox, Gavin Gardiner, Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo DiCaprio, Leonardo the ninja turtle, Charles Darwin, W.V.O. Quine, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Tammy Beese, Cormac …
ROYAL NAVY TRADITIONAL TOASTS Monday: Our ships at sea. Tuesday: Our men. Wednesday: Ourselves (as no one is likely to concern themselves with our welfare). Thursday: A bloody war and quick promotion. Friday: A willing soul and sea room. Saturday: Sweethearts and wives, may they never meet. Sunday: Absent friends and those at sea. The …
The truth is I don’t put much stock in matching socks. I wear matchies for important events like funerals, but for grocery shopping on a Tuesday and other everyday adventures, I find mismatched socks just as practical. In a pinch, they can even be used as conversation starters. Here’s how it works: If I open …
It can’t be easy to find your identity as a chubby performer in Hollywood. In an industry notorious for its worship of physical perfection, overweight actors must sometimes feel adrift. Case in point: Phillip Seymour Hoffman. He didn’t settle on an identity for five years. Of his first 15 television and film appearances he is …
This February finds Whitehorse music aficionados scratching their heads in a manner not seen since the Trudeau administration. After 35 years of jams and jingles, the Frostbite Music Festival will fall silent this year. But while some see disappointment, others sense an opening. Enter Josh Paton and Marcus Steiner. Paton is the proprietor of Epic …
Pecha Kucha is a presentation-style invented by architects in 2003, designed to promote clarity and concision amongst public speakers. The Pecha Kucha format requires presenters to build a slide show containing exactly 20 slides. As the images roll, the speaker provides commentary on each one. The catch? Each of these 20 projections is only shown …
I’m interested in enthymemes. An enthymeme is an argument in which at least one constituent part is not stated, but implied. When I use the word “argument” I am not denoting a spirited exchange of opinions; rather, I’m using it in a technical sense, meaning “a series of premises leading to a conclusion.” A simple …
You’d be forgiven for thinking The Wire and Breaking Bad are American television shows — that’s certainly what they appear to be. But actually, they’re 19th century novels — or at least, these days, they’re the closest thing we have to the epic, moral, and popular storytelling of Dostoevsky, Dickens, and Hugo. Those two shows …
I was just wondering whatever happened to Donovan Bailey, and then there he was — all over my Internet. As a guy who tries to keep his toe wet in the world of literature I have come to enjoy Canada Reads, CBC’s odd combination of high-brow book culture and low-brow reality show banter. The multimedia …
In December 2010 I moved into my current residence on Normandy Road in Takhini. Joining me as roommates were Gavin Gardiner from Saskatoon and Jayden Soroka from Regina. In January 2011, Weyburn’s own Shawn O’Dell also moved in. With three-quarters of our household originating from Saskatchewan it was natural to begin calling our large, white …
Perhaps citizens of every tourism-oriented economy reserve the right to gently mock the very visitors that employ them. In the Yukon, for example, tourism contributes more than $100-million to our Gross Domestic Product and helps to generate a quarter of our jobs. Nonetheless, these figures don’t prevent us from gathering amongst ourselves to coyly chuckle …
In my room I have a desk where I work. And on the wall above that desk I have tacked a What’s Up Yukon article dated December 11, 2008. Titled “Worked Hard, Still Working,” it is about Roger Thorlakson, who settled here in 1964. I wrote it — it’s the first in my Yukon Icon …
Brian Fidler’s latest one-person show, which he wrote and stars in, has an inclusive quality about it. Broken, which premiered in Whitehorse in the fall of 2012, deals with Alzheimer’s disease and the way it affects family relationships. “The story is universal,” says Fidler. “Nearly everyone will have experiences with aging and dementia at some …
Before I turned my attention to carousing in the early 2000s, I watched a lot of movies, and as a young film buff I couldn’t believe my good fortune when I stumbled upon the Internet Movie Database (IMDB). Here was a website with a seemingly endless stream of information, reviews and statistics on nearly every …
