Klondike Korner

Looking Inside the Insider

Christopher Ross writes about his journalism experiences at the Dawson City Insider from 1997-1999 and what happened after.

Spring clearances in Dawson

In some ways, our streets are better in the winter. Spring makes it harder to get from the street to the boardwalks. Dawson is not a friendly town for people with mobility issues.

Uncle Jimmy Roberts and the Hammerstones were locals whose sound was heavily slanted towards indigenous fiddle tunes

Live music returns to Dënäkär Zho

COVID-19 pretty much shut down live music in Dawson in 2020. This year the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture (Dënäkär Zho), in partnership with the Dawson City Music Festival, has been trying hard to bring some of it back over the last few months.

The Ice pool Contest is a go for 2021

The Ice Pool Lottery, officially known these days as the Dawson IODE Ice Guessing Contest, has been around in various forms since 1896. The Dawson Chapter of the IODE officially took over running the event in 1940 and has managed to keep it going in spite of pandemics and other natural disasters.

An indigenous fable for all ages

Teiakwanahstahsontéhrha’ (We Extend the Rafters) is the latest exhibition at Dawson City’s ODD Gallery. The machina animation style movie is projected on the east wall at the far end of a metal frame structure which mimics the look of an Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) style longhouse.

Navigating Dawson’s streets last summer

We are in the third season of a mammoth upgrade project to deal with the deficiencies in the town’s sewer and water infrastructure. That has meant that getting around town has been interesting enough for those of us who live here. For visitors, it’s probably been a mite of a mystery.

A delayed Short Film Festival will happen in October

After a few months of working at home, Dan Sokolowski is finally back in his southeast corner space at the KIAC (or Dënäkär Zho) Building. There, he’s busy downloading videos for this year’s late version of the 2020 Dawson City International Short Film Festival, which will take place over two weekends in October.

Authors on Eighth overcome COVID-19

Each year there is a writing contest called Authors on Eighth connected to an annual walk along the Writers’ Block along Eighth Avenue in Dawson City.

Dawson in the deep freeze

The most annoying thing about being fully dressed to walk outside at -45 degrees Celsius is that I can’t see my feet.

Dawson’s Thaw di Gras

Dawson celebrates almost spring, sort of end of winter, with a local event called Thaw di Gras. An obvious play on New Orleans’ Mardi Gras.

Dawson entertains itself at monthly coffee houses

It’s Coffee House/Open Mic time at the KIAC Ballroom once again. This is a monthly event that usually takes place on the first Saturday of every month from September through to May. It is one of those things that the community does for itself, as contrasted with all those special events (partly for visitors) that …

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Changes are not always welcome, even if they are historically accurate

Sometime before the beginning of winter, the old CIBC building on Front Street will turn grey and I’m quite certain that some people will be upset. The building has been going through changes since the town bought it for $170,000 back in 2013. I don’t think we had any idea how much potentially toxic material …

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Friends of the Palace Grand plan 21 shows this summer

A scene from the 2018 production of the Cabin of Curiosities. Canoers meet The Collector at his cabin – Faith (Joey O’Neil) and Keeton (Sam Connolly) meet The Collector (Robin Sharp) The Friends of the Palace Grand (FotPG) has existed for a number of years. Originally under the umbrella of the Dawson City Arts Society …

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Ready for Christmas Eve

The cast including shepherds, angels, wise persons and citizens. PHOTO: Dan Davidson   What would Christmas Eve be without carols and a pageant. All are invited—shepherds, angels, wise persons, citizens, family and friends—to St. Paul’s Anglican Church A traditional Christmas Eve in Dawson City begins with an ecumenical carol and pageant service at St. Paul’s …

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It’s beginning to look a lot like … (you know)

The pre-Christmas season will soon be underway here in the Klondike, actually beginning a few days before this piece can see print. It’s a season of bazaars and open houses that lead up to the actual holidays. It begins with the oldest and largest of the bazaars, the Little Blue Daycare Christmas Bazaar. This will …

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Stream of Dreams

A team of facilitators from the Stream of Dreams program was in Dawson this week to promote environmental stewardship and facilitate a community art project.

