Jack London imagined a virus
What’s of particular interest to readers in this year of the COVID-19 pandemic, is that London managed to predict the spread of a virulent disease three years before the so-called Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918.
Jack London
The ballad of “Buck” Choquette
Buck Choquette spent his last days and hours in Dawson telling Jack London true stories of his long pioneering life in the Northwest. Is it just coincidence, then, that the main character in his most successful novel, The Call of the Wild, is also named Buck?
A stroll along the Writers’ Block
Dawson City would not be nearly as well-known as it is without the writings of three men who lived here for parts of their lives. This year we will once again be celebrating all of their lives and works with a stroll along the Writers’ Block, that portion of Eighth Avenue where they once lived. …
An Old-fashioned public reading at Jack London Square
Of the five writers who have attracted folks to come and visit buildings and gravesites in the Klondike, that are attached to their names, Jack London was the first.
Authors on Eighth celebrates Klondike literature
Each summer the Klondike Visitors Association (KVA), honours the memory of four writers who have meant a great deal to Dawson City and the Klondike: Jack London, Robert W. Service, Pierre Berton and Dick North.
Molasses, methanol, and mine-water remediation
Yukon College mine-life-cycle researcher Dr. Guillaume Nielsen likes to find innovative solutions to problems.
Celebrating the Klondike’s Literary Legends
During the week that leads to the Discovery Days weekend, the Klondike Visitors Association, Parks Canada and the Writers’ Trust of Canada celebrate the writers who have made Dawson City world famous. Part of this event, called Authors on Eighth, is a writing contest that began in June and ended in July, in time for …
On the Quest For A Good Story
Parents and teachers, do you have a budding Jack London in your midst? Kids in Grades 1-7 are invited to enter the Yukon Quest Short Story Competition. The contest is divided into two categories with children in Grades 1-3 and Grades 4-7 will be judged separately, and one winner chosen from each category. The winners …
Dawson in a Fictional Sense
About the same time as I was reading Elle Wild’s very entertaining mystery novel, Strange Things Done, I happened to watch a discussion between best selling novelists Stephen King and Lee Child. Part of the discussion was about settings, and Child noted that he had set one of his novels in New York, a city …
Stories for Gold
Each year the Klondike Visitors Association works with the Writers’ Trust of Canada, Parks Canada, and the Dawson Community Library to put on the Authors on Eighth Walking Tour during the week before Discovery Days. Connected to that event is the annual Authors on Eighth Writing Contest, which challenges would-be authors to emulate the work …
The Joys of Reading Aloud
Jack London’s The Call of the Wild is not a particularly long book. A mere 70 pages, perhaps a few more in a version with illustrations, it is often published between the same covers as its thematic opposite, White Fang, often along with some of the better known short stories to round out the page …
Celebrating Jack London’s Legacy
One of the stops along Dawson’s 8th Avenue Writers’ Block is Jack London Square, home of a part of Jack London’s Klondike cabin and the Jack London Museum, in a setting modeled after a painting by Jim Robb. This year marks the 100th anniversary of London’s passing and the Klondike Visitors Association is marking the …
Germans love Jack London
Why is Robert Service so much better known here than Jack London? This question comes from Wolfgang Robert Greiner, one of five German journalists I was invited to meet for breakfast at the Aurora Inn in late February. Their primary literary interest is in Jack London, whose Yukon themed short stories were standard fare in …
Fun fiction from the Klondike
As the crew who came here to film an episode of the Canadian television series Murdoch Mysteries a few years ago told me, Dawson is a place that’s just a perfect backdrop for storytelling. The particular episode was a lot of fun to watch them film and then see it on TV later on. It …
The KVA promotes the Klondike to the world
The Klondike Visitors’ Association (originally the Klondike Travel Bureau) pre-dates the formation of the Yukon’s Department of Tourism (originally the Yukon Tourist Bureau) by over a decade. It’s been doing its darndest to keep the Klondike on the top of traveler’s minds ever since. Over the past winter, the KVA organized the annual Trek Over …
The Legacy of Dick North will Endure
The late Dick North used to quip that with a surname like his it was no mystery that he worked as a journalist in the Yukon. North was inexorably drawn here, telling me the first time I interviewed him in 1986 that Jack London’s stories fascinated him as a child. In 1954, after serving …
The Klondike Echoes Down through the Literary Years
The Klondike has been the inspiration for a great deal of fiction since the Gold Rush, beginning with Jack London, who came with the Stampeders and left with a mother-lode of inspiration that would make him the wealthiest name-brand author of his generation. A decade later, the same inspiration seized a quasi-hobo and reluctant bank …
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World of Words: Modern-Day Mythology on 8th
Celebrate Northern literature on August 13 during Authors on 8th, a literary walking tour through the lives of Klondike authors Jack London, Robert Service and the Bertons, Laura and Pierre. “There’s a huge mythology about the North that both Jack London and Robert Service created,” says Rachel Wiegers, the marketing and special events co-ordinator for …
A Journey Inspired by Jack London
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.” …
Capturing a Northern Legend in Bronze
When Harreson Tanner was a youngster in Ottawa reading Jack London tales of the unforgiving North, he never dreamed the San Francisco-born author would one day be a passenger in his motorhome. But that’s what happened recently when Tanner drove to Kelowna with London strapped safely into the seat beside him. Not the real Jack …
A Literary Study
When Bob Hayes was in grade school, he was nearly accused of plagiarism for his story “The Flickering Flame.” The author Hayes emulated? Jack London. Readers of Hayes’ first book, Wolves of the Yukon, will spot the influence of Jack London, Robert Service and Pierre Berton. And like Alaska author James Michener, Wolves starts at …
Looking Back: 3,000 Horses
One of the interesting names on the map in Yukon history is Dead Horse Gulch. It’s a name that has been well-earned. During the height of the Gold Rush, from 1897-1898, there were thousands of horses that joined the thousands of people making the epic trek from the south up to the Klondike. A North-West …