The Amazingly Consistent Downward Trajectory of M. Night Shyamalan’s Films, 1999 – 2010 Read More »
About a month ago my friend Dylan Letang finally got his wish. Last year he moved back to Whitehorse after spending a decade in Vancouver. As a single man with intelligence, steady employment, and racially ambiguous good looks he had designs on making a dent in the local scene. Unfortunately, he lived in country residential …
In the early ‘90s I semi-regularly attended the United Church with my family. This involved weekly Sunday school lessons, plus the occasional extracurricular congregational picnic or evening potluck. The evening potlucks were my favourite events because after dinner, while the parents drank coffee and chatted (or whatever parents did in the early ‘90s), the children …
When 2010 began I had three living grandparents; by the year’s end I had none. My mom’s parents were Walter (Waddy) and Beth Robertson, both born in 1917, both raised in the lower mainland of British Columbia, both quintessential children of the depression. Shortly after Waddy’s return from the European Theatre in 1945, they bought …
I’ve never been to New Orleans but my friend Casey Mclaughlin has, and when she returned she brought me a book called 1 Dead in Attic, by New Orleans Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose. The book is a collection of Rose’s columns dating from September 1, 2005, three days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana, …
I broke my arm almost four years ago to-the-day and I was impressed with the diligence of my friends’ response — the visits, the casseroles and the almost aggressive earnestness with which they offered to help in any way they could. Their intensity struck me as distinctly Northern — born of a social contract that …
Celebrated Yukon musician Declan O’Donovan is on the road again. The piano-playing troubadour began his fall tour at the Hamilton Music and Film Festival on September 20, and will continue westward, spreading his brand of alternative-roots-blues throughout Alberta and British Columbia, before finishing his tour on October 13 in Vancouver. For O’Donovan, the traveling is …
The film Adaptation (2002) was directed by Spike Jonze, but it’s really screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s movie. Kaufman, who is also responsible for such mind-bending classics as Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, writes himself into his own script and sets the stage for one of the most literary flicks of our …
It’s happening. Right now. I’m sitting on a high stool in my kitchen, propping my torso up with my elbows. The oven is humming away at 425°F, emitting the quenching aroma of melting cheese. In mere minutes it will be sitting on a cutting board in front of me, cut into quarters — begging to …
It’s official. I think I could take John Mayer in a fistfight. Not that I am interested in fighting him, or vice versa, but if by some fantastic coincidence we found ourselves squaring-off with an axe to grind I think bookies would be wise to put the long odds on him. For those of you …
I held out as long as I could. Until last week I had one of the Yukon’s craft-project driver’s licenses. You know the type — scorned by south-of-60 bouncers, passed around and mocked as an example of territorial hickishness, easily forged on a retrograde computer and slickly laminated for protection. These were the IDs of …
If you can satiate yourself with simple pleasures, your chance at a happy life increases. If, for example, a well-timed cupcake can make your day, a contented existence awaits you. For me, the inevitable sticky hands that result from cupcake consumption ruin this effect; but I have my own simple satisfactions. During the course of …
No Need to Feel the World is Dour, If You Have a Tasty Beer in a Well-earned Shower Read More »
One of my crosses to bear is hay fever, an allergic reaction to pollen that emerges in the early-summer and crescendos to the point where I am a runny-nosed, puffy-eyed mess — unable to conduct the most basic of enterprises without dragging a snotted handkerchief across my chafed-red schnoz. During a hay fever episode, sneezes, …
Perhaps Whitehorse’s most stately landmark is the S.S. Klondike, perched on the shore of the Yukon River. But for sheer bizarreness you can’t beat my favourite capital city attraction — on the corner of 4th and Strickland, in front of the blue and yellow Workers Compensation Board (WCB) building. I am speaking of the large …