It’s ice pool time

The ice pool tripod is in the river, anchored by a cable to the boxed clock on the Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre, ready for when the ice moves during breakup some time in late April or early May. The tripod is on the ice between the river bank and the unofficial ice road. It may …

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Try this!

The annual Youth Art Enrichment program, now entering its 17th year, is an annual four-day intensive art program for Yukon youth, hosted by the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture in Dawson City. It has changed its dates this year and will be held from March 19 to 22 instead of its traditional November schedule. KIAC’s …

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Keeping the weekend weird

Thaw-di-Gras, Dawson’s spring-or-late-winter carnival, is adding a day this year, with events beginning on Friday, March 16 and running through Sunday, March 18.

We are what we used to eat

February 19 to 22 will see the latest edition of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Heritage Department’s bi-annual Myth and Medium week.

Getting Ready for Christmas Eve

After all the bazaars and seasonal open houses are done, and folks are just about ready to settle down at home waiting for Christmas Morning to arrive, there is one more thing that happens for quite a few folks in Dawson. The various churches will have their own late evening services on December 24, but …

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A spooky pre-Halloween evening

Dawson City’s Old Court House on Front Street will be the site for this year’s Haunted House event, a yearly offering to the community sponsored by Parks Canada. For many years the RCMP took the lead in providing this Halloween celebration, but four years ago they needed to step down. Janice Cliff, with Klondike National …

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Symposium to discuss activating history

Every two years the Yukon Historical & Museums Association holds a meeting for the entire Yukon heritage community. It moves around the territory, but executive director Lianne Maitland says that one of the places they like to come back to is Dawson City. The 2017 Heritage Symposium, called Activating Our Communities, will take place on …

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A Tale of the Klondike Tailings

Despite the romantic image of the grizzled miner panning by the creek side in search of gold, that phase of the Klondike’s mineral saga was relatively short. Entrepreneurial minds knew of more efficient and less-labour intensive ways of getting gold from the ground, and it wasn’t long before the arrival of the dredges in the …

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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 …

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Race ’til You’re Pooped!

“We’re dedicated to keeping the Yukon weird,” Robitaille likens the Great Klondike International Outhouse Race to Jim Robb’s Colourful 5%

There’s Gold in Those Buckets of Dirt

Canada Day will be exceptionally busy in Dawson this year. Combining our nation’s birthday with a roster of events that normally occur on the first Saturday after that celebration will make for a packed schedule. The Klondike Visitors Association decided a few years ago that having the Yukon Gold Panning Championships in the afternoon, following …

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North Words

“Exploring the Frontiers of Language” will be the theme of this year’s edition of the North Words Writers Symposium, which will be held in Skagway from May 31 to June 3. This is the eighth annual symposium since the event’s inception. It was originally inspired during a series of walking conversations between Daniel Henry and …

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Gold Show: The Rush is On

Early in May, with the deadlines for the 2017 edition of the Dawson City International Gold Show approaching, Coralee Rudachyk was busy, but calm. As the General Manager of the Dawson City Chamber of Commerce, she has the primary responsibility of making sure everything works out according to plan. The plan is a pretty solid …

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Celebrate the Art of Filmmaking this Weekend

The cupboard behind Dan Sokolowski’s head is still covered with the multi-coloured Post-it notes he’s been using to assign the 86 short films in this year’s Dawson City International Short Film Festival to various categories for Friday, Saturday and Sunday screenings that will fill up this Easter Weekend. The films were selected by a group …

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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 …

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Gathering Memories of Clinton Creek Proves Difficult

The original purpose of the Clinton Creek Oral History Project was to gather information about how the area around the former asbestos mine and company town had been used by locals prior to the establishment of the mine in the mid-1960s. The mine was about a decade getting off the ground from the time that …

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The Klondike Continues to Prepare for World Heritage Status

The nomination package has been prepared under the watchful eye of a local advisory committee, including representation from Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, the City of Dawson, the Yukon Government, the Klondike Placer Miners Association and citizen reps from both Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in and the Dawson community. There is also a project management team, and much of the actual …

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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 …

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The Sourtoe celebrated as a “Hidden Wonder” of the World

Just a week or so ago the newly published Atlas Obscura, subtitled, “An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders,” arrived on my desk sporting an enthusiastic recommendation from fantasy and comic book writer, Neil Gaiman. That’s not true any more, there have been at least half a dozen substitute toes since that time. One was …

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What is the Aurora Trail?

