Issue: 2016-04-21
“MAD About Art”
What am I doing? It is -45 C and I am starting to feel trapped. I haven’t left the house – unless you count visits to the outhouse or to grab more wood, which at these temperatures are so quick that they hardly bear mentioning. I haven’t left the house in 15 days. I haven’t …
Longtime Yukon teacher Mary Sloan and rapper Eminem have something in common. They both got their careers started in Detroit’s notorious 8-Mile district. However, Sloan’s teaching environment from the beginning to the end could not have been more different. Growing up in Michigan, Sloan was just 20 years old when she began her first teaching …
We drove four hours from Whitehorse to one of my favourite fishing lakes, then an hour and a half across. As a sheep hunter that’s all the info we give on our hunting spots. If you know where that is, you know the Yukon better than I do. Looking up the side of the mountain …
Walk into École Émilie Tremblay (EET) on a Monday or a Thursday evening and you may be surprised to see that the usual school gymnasium is transformed into a dojo, complete with a giant tatami (floor mat) and filled with students, donning their crisp white judogi, diligently training in the Japanese martial art of judo. …
Except above tree-line, good firewood is available in most places in the Yukon but a few days of rain can make pretty good wood too wet to get anything but thick smoke and little flame. A short time spent on preparation can help to get at least a good cooking fire anywhere. In other articles …
Biathlon is an Olympic Sport that combines two incredibly different competitive activities. Which two incredibly different activities you ask? Biathlon is a combination of a cross country ski race and small-bore rifle marksmanship. In Europe, biathlon is highly regarded with more than 30,000 fans showing up to races. You can consider it the winter version …
Jim Christie was born in Scotland in 1867. He emigrated to Manitoba and then came to the Klondike in 1898. The short, wiry Scotsman took to living in the north like a duck to water. He prospected in the summers and trapped in the winters, learning everything about the isolated regions of the northland. He …
If you are indulging regularly in the good old Yukon Happy Hour, you may have met last night’s mean morning friend: The Hangover. He may be dependable, but he sure is a jerk. While the obvious advice may be that prevention is more effective than a cure, we all know that best intentions don’t always …
The Old Fashioned takes us right back to the beginning of the history of cocktails. In 1806 a reader wrote to the editor of The Balance and Columbian Repository, a newspaper published in Hudson, New York from 1801-1807, asking about the meaning of a new word: “cocktail.” The editor replied, “Cocktail is a stimulating liquor, …
Sandra Grace Storey’s Words Like Birds exhibit digs deep into all that we struggle to express. It finds a great tenderness there. Storey has created an exhibition of small, focussed sculptures for the solo show room at the Yukon Artists @ Work Co-operative art gallery. Storey works in stoneware ceramics coloured with earth-toned oxides. White …
For years I have heard the name Voltaire and have not had a chance to locate any of his works. Then the fateful day came when I went into Well Read Books and came across Candide. As I flew through the first couple of chapters at the Gold Pan, I found the charm of …
Dear Parka, We invited you into our family last summer because we felt a void that only man’s best friend could fill. Down south last summer, we picked you from the litter of pups and brought you up North, to which you’re probably sarcastically thinking, “Oh great, I got stuck with the one family who …
Dear Sir/Madame; It has come to my attention that you may have lost these (see photo). They were left in a fire pit sometime over the winter, which was installed in the parking lot of the Schwatka Lake Day Use Area, directly adjacent from the sign that reads “NO FIRES AT ANYTIME.” Clearly, you left …
An Open Letter to the Owner Of Twenty Rusted Nails Read More »
Born in 1950 in the Philippines, Socorro Alfonso travelled halfway around the world to live in the Yukon. Socorro was born on the tiny tropical island of Bacacay Albay southeast of Manila. Her mother named her for the Spanish word meaning “help” and throughout her life she has been a caring helper for people of …
The streets of Dawson vary in size, height, width and smoothness with the seasons. In spite of snowfall and the need to plough them, they are really at their best in the winter, when the hard-packed snow fills in all the possible places where potholes might form. In the summer, potholes are the bane of …
Scott Price has come home to Whitehorse from a year away in Guelph, Ontario. His new sculpture show, called Separate Realities, emerged from the process of inhabiting these two places. Separate Realities is on exhibit until the end of April at the Northern Front Studio, in Waterfront Station. It includes wall pieces and sculptures. The …
Separate Realities come together at Northern Front Studio Read More »
Unlike many a published author, Saskatoon writer Sandy Bonny didn’t study to become one. It just happened. “I haven’t got an English degree,” she says, “and didn’t train or apprentice purposefully with literary mentors before my first publications, but I did always enjoy writing and continued writing recreationally long after it was required for school. …