About four months ago I stood in stunned silence and listened to Ross Mercer’s Tragically Hip theory. To paraphrase it: the Tragically Hip revels in their Canadiana because they are not good enough to make a splash on the international scene. Furthermore, we gladly swallow such pandering because we are often happier to applaud self-aggrandizing …
My friend Mike Bertrand was in town for the 21st Annual Peter Gzowski Invitational Golf Tournament on June 15. Mike, son of Annette and legendary Yukon Mountie Chuck, grew up playing the links at the Mountain View Golf Course in Porter Creek, but when he left Whitehorse at 19, he didn’t look back — not …
Bruce Springsteen’s music is often the soundtrack of my weekend mornings. There is something about waking up and fumbling through the first cup of coffee while listening to Springsteen’s unpretentious — and mostly irony-free — heartland rock that makes me believe the day ahead has worthwhile things in store. It’s not that the themes are …
A couple of weeks ago my sister Hannah flew up from Vancouver, where she teaches at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and spent a few days in the Yukon. She was busy most of the time — meeting with members of the Yukon Orienteering Association (YOA) — so our sibling hang out …
Navigating Through Forests, Art Pieces, and Sibling Rivalries Read More »
A few days after I arrived back in Whitehorse in November 2008, I ran into Janine Aberson while grocery shopping with my mom. She invited me to Aubyn Russell’s birthday party and I went. Aubyn and I weren’t particularly close at the time, despite being Grade 3 classmates in Takhini Elementary. When I arrived, Georgia …
Last night I spent a few hours organizing the entries for What’s Up Yukon’s Food to Fly For contest, in which a lucky winner will be sent to Frankfurt courtesy of Condor Air. Contestants wrote short essays on European cuisine worth hopping the Atlantic to experience. The deadline was April 30 and we received more …
As I write this, the final days of April are whittling away to nothing. Yet when I awoke this morning and surveyed my kingdom from the large bay window in our living room, I was chagrinned to discover my little Civic was covered with snow. Rude. One of my roommates traipsed past me and announced …
On the corner of the building at Third and Black, there is an office with no sign above the door. On a quick scan you would be forgiven if you thought the office was abandoned. In fact, this is the office of Mark Prins, who owns and operates Inanda Images, a local photography company that …
Harreson Tanner and his wife drove up to the Yukon from Vancouver in the summer of 2002. It rained all they way up, but once they got to the Yukon, the Northern sunlight broke through the clouds and put on a show. “We thought the Yukon sure knows how to welcome us,” says Tanner. This …
The top of Grey Mountain is one of my favourite places in the world. In a territory that features nine of the 10 highest peaks in Canada, it doesn’t amount to anything more than a nub, and yet for me it is a magical place. Every summer that I have spent in the Yukon has …
If you’ve been in Umbellula Café, at the Spook Creek Station, recently, you’ve probably noticed some strikingly unique light fixtures illuminating the landscape. These are the brainchild of Steve Gartner. Gartner is an electrician employed by the City of Whitehorse … he’s also an artist. “I’ve been into art since the age of five or …
Rosemary Scanlon grew up in Montreal and turned to art for expression in her teen years. “I was a pretty shy kid so I did a lot of drawing,” she says. Then in high school she did a large-scale portraiture project and art became her passion. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at …
The thing about chefs is that they can work almost anywhere. Because of this, cooking is an ideal job for the restless spirits among us. In a crowd known for its wanderlust, Gordon Parton is somewhat of an anomaly. Parton is the head chef at Gadzoosdaa Student Residence, where students from small towns live while …
For Whitehorse-based theatre artist Brian Fidler, the desire to perform dates way back. “I can trace it to third grade,” he says. “Our teacher would get us to read stories we’d written in front of the class and I loved getting a reaction.” Shortly thereafter he knew he had to make it in the theatre …
There are Lebowski-Fests and books about the Dude’s laidback ethos. Its popularity isn’t surprising, after all, the Dude abides.