The folk/roots duo Twin Peaks, comprised of Naomi Shore and Lindsay Pratt, opened Dawson’s Home Routes season on Sept. 26. The show in Dawson City was their second-last stop on a tour that had seen them perform in Dease Lake, Atlin, Teslin, Crag Lake, Whitehorse, Haines Junction, Faro and Mayo, with one more concert planned …

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Need Some Good Advice?

Basia Bulat is returning to the Yukon. Bulat is a multi-instrumentalist – she plays guitar, autoharp, banjo, ukulele, charango, hammered dulcimer, saxophone and flute – and has a powerful voice. She comes by her musical interests naturally, having a mother who was a music teacher who taught both piano and guitar. She has said the …

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The Trail of 98 Shows Another Side of Robert W. Service

Though best known for his 15 collections of verse (a term he preferred to poetry in reference to his own work) Robert Service also wrote novels. Between 1909 and 1927, he produced some genre material: adventure, mystery, science fiction and horror. The first of these was The Trail of 98: a Northland Romance, written in his …

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A Colouring Book for Adults

When Kyley Henderson was in elementary school her mother, Elaine, encouraged her to draw, and one year a drawing of hers was used in the Robert Service School yearbook. Elaine, who is herself a landscape painter and sculptor, says that she always encouraged Kyley to develop her art as a kid. Kyley remembers her mother telling …

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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 …

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The Strange Story of Mary Hanulik Garden

Dawson City blooms in the summer. It’s a process that begins in some local commercial greenhouses and explodes after the horticultural booths at the Gold Show during Victoria Day Weekend in May. It then continues unabated as part of the Farmers’ Market during the summer, and employs several landscaping and gardening firms during the same …

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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 …

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Chasing Stories in Skagway

My shakedown cruise for our trailer has come to be my annual pilgrimage to the town of Skagway to attend the North Words Writers’ Symposium, held this year from May 25-28 in the windy town. This was the seventh annual event, of which I have attended all but one since the first in 2010. The …

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Dawsonites love to run

A Little or a Lot, Get Ready to Run

Dawson City runners have been pleased to participate in the Mayo Marathon. This year there is a Dempster to Dawson (or D2DC) Solstice Race.

Music for Fun and a Good Cause

“Ten years we’ve been doing this and we never quite know what’s going to happen each time.” Nijen Holland (usually just known as Nijen) was quite right when he said this at the conclusion of the latest Coffee House/Open Mic Saturday night at the KIAC Ballroom (formerly known as the Odd Fellows Hall ballroom). Lately …

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Taking it to the Streets

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 …

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Dawson and the Harrison Effect

I’ve been enjoying a couple of relatively new books about the work of the latecTed Harrison. They are Ted Harrison Collected (Douglas & McIntyre) and A Brush full of Colour (Pajama Press). The first one is a trade paperback collection of the 91 serigraph posters he created and sold. The second is a hardcover children’s …

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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 …

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Year 17 sees an abundance of Yukon Films at the Festival

On Easter weekend the ballroom of the Oddfellows Hall will be filled with hundreds of short film fans celebrating the 17th edition of the Dawson City International Short Film Festival (DCISFF) and cramming in as much as they can of the 500 hours of screen time that will fill up the days. This is the …

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Dawson City Street Hockey Tournament during Thaw Di Gras weekend

