It’s a small world – Part 2
Weather, nature and life in the wild (mosquitoes included) continues to carry on, untouched by COVID.
Faro
It’s a small world – Part 1
While tourists worry about bears in the Yukon, I worry about the excess of mosquitoes we’ve had this summer. I am prone to bad bug bites.
Lest we forget
Each year we hope you take the time to remember on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, wherever we are. In the modern world and as we become more disconnected from the memories of what occurred, it becomes more important that we share the necessity of recalling what may occur …
Faro writer nabs excellence award
Wise and wordy Sally Lee Baker weaves wicked words in Toni Tanager, the latest instalment in her series of alliterative children’s books. In doing so, she has also found herself the recipient of a 2019 Book Excellence Award. The Canadian-based Book Excellence Awards is an international book competition that acknowledges the work of both independent and …
We will remember them
It’s important to reflect each November 11th and remember those young men and women who gave their lives on behalf of their country.
The Tintina Trench
There was a not-so-urban myth out there that you could see the Tintina Trench from the moon. That is not true, unless the person on the moon had a good telescope.
Owen Laukkanen: “Keep writing and edit your own work ruthlessly”
Owen Laukkanen is unabashedly a writer of commercial fiction, also known as “genre” fiction, having produced a novel every year since The Professionals came out (and was nominated for four major genre awards) in 2012.
Gearing up to explore ideas and the written word
PHOTO: Dan Davidson The Yukon Writers’ Festival takes place May 2 through 5, with events throughout the Yukon In 1990, a number of organizations joined together to meld the Young Authors’ Conference and the National Book Festival into a farther reaching Yukon Writers’ Festival to highlight the Canadian literary arts in the Yukon. The …
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Yukon Women in Mining
Yukon Women in Mining wants to raise the profile of mining as a vibrant career option, especially for Yukon women and youth. To do that in May they launched the Experiential Extravaganza in three Yukon communities. Over 30 representatives from 20 companies built a travelling exploration camp in Pelly Crossing, Faro and Dawson City to …
The Yukon is Great for Summer Travelling
Summer, with its long daylight hours, is a great time to travel around the Yukon. We started our travels the summer after we arrived, trading up from a VW Beetle to a Ford 150, and loading a second hand 8 ½ foot camper on the back. Over the next several years we covered all the …
There’s Always a Stack of Books Hidden Under Their Quilts
The Yukon Imagination Library — non-profit organization that gives free books to Yukon children from birth to age four — is turning 10 this year. To celebrate the milestone we have collected reading stories from families who have used the library and from a few well-known Yukoners. We will be sharing them over the next …
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Tee Time in the Town of Faro, Yukon
For the first Faro Golf Tournament “we drew circles on the soccer field to serve as holes,” The Faro Golf Club incorporated in 2001.
Wild Times
“They’re [cranes] a much more delicate bird, compared to the swans,” says Carrie McClelland, a wildlife viewing biologist with Environment Yukon. “They stand three and a half to four feet tall, with a six foot wingspan, but they only weigh around seven or eight pounds. They’re very slender.” Lesser sandhill cranes migrate each year from …
The Evolution of a Home
By 2001, however, that big detached deck on the front of the house was deteriorating and we decided that a verandah running across the entire front of the house would cut down on the seasonal evening sun glare and provide what amounted to a sheltered outdoor living room in the summer. This addition we were …
Slip-Sliding Away
Benkert is quick to underline this aspect of the project. “The Yukon Geological Survey has been really critical (to the project) all the way through,” she says, and goes on to cite the important roles played by the Universities of Ottawa and Montreal as well as each of the seven communities that participated in the …
Nothing, Nothing, Nothing… Then Honks Galore!