In September 2008 I visited Scotland with Casey Lee McLaughlin. I was almost killed on the slopes of Ben Nevis and I nearly went to heaven in the Oban distillery, but before we made tracks for the highlands, we had a couple of days to kick around London. Sure, Trafalgar Square was neat and Buckingham …
Above Antoinette’s Food Cache is a sign that proclaims it to be an “International Slow Food Restaurant”. In a culture that often idolizes speed, such a proclamation seems a little out of place. But maybe there is more value in slowness than we often give it credit for. Antoinette Oliphant would certainly agree. She is …
Cambridge medical students are expected to be well-schooled in the art of social climbing, but Peter Steele, who studied medicine at the University of Cambridge, in England, chose mountain climbing instead. “There were some really excellent climbers [at Cambridge], and I got bit by the ‘climbing bug’,” Steele says in a British accent that seems …
Philippe’s Bicycle Repair occupies a modest little house on Wood Street. The front yard is filled with many bike parts, but they are not strewn about as one might expect; rather, they are arranged – designed to catch the eye and imaginations of those who pass by. Inside, Philippe Leblond, the owner, builds and repairs …
Flo Whyard was born in 1917, in London, Ontario, and grew up in a family of newspapermen and political junkies. Her father sat in the Press Gallery, inside the House of Commons, and wrote his articles at night while Whyard fell asleep. “I was still small enough to fit in a crib, and banging away …
On March 12, 2013 much of the world sat riveted as a papal conclave convened in Vatican City. Two weeks previously, Benedict XVI announced his resignation as leader of the Catholic Church; it was time for the Sacred College of Cardinals — tough admission standards — to elect a new Pope. The conclave was established …
On Phyllis (LePage) Simpson’s coffee table is a stack of books on the history of the Yukon River. When she reads them, it is not unusual for her to find a glaring error or omission. “They make me so mad,” she says. “They sometimes get things wrong.” It’s easy to wonder if perhaps it is …
When Keith Ellert graduated from the Cinema, Television, Stage and Radio program at SAIT, in Calgary, he had dreams of being a “shock jock”. “I wanted to be Canada’s answer to Howard Stern,” says Ellert. “I didn’t just want to push the envelope; I wanted to put enough postage on it to send it around …
When I was a kid I used to sit on my hands after school and wait for the Whitehorse Star. I’d check the previous night’s hockey scores and then I’d read the latest edition of Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. My best friend, Adam Scheck, and I were obsessive about our favourite comic strip. …
Between 1968 and 1978, the Cassiar Asbestos Corporation ran a small mining community called Clinton Creek, about 60 miles northwest of Dawson City. The far-flung location attracted a certain type of person; namely, the young and the adventurous. And so they came – from across Canada and around the world. Noreen McGowan arrived from rural …
A friend of mine turned 30 on the weekend and to celebrate, about a dozen of us hiked into Rainbow Lake, 20 kilometres south of Haines Junction. Those with snowshoes fared better on the hike then those without, but I was somewhat disappointed to find that there was not a traditional pair of snowshoes to …
Until I was 14 years old, every trip I made from Whitehorse to Vancouver included at least one doctor’s appointment. True, those trips also included an Orange Julius at the mall, and even the occasional Canucks or Lions game, but nearly two decades later the details of the sporting contests are lost on me, but …
Between 1964 and 1971 director Stanley Kubrick released three movies, each significantly altering the course of film history. The first of these films was Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Produced in the shadow of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Dr. Strangelove openly mocks the possibility of mutually …
Sometimes I’m asked how I deal with writer’s block. Usually I say that I can’t afford to get infected; that writer’s block is a luxury for hobbyists, not fledgling wordsmiths racing neck-and-neck with the poverty line. But here’s my confession: I say that mostly because it sounds cool, not because it’s 100 percent honest. It’s …