Announcing Yukon’s Unofficial Other March Long Weekend

With late February temperatures maxing out at +4  in Dawson, it’s hard to say just what this year’s Thaw di Gras, Spring Carnival will be looking at for weather, but the Klondike Visitors Association (KVA) has once again encouraged a wide variety of groups to get involved in outdoor and indoor events for the weekend …

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Myth and Medium Focuses on Stories and Performance

This week shaped up to be a culturally ambitious one in Dawson City. The centerpiece of the week has been the Myth and Medium conference organized by the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in’s Heritage Department and focusing on the performing arts. It’s not too late to take in some of the culture. The week’s performance workshops continue on …

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Examining the Quest to Understand the Aurora Borealis

The most recent exhibition at Dawson’s ODD Gallery is nothing if not seasonal for its subject is the northern lights, also called aurora borealis, the light display named jointly after the Roman god of the dawn, Aurora, and the Greek god of the north wind, Boreas. Nicole Liao’s installation is called Against the Day, which …

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Where will the ravens warm their toes?

Dawson is switching to LED (Light Emitting Diode) streetlights, swapping out the older HPS (high pressure sodium) for the newer, more eco-friendly, longer lasting lights. It’s a move that makes sense in a lot of ways. Yukon Energy and the City of Dawson figure that changing the 170 residential streetlights will save the town about …

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Winning Awards with Husky Bus

Last month Jesse Cooke was the recipient of the Parks Canada Youth Tourism Entrepreneur Award, at a ceremony held in Ottawa on Dec. 2. Cooke arrived in the Yukon for the first time 10 years ago, studying glaciology at Kluane Lake as part of his University of Ottawa degree program. He says it was the …

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Dawson Lights up for Christmas

We have reached that point in the season where we don’t get a lot of direct sunlight in Dawson City’s historic townsite. Those who live the Dome subdivisions – which I refer to as Literary Heights because all the streets are named for authors – do continue to get a short view of Ol’ Sol …

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Feeding the Hungry is a Vital Community Service

The Dawson Food Bank and the Dawson Women’s Shelter are busy organizing their annual Holiday Hamper Program and Food Drive. It’s designed to assist individuals and families in the community who might need a little boost to get them through the Christmas season. Donations of non-perishable food items can be dropped off at either the …

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Good Music for Good Causes

November 7 turned out to be an incredibly busy evening for anyone involved in community events in Dawson. There was the closing banquet for the Youth Art Enrichment program, which I mentioned here a few weeks ago. There was an outdoor art installation on the dyke and waterfront called The Deep Dark, involving contrasts of …

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Jewels on the Water

The ice is coming down in a rush this year. While there was not a sign of the stuff in the river on the day they pulled the George Black Ferry out of the Yukon on October 29, it took just a few nights of minus teens temperatures to bring small pans of the greyish …

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What to Do in Dawson in the Winter

Those who think that the Klondike is just a sleepy little place in winter between the tourists and the Yukon Quest would be mistaken.

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 …

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Revisiting the Klondike Big Inch

Each year during the Riverside Arts Festival, the ODD Gallery sponsors a paired set of exhibitions called The Natural and the Manufactured, each dealing with some way in which people and their plans have had an impact on the environment around them. This year one of those exhibits, the one indoors at the gallery itself, …

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A new park says Thanks to Klondike volunteers

Dawson City has a new park. Located between the Dawson Plaza (where the CIBC is) and the Husky Bus HQ (the former Hair We Are salon) it’s not a large space, but it’s a pleasant spot along Dawson’s second busiest commercial street, Second Avenue. It’s the latest project of the Klondike Centennials Society, which did …

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Rambling North for the Dawson City Music Festival

The Slocan Ramblers often get asked how it happens that four lads who live in Toronto came to be interested in bluegrass music. Bass player Alastair Whitehead says there’s a fairly vibrant bluegrass scene in Toronto and even a lot of interest in really old time bluegrass. “There’s been a weekly gathering with groups at …

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Twice A Day the Whistle Blows

It’s 5:00 and I’m sitting at the table in my summer office which, whenever possible, is our veranda. Seven blocks west and about two north the whistle mounted on the S.S. Keno lets loose with a blast that I can hear very clearly from here. It’s a tourist season feature, which Parks Canada arranges to …