Sometimes it seems like maybe they might not come. Then you hear them: the faint, high-pitched croaking, growing louder and louder. Then the sky fills with hundreds of sandhill cranes, flying in huge Vs that morph and swoop as the birds soar to catch rising thermals. Everyone in Faro drops what they’re doing to look …
Faro Calling
The Town of Faro fascinates me because I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard stories. That is was a mining boomtown starting in 1969, and now it’s a bit of a bust town. That it’s very well groomed — in my head (and in writing, now) I call it the Pleasantville of the Yukon. It’s …
Cranes Fly High Up in the Sky
The thermals above the town of Faro may account for the “tens of thousands” of sand hill cranes that fly above it each spring. Or so Rose Fulton speculates. Fulton works for the town, and is the Faro Crane and Sheep Viewing Festival coordinator. She says she’d be the event coordinator, but there aren’t enough …
Reflections on Rural Yukon Education
Robert Service School (RSS) celebrated its 25th year in its present building last May. There were no special celebrations, and I suspect that not too many people were aware of the anniversary. It was probably my time on the building committee that made me sensitive to the date. There were still a few staff members …
Road Ready
When Morgan MacDonald closes his classroom door a few weeks from now, he’ll hit the road-less-travelled to gauge how far an alternate career path might take him. The 32-year-old math, science, social studies, and health teacher at Del Van Gorder School in Faro is also a burgeoning singer-songwriter, about to embark on his second Canadian …
Simple Beauty
You know a painting is really good when you can lose yourself in it. Just like looking at a fire; you get hypnotized. Faro artist Jay Hambleton’s paintings of mountains are like that. They will be on exhibit at the North End Gallery in Whitehorse until Feb. 1. They’re impressionistic, rather than realistic, but the …
Getting Around the Yukon: Faro
I lived in Faro for 20 years. I could tell you about how an impressive golf course evolved from a few green belts with spray-painted targets. I could regale you with tales of hiking and biking to beautiful Van Gorda Falls, or snowmobiling and skiing to one of the public-use cabins on the Dena Cho …
Faro’s sheep and cranes ready for their closeup
Faro’s Crane and Sheep Viewing Festival has attracted international attention before as it grows yet again in its fifth year, but this time the International Crane Foundation will help attract even more attention. The Wisconsin-based organization has a crane preserve that protects representatives of all 15 known species. It has a global mandate and has …
Faro fetes its 40th
When you’re a mining town with no mine, every anniversary is special. But this one is more so because Faro turns 40 on July 1. The town that lives on its good looks and personality will be feted by Faroites and anyone else who wants to visit. “There are a lot of free barbecues,” says …
Happy Anniversary, Faro!
When the world thinks of Canada, they think of the Yukon. When Yukoners think of the Yukon, they think of Faro. When the world is thinking of Canada, they don’t picture an industrialized Hamilton or the concrete of Toronto or even the wheat fields of Saskatchewan. They are thinking of mountains and forests and lakes. …
The Best Job in the World
Trevor Twardocleb’s eyes light up when he recounts his own first experience at the Arctic Winter Games. It was 1980 in Fairbanks, Alaska. Twardeochleb, then a young hockey player from Faro, had managed to crack the lineup for Team Yukon. “We won the gold medal,” beams Twardochleb. “For a kid from Faro, just going to …
Rock in a Rush
Would-be rockers in Haines Junction and Faro have a chance to perfect their performance chops in the next few weeks, with help from rock trio Speed Control. The group, comprised of lead singer and guitarist Graeme Peters, drummer Spencer Cole and bassist Jody Peters, is offering “rock camps” in the two communities on back-to-back weekends, …
A Wall of Colour Tells a Tale of Faro
Young laughter rings out in the Faro Kettle coffee shop in the Recreation Centre, as the community celebrates the unveiling of a new mural that brightens the wall above the tables. The mural uses cartoon-like solid areas of colour with black outlines and a rainbow of colours spans the sky, reminiscent of a Ted Harrison …
Sandhills on Demand
A quarter million sandhill cranes! When, anywhere in this territory, do we have the opportunity to see a quarter million anything? Caribou? Nope. People? Not even close. Trees? Well, probably, but trees aren’t typically very active; they don’t really provide a spectator sport, as it were. But a quarter million sandhill cranes, flying overhead in …
At Your Service
In the quarter century since the late Rob Harvey founded Yukon Engineering Services (YES), the company has had its hand in the majority of mining venture in Yukon and northern B.C. It’s not hard to see why. With expertise in everything from designing tailings and water dams, to conducting site surveys and mapping, ore body …
Skyward Bound
t can happen to anyone. You forget to set the alarm, you sleep in, you miss an important flight. But when you’re a migratory bird, missing your southbound flight in the fall could have disastrous consequences. So when Doug and Yasmine Hannah found a mature sandhill crane wandering in the woods near their farm home …
100 Steps Further In
Faro-based artist Jackie Irvine set herself a challenge. What if she painted one painting a day for 100 days? Starting October 1, 2011 she did just that. And every day, even if she was stranded in Whitehorse without her acrylic paints, and had to go buy oil pastels to do it, she kept her commitment. …