I’ve only been to New York City once, and it was brief. In August 2010 I landed in LaGuardia airport in New York, needing to find Grand Central Station in order to catch a train to Connecticut — where my cousin was getting married. As the plane descended, the captain announced that it was 29°C …
Daniel Tlen sang our national anthem at the opening ceremonies of the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. The event was viewed by one of the largest television audiences ever assembled. “There were some estimates that two-billion people were watching,” says Tlen, though he admits he is a little skeptical of that figure. Tlen’s performance of …
Colleen Potter has an infectious smile that can put even the most-guarded person at ease. It’s a smile that doesn’t fade when she begins to talk about her ancestry. Potter is Métis. We often think such a fact should be pushed to the side, that ethnicity should not be discussed in polite company. Because of …
Bob Van Dijken is a man of deep convictions and strong opinions, but what’s odd is the way he expresses them. Amid the barrage of aggressive sound bites and amped-up election campaigns that we usually suffer through, Van Dijken’s thoughtfully expressed sentiments are an anomaly – but a refreshing anomaly. Van Dijken came to the …
It seems almost everybody knows an O’Donovan. Some of us know nine or 10 of them. All told, there are 11 siblings and they tend to be an active and creative bunch. After seeing different brothers and sisters pop up at different community events, it is only natural for one to wonder where they all …
When you talk about “The Theatre”, these days, it is inevitable that certain eyes will glaze and certain minds will wander. It’s old and out of date, the YouTube crowd might complain. But perhaps the qualities that prevent live theatre from being trendy are the exact same qualities that ensure it will always remain consistently …
During my days at Vanier Catholic Secondary School I played football during lunch. After scarfing down some sustenance we would head to the soccer field, divide the available players, and fling ourselves around the gridiron for half-an-hour before returning inside for afternoon classes. In the spring the floodgates opened and an assortment of jocks, stoners, …
The Coppermoon Gallery is buzzing. Prospective customers peruse the walls, looking at exquisite Yukon art, a woodworker presents a scaled replica of a new sign for the entrance and there appears to be some renovations going on in the back. At the centre of all this activity is Nerissa Rosati, owner of Coppermoon. She apologizes …
I was lucky enough to see the two winning entries from the recently held Yukon 48 competition, in which filmmakers had exactly two days to shoot and edit a movie. Gordy by Traoloch O Murchu is about a man living in the aftermath of childhood sexual abuse. Told with stark, snow-swept vistas and unflinching voiceovers, …
Preceding the last decade of his life — when brilliance gave way to madness — German thinker Friedrich Nietzsche wrote some of the most challenging and controversial philosophy of the 19th century. In the years following his death, Nietzsche’s work influenced a range of admirers, from the Doors front man Jim Morrison to Adolf Hitler. …
Rick Griffiths just returned from a vacation in Saskatchewan where he visited many old friends. “There wasn’t a place I visited where I wasn’t given a meal and offered a bed to sleep in,” he says. Griffiths is a self-proclaimed “people-person”, a man who cultivates and maintains long-term relationships. As he talks about his friends …
In The Yukon, certain family names loom large in our post-gold-rush era: “Van Bibber” is one such handle. Geraldine Van Bibber is one of the family’s new recruits. She took the last name upon marrying her husband, Pat, and has since become a student of the family’s history. “The three Van Bibber brothers came up …
Sometimes people stumble upon their passions accidentally; such is the case with Sophia Marnik. After studying to become a teacher at McGill University, she came North to the Yukon, in 1996, with an open-ended future in front of her. At approximately the same time, a local production of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was …
In the summers between my years at the University of Lethbridge I would work at the Yukon Transportation Museum (YTM). I sold trinkets in the gift shop, gave tours to visitors, went disc golfing at lunch, napped underneath the train exhibit, put a tip-jar at the exhibit entrance, and generally relished my low level of …