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The Fire Siren is Good News

On any Wednesday evening, at any time during the year, most residents in the core historic zone of Dawson City can hear the sound of a siren cutting the silence. If it’s about 7:30 p.m., people will know that there’s nothing to be concerned about. It’s the practice meeting of the Dawson City Volunteer Fire …

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When your Fingers Stumble Through the Pages

On the whole, there are two positive things about this year’s edition of NorthwesTel’s Northern British Columbia and Yukon Directory. The first is that the painting on the front cover, the dramatic “Blue Break Up” by Simon James Gilpin, is reproduced in a larger size than in previous directories. The second is that because the …

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When the Darkness Bleeds Daylight

June 17 – 21 2015: Dawson City Midnight Sun Camera Obscura Festival. This is the follow up to last year’s Dawson City Solstice Symposium

Dawson Moves Into Puddletime

Dawson has entered that phase of spring I call Puddletime. City workers have been trying to keep up by opening storm drains. The rapidly accumulating melt-water makes its way to the river, but it’s a losing battle. The darn streams freeze up again if the temperature drops significantly at night. It’s hard to think back …

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Gerties is now a Municipal Heritage Site

Diamond Tooth Gerties is an iconic Dawson building. It’s the cash cow that finances most of the operations of the Klondike Visitors Association. As of January 27, 2015, it’s even more than that; it’s a Municipal Heritage Site. In the somewhat stuffy language that seems to define municipal bylaws, city council determined that “The building …

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Her Next Plan is Coming to a Television Near You

A television mini-series is being shot in Dawson between April 7 and 17. The two episodes of Her Next Plan are being produced by the newly formed Big Plan Pictures Ltd. Dawson filmmaker Lulu Keating (Red Snapper Films) and Max Fraser (Hootalinqua Motion Pictures), formed the new partnership to bring this short series to the …

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Getting Around in Dawson

I recently listened to a court debate concerning the streets connected to 2nd Avenue in the north end of town, and which turn you would have to make to get back to Front Street, depending on which direction you were travelling. There were street names involved, but using them just seemed to confuse the matter. …

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Court Comes to the OTAB

The Yukon Supreme Court returned to the Old Territorial Administration Building (OTAB in local slang) late in January. It will continue to occupy space there until March, at the rate things are moving. The subject of the trial is not fodder for this column, but I’ve been spending so much time in the building lately …

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The Cold Weather Doggie Blues

At 40 below, Fahrenheit and Celsius are the same; not that our dog, Shadow, cares about that. She may need to go outside to relieve herself, but her preference is to cross her legs, huddle in the back of her kennel in the kitchen and wait for warmer weather. We kennel her at night so …

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St. Paul’s Tries To Get Warmer

November and most of December were mild in the Klondike this winter. Wondrously, it only took two-and-a-half days to warm up St. Paul’s Anglican Church enough to have a comfortable ecumenical Christmas Eve pageant. The building is primarily heated by a large, hungry wood stove. After the chill is off, and the temperature is up to …

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Here Comes the Sun

At the request of some Facebook friends I spent about a week in late December taking a series of pictures showing the retreating daylight hours. Some of them were people who used to live here — friends and former students. They wanted to remember what it was like. Other requests were from people as far …

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Music for the community

I’ve been the opening act at the last two monthly coffee houses. We meet on the first Saturday of every month in the Odd Fellows Hall ballroom. We’ve been doing these evenings for the better part of a decade. I know because I was still teaching during the first couple of years, and this month …

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Turning Her Life Into Stories

As a former English teacher, long time library patron, book reviewer, informal Berton House liaison, and editor of The Klondike Sun, it often falls to me to make the introductions when an author comes to do a public reading at the Dawson Community Library.