One of the things I like about local man-about-town Ben Mahony is that I have managed to construct a solid friendship with him despite scant regard for logistics. I have spoken to him on the phone less than half a dozen times and we have never gone for a hike. But we do frequent the …
If it’s true that artists force a culture to come to terms with itself, then few people have helped define the Yukon more than Jim Robb. We all know his work: the billowing drifts of snow, the wispy chimney smoke, the happy huskies and, of course, the cabins – canting outward from their base. Robb …
BY PETER JICKLING The circus is coming! “Bounce” is the brainchild of the Boys and Girls Club of Whitehorse. As Dave Blottner, the club’s program director explains, it was the youth who initiated the plan to bring the circus north. “We’ve got to give this one to the kids,” he says. “We were discussing a …
In the early 1980s when Mike Gladish was working for the Canadian Weather Office, in Edmonton, he was given a choice between taking a job in Banff and taking a job in Whitehorse. He chose the latter. “I had just gotten into cross-country skiing,” Gladish explains, “and I heard about the World Cup race that …
Florian Lemphers sits on the back porch of his Lake Laberge home. This vantage point offers a glorious view of the lake and the fall colours, which are in full bloom. Lemphers rests his feet on a bench and casually sips a cup of coffee (he’s wearing a pair of Carhartts and a broad smile). …
As a young biologist and a newly married husband, the Yukon offered Dave Mossop a chance to combine these recent developments in his life. “[Grace and I] were looking for an adventurous place to have a honeymoon, and I had the chance to research ptarmigan up here,” says Mossop. It’s almost 40 years later and, …
Sometime near the end of October, I was making pumpkin soup with a friend of mine. There was one missing ingredient: fish sauce. We meticulously sifted through the shelves of a local grocery store, but came up empty-handed. We got the staff involved in the search – still nothing. Just before giving up, my friend …
It is an odd position for Sandi Coleman to be in. On this particular afternoon, as she sits in a local café and sips on a cup of coffee, Coleman is not the interviewer; she’s the interviewee. For thousands of Yukoners, Coleman’s cheerful voice is one of the first sounds heard in the morning. She …
Vangie Ramirez wears a warm smile on her face and she laughs a lot. It is not a naïve or childish laugh; rather, it seems to be a quiet acknowledgement that life is treating her well. When Ramirez arrived in the Yukon in 1990, it was the culmination of long journey, a journey that began …
On the first Sunday after southern Yukon’s cold snap waned, my roommates and I piled into Jayden Soroka’s Subaru and headed down the Fish Lake road in search of a household Christmas tree. We pulled up beside a large drift, tightened our boots and barreled into the untouched, highway-side snow — smiles on faces. A …
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In the spring of 2011 my ex-roommate Gavin Gardiner bought a piece of taxidermy featuring a stuffed mongoose engaged in mortal combat with a stuffed cobra. He originally intended it as a wedding present for a friend of his, but fortunately the engagement disintegrated. Towards the end of 2011 Gavin accepted a job is Saskatchewan …
As a young girl, growing up in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, Ruth Armson was an avid reader. She read whatever she could, but the selection was limited by her rural circumstances. “I read all the Jack London books,” says Armson. “I went to a small country school and that’s what they had in the library.” …
For the past year and a half Jayme Henderson has always been there — at mango-infested brunches, long weekend retreats and off-key karaoke ho-downs — but now, as we head into the darkest hours of winter, Jayme is leaving the Yukon on December 17. This type of thing is not uncommon; a talented person with …
When Ellen Brian talks, she looks you in the eye. She speaks in well-constructed sentences and, when she finds something funny, she laughs naturally. Brian strikes those who meet her as down-to-earth. With this in mind, some might be surprised to discover what she does for a living. Her business, Little Star Astrological Services, specializes …
Dean Eyre sits on a stool in the middle of his newly purchased bike shop on Wood Street. A man as passionate as Eyre deserves to own a place like this: “There’s something nice about going somewhere and knowing that you used your own muscles to get you there. “I think they (bicycles) are the …
There is a lot of open space in Nora Merkel’s apartment. Furniture lines the outside of the living room, but leaves plenty of room to maneuver in the middle. It’s a stark contrast from the conditions in which Merkel was raised. “I come from a family of 20 children,” says Merkel. “There wasn’t much privacy.” …
For 30 years, Vince Fedoroff has been viewing the Yukon through the lens of a camera. As a photographer for the Whitehorse Star, his long blond hair and laid-back smile have become fixtures at cultural and sporting events around the city. To see Fedoroff is to know that you are in the right place. Like …
Kip Veale is right at home among the throngs of people who are participating in Rendezvous at Shipyard’s Park. As Yukoners celebrate the coming of spring and the longer hours of daylight, Veale stands outside a large camping tent. She engages passersby with a bright smile and an infectious sense of enthusiasm. But there’s something …
Local photographer Lisa Marino believes in the power of her medium. According to her, photographs are a “universal language” in which people from a variety of backgrounds can experience commonality. “Eight different people from eight different cultures can all look at the same picture and understand it,” says Marino. As such, photographers can be, among …
Tana Silverland didn’t ask for any attention, but she’s learning quickly that it has a way of finding her. The British ex-pat, who used to be a university administrator in Cambridge, England, is about to embark on a two-and-a-half-year bicycle odyssey across Canada. Attention seems to be a natural consequence of doing something interesting and …
Jon Breen in no way fits the mold of the stereotypical bureaucrat; and he’s got the statistics to prove it. He is the manager of Disability Employment Services (DES), which is a division of the Workplace Diversity Employment Office. “Our mandate is to give people with disabilities increased representation within the Yukon government,” he says …
Growing up on the mean streets of Whitehorse’s Hillcrest subdivision, one of my favourite post-dinner, pre-bedtime activities was “taking shots”. Stephen Doyle and I would place a ratty, old hockey net in the middle of Park Lane (the same street where Ron McLean lived) and take turns firing a flattened pop can at each other. …
He was a staple of this summer’s Fireweed Market, held every Thursday in Shipyards Park. At the far end of the market’s stalls, you’d find him cooking underneath a modest white tent. In fact, most aspects of his operation are modest. But not the line-ups. He is Gadi Katz, better known to some as “The …
Last weekend, my friend Georgia Sauve picked me up and we drove 50 minutes south of Whitehorse to Nares Lake. We pulled of the highway onto an unpaved road and followed it until forward progress was no longer worth the risk of getting stuck in the snow. Then we hiked along the shore of the …
Marny Ryder seems to have her thoughts in order. The high-energy septuagenarian sits in her Riverdale dining room and recounts her life —in almost perfect chronological order. She starts in December 1959, when she first arrived in the Yukon as a newly minted nurse. She worked in Whitehorse for a little over a year before …
More than six decades later, Ellen Davignon vividly recalls her first trip to Whitehorse. In was 1943 when six-year-old Ellen and her three siblings embarked on a steamboat in Dawson for the long up-river trek to the family’s new home. “It took us a whole week to make it from Dawson to Whitehorse, but it …
Nesta Leduc’s 1962 journey north, punctuated the remoteness of her new home in the Yukon: “It was a six-hour flight to get up here from Vancouver,” she says, “we had to stop in Williams Lake, Prince George, Fort St. John and Watson Lake first.” Leduc came to our territory as a newly minted doctor who …
I come from a family of cross-country skiers. My father was a coach and my sister was on the Yukon Ski Team. Throughout my youth, our boot-room was cluttered with an assortment of multi-coloured waxes, skis, and poles jutting off at dangerous angles. I, however, could never figure out the rhythm of the sport. Instead …
Every week in 2011, Yukon artist Joyce Majiski constructed, wrote, and mailed a postcard to California artist Zea Morvitz—and Morvitz reciprocated in kind. It was part of a mail-art project that became known as 52 x 2 Postcard Exchange. The idea for the project has been lying dormant in Majiski’s mind for a couple decades. …