Change is Always Challenging

My son came home from work a few weeks ago with a sad look of his face. When we asked what tragedy had befallen him he replied, “They’ve torn down my playground.” Well, it was true; the Robert Service School got some new playground equipment this fall. Why this fall instead of during the summer …

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Listening to the Music

I’ve been listening to a lot of cassette tapes lately. You remember those things; they appeared between vinyl records (making a comeback) and CDs (fading away as the world goes digital). Our collection of taped music isn’t as obvious as our shelves of vinyl, which got admiring glances from adults accompanying their kids trick-or-treating. “ …

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Where Have All The Colours Gone?

On the day I am writing this, Whitehorse and Haines Junction are inches deep in their first winter snow and Dawson, while chilly and damp, is not. Mind you, we’re getting ready for it. The big living room window got its winter plastic coating this evening, and several of the online weather widgets are predicting …

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Keeping Busy On The Berton House Beat

Last evening our current writer-in-residence, Anik See, presented two of her essays to 15 people at the Dawson Community Library. See focuses particularly on landscape and people’s reactions to it, as well as an interest in the narratives people tell each other, and themselves, about their lives; both themes were featured in the pieces she …

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An Odd Taste in Lawn Decorations

The Klondike is known for permafrost-distorted buildings. The twisted shapes of older structures inspired the artistic career of Jim Robb — as a young artist he visited Dawson and was gob smacked by what he saw. He turned his amazement into a style and has worked with it ever since, to the delight of us all.There …

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Tracking down grandmother by land and water

Nadia White, great-granddaughter of Elmer (Stroller) and Alice Josephine (Josie) Keys White is on a quest to find out all she can about the life of her great- grandmother. Klondike newsman Stroller White is a fairly well known historical figure, having worked at the Skagway News during Soapy Smith’s heyday. He moved on to Dawson …

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Why does Dawson Need a Dike?

The Yukon Gold Panning Championships were held on the well-used greensward between Front Street and the dike. The greensward wouldn’t be here if the dike wasn’t built. The dike was a controversial pile of rock and dirt when it was erected in 1987. Many conceded it was necessary, and long overdue. But no one said …

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Grand Times at the Palace

The second full revival season has been launched at the Palace Grand theatre. Marveling at the theatre is past due; It’s time to celebrate that the theatre is hosting more than daytime Parks Canada programming. There’s nothing wrong with showing off our treasure, or staging the Greatest Klondiker in the afternoons, but the Palace Grand …

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Front Street’s Elegant Showcase

The Commissioner’s Residence sits on Front Street, just past St. Paul’s Anglican Church, in Dawson City.  It is one of six buildings in town designed by Thomas Fuller II, who eventually followed in his father’s footsteps to become the Chief Dominion Architect of Canada.  Five of these buildings — the Old Post Office, the Court …

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Winnowing Word in the Windy City

In windy Skagway, the boat people make their way from the cruise ships into town several times a day, clogging the streets and shops. I meet them or walk among them on the seven-minute stroll from my trailer to the Arctic Brotherhood Hall, where I have been attending my fourth edition of the annual North …

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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 …

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Talking Points about “Klondike” for our summer visitors

There’s all sorts of misinformation about the Klondike Gold Rush out there. One of the most obvious is that a lot of Americans, other than the ones who live in the big state next door to us, still think the Klondike is in Alaska. Granted that the vast majority of the stampeders came from the …

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Dawson City Runs on Volunteers

I’ve been attending a number of annual general meetings lately, and the experience has simply served to reinforce something that I already knew: without the work of many dedicated volunteers, very little would get done here in Dawson. I know this from my own work on our local paper, the Klondike Sun, which will enter its …

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Cross-Cultural Advances in Klondike Education

On March 31, the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in (TH) held a feast to remember the mixed-heritage children who came to Dawson City to live at St. Paul’s Hostel and attend Dawson Public School — the only public school in the territory they were allowed to attend between 1920 and 1952. While the stories from the hostel don’t …

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The Hollywood Treatment

In Dawson we are of two minds regarding the Discovery Channel’s Klondike mini-series — that six hour reimagining of history, geography and culture that aired this winter. We celebrate six hours of free advertising that will probably draw some visitors to our town, and we lament that it had so little to do with anything …

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What Does Klondike Mean to the World?

From the very beginning there’s been some confusion connected with the word “Klondike.”  It started with new arrivals — the gold rush stampeders — who where unable to wrap their tongues around “Tr’ondëk,” the Hän word for the “area,” which translates as something like “hammerstone water.” While the English word has become synonymous with gold, …

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The Trek Will Be Coming Soon

The 21st running of the Trek Over the Top snowmobile run from Tok, Alaska, to Dawson City and back will take place from March 6 to 9. It’s a 200-mile (382 km) trip each way, over the spectacular scenery provided by the Top of the World Highway. Trekkers will ride out of Tok on Thursday, …

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Myth and Medium are Coming Again

The bi-annual Myth and Medium symposium runs from February 24 to 28 this year, the week after the territorial Heritage Day holiday. Heritage Day originally inspired the idea of Myth and Medium about a decade ago. The first symposium tied in nicely with both a display of the Cameron Collection, brought here by Ken Lister …

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Getting into the Skins of Things

Rebekah Miller is fascinated with zippers, with how they both conceal and reveal, how they  open and close. She’s also fascinated with coverings – whether they are external facades of buildings or the skins of animals. Therefore, Skins is a very natural title for her exhibit at the ODD Gallery in Dawson City until February …

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Radio With Heart

Volunteer radio has a long history in Dawson City, with the current organization – CFYT-FM (106.9) – reaching back to 1984. At that time, the Dawson City Community Radio Society (DCCRS) picked up the mantle left by the Royal Canadian Signals corps, which broadcast CFYT (Canadian Forces Yukon Territory) out of a hotel room in …

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A Season in the Mist

Freeze-up on the Yukon River is not proceeding according to custom this year. Despite the lack of ice at the regular crossing down by the ferry landing in Dawson City, people did begin to cross the river south of the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike about two and a half weeks after the George …

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It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like… You Know

The Dawson pre-Christmas season launched on Nov. 10 as the gym in the Robert Service School filled up for the Dawson Daycare’s Bazaar. This was the lead event in a series that will take place until first weekend in December. At least two others have now been announced, and sometimes another one creeps into the …

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What is the Tr’ondëk-Klondike Project?

In two previous columns I have given some background behind Dawson City’s interest in UNESCO’s World Heritage Status designation. The Klondike region was placed on the national short list for this status in 2004, and I have outlined some of the earlier attempts to realize this goal. The latest project is called Tr’ondënk-Klondike: Future World …

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A Subversive Singer-Songwriter Comes to the Yukon

While Martha Wainwright began her current tour a year ago to promote her latest CD, Come Home to Mama, she says the North American portion of the tour has evolved into something a little more wide-ranging. “At this point we’ve moved from promoting the latest album to doing songs from the previous two or three …

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Proposing World Heritage Status for the Klondike

The headline on the front page of the July 24, 1997 edition of the Klondike Sun proclaimed, “Berton Proposes Dawson for World Heritage Site Status.” The Berton was Pierre Berton, of course, Dawson City’s most famous living son at the time and author of some 60 books. It wasn’t the first time anyone suggested the …

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The Sourtoe Cocktail: A Popular Gag

The Sourtoe Cocktail gets a mixed reception in the world abroad. Thousands of people have touched their lips to Captain Dick Stevenson’s inventive libation and have swallowed the notion that it is part of Dawson’s quaint charm. A few have gone further and swallowed the toe itself, and that’s exactly what happened recently. The news …

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Created from Shattered Glass

From May to September you can find Riley Brennan all around Dawson, digging in the dirt as she skillfully helps to make the town a place that the Cities in Bloom tour usually compliments. Her gardening business keeps her creative side happy all summer long. Come winter she settles down in her home on the …

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A Terd of Hurtles

There was a time when the Great Klondike International Outhouse race featured 12 to 17 teams and was quite a bit more of an extreme sport than it is now. It had a course that began in front of the museum, ran north on Fifth Avenue, up the hill on Church to Eighth Avenue, over …

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Dredges Kept the Klondike Alive

Despite iconic images of a solitary miner with a pan or a group of men drifting into a hillside, the dredges of the corporate-mining-era are the main reason that Dawson outlasted the usual boom-and-bust cycle common to gold rush towns.