My first job as a professional writer began in January of 2011 when I was appointed to a one-year term as the Yukon-based associate editor of Up Here magazine. I showed up with lots of enthusiasm, but also sporting a few notions about grammatical correction that needed to be massaged out of my writing process. …
I grew up with a pretty cool cat named Bing. He was a grey, striped little scrapper who menaced the neighborhood biodiversity for most of his 15 years. Until one night in August 2006 when karma enlisted the services of coyotes, and Bing was never heard from again. I am now pet-less, but have relished …
The Yukon municipal elections are upon us; but how many of us really care? It sounds like a rhetorical question, but it’s not. Thirty-seven percent — that’s the answer. 37 percent of us care, or at least that’s the proportion of eligible Whitehorse voters who dragged a pencil across a ballot in 2009, the last …
So you’ve always wanted to try your hand at playwriting? Well, Nakai Theatre has an offer for you. Starting at 11 a.m. on November 3, and running until the same time the next day, Nakai is hosting their annual 24-hour Playwriting Competition at the Edgewater Hotel. For a fee of $50, contestants are set up …
Years ago I visited Vancouver on my university reading week and a friend of mine took me to a dingy but delicious sandwich shop for lunch, somewhere off Commercial Drive. As we approached the entrance he turned to me. “I’m going to show you something fascinating,” he said in low tones. “When we go in, …
A few days ago I bought a new car, a nice little Honda Civic hatchback with a few fancy bells and whistles: low mileage, intact body work, and no strange “popping” sound when you crank the wheel to the left. All-in-all it’s a good car, and a boon to my personal equity. Furthermore, as an …
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Amber Church sits on a bar stool in Rah Rah Gallery, a new art space, café, and baron Sixth Avenue in Whitehorse, and gazes upon the opposite wall. “Essentially, my imagination is plastered up there,” says Church. “Its wonderful to see my off-kilter world-view on display.” Church is referring to “Once Upon a Time: Fair …
In Roger Ebert’s review of Charlie Kaufman’s maddening but brilliant Synecdoche, New York,he wrote, “I think you have to see (the movie) twice. I watched it the first time and knew that it was a great film and that I had not mastered it.” I have similar feelings about The Guild’s latest production, Venus in …
In September of 2008, I was working construction in Edmonton when the bottom fell out of the economy. There were a few workers on my crew that were good enough to find work in a recession, but I wasn’t one. After spinning my wheels for a week or two, I bought a bus ticket and …
It all started with a movie. When Yvon Soglo was growing up in Aylmer, Quebec, his preferred method of physical expression was channeled through sports. Then in high school he saw a film called Breaking, and a new world opened itself to him. The film was about b-boys and girls (break dancers, to the uninitiated), …
Have you seen the flowerbeds outside the Subaru/Kia dealership? They are, in a word, immaculate. Nestled together in concrete planters, the Geraniums, Petunias and Marigolds burst forth in almost psychedelic technicolour. It all leaves one to ruminate about the tender loving care that has been invested in the garden. The gardener’s name is Joginder Grewal …
Celia McBride will be representing us at the 2010 Olympics, in Vancouver. Is she a curler? or a luger? Neither, actually. She’s a local playwright with an incredible opportunity on her hands. As the host country of next year’s Olympics, Canada has been afforded the opportunity to showcase its provinces and territories on the world …
If you’ve been to a concert or stage performance, recently, and admired the crisp sound or the well-lit stage, then chances are you are already a fan of Bill Charron’s, the owner/operator of Omni Productions. Charron has been a mainstay of the Yukon entertainment industry since his arrival on the scene in September of 1979. …
Rodger Thorlakson cuts a unique figure amongst the early Christmas-season shoppers. He wears a hat that would look affected on a lot of people but, on him and Indiana Jones, it looks perfectly in place. His belt buckle is the shape of The United States — complete with red, white and blue background colouring — …