Klondike Korner: Klondyke Korner: Discover a New Interpretive Walk

Saturday, August 17, is coming right up. That’s Discovery Day, the day that Skookum Jim (Keish), Dawson Charlie (Káa Goox) and George Carmack stumbled across the gold discovery on Rabbit Creek – immediately renamed Bonanza Creek – that would trigger the most famous gold rush in the world. Carmack rushed off to Fortymile, the site …

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Authors on Eighth

Taking a stroll along the Writers’ Block — from the corner of 8th Avenue and Hanson Street to the corner of 8th and Firth — you find yourself sandwiched between Berton House and Robert Service’s Cabin at the top end. Moving south and then west, you close the block at Jack London Square, with the …

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Exploring Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Culture

The striking Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre was controversial when it was first being built in Dawson City — it’s not exactly a gold rush themed building. But it was Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in themed, and it’s now thoroughly embedded in the Dawson waterfront scene. With its stadium seating theatre, Hammerstone Gallery, Gathering Room and gift shop, the …

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Klondike Korner: Life Returns to the Palace Grand Theatre

When “Arizona” Charlie Meadows built his Palace Grand Theatre in 1899 in Dawson City, it probably never occurred to him that some version of the place would still exist in 2013. The current building is not exactly the original, though it does contain some of the original wood. The original was torn down, numbered, and …

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Klondike Korner: Parks Open Some Dawson Doors for the Summer

On an increasingly slender budget Parks Canada attempts to preserve quite a bit of real estate in Dawson City. A lot of it is still intact due to the efforts of local business owner Fred Caley. The recent acquisition of the CIBC building by the City of Dawson was the end of a decades-long struggle …

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Sunshine Paradox

BY DAN DAVIDSON Luminous ice-fogged sunshine haze sits upon the earth; mocks our avenues and days with signs of nature’s mirth. Sunshine should bring warmer weather so we have been told; this light’s touch is a frosty feather tickling us with the cold. We bundle up in parkas thick as down the streets we lurch, …

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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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Klondike Korner: Lovely Artworks Carry Disturbing Message

One of the many projects under the umbrella of the Dawson City Arts Society is the ODD Galley, which is housed on a corner of the ground floor of the Odd Fellows Hall. The gallery mounts works by local, regional and international artists — leaning somewhat towards the avant-garde. The latest exhibit is by Veronica …

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Whitehorse’s Annie Avery and Dawson City’s George McConkey joined forces for an evening at the pub

Bombay Peggy’s was crowded with a revolving group of about 50 people on the evening of May 11, when Whitehorse’s Annie Avery and Dawson City’s George McConkey joined forces for an evening at the pub. Avery and McConkey get together for an evening whenever she has a gig at Dawson’s Robert Service School, and they …

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Klondike Korner: Visiting Artist Finds Inspiration in Faces and Stories

Vancouver visual artist Michael Markowsky would someday like to make a landscape painting while standing on the surface of the moon. On Earth, Markowsky has drawn landscapes while travelling across the country by train and while riding inside, or strapped to the top of, other moving vehicles. Typically these projects have a video component and …

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Come to the Klondike

On hillsides around us the trees are all blooming; While yards are responding to home owner’s grooming; And out on the highway the RV’s are looming. It’s all coming clear in the light! The days are so long you can hardly the remember The darkness that plagued us so much in December. The evening’s twilight …

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Young Performers Are Stepping up to the Microphone

This year’s monthly open mic/coffee house gatherings in the Odd Fellows Hall ballroom in Dawson City have featured an increasing number of young performers, who are filling up the set list during the first hour of the evening. Some of them are taking individual lessons in guitar, recorder or ukulele. Others are part of programs …

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Bi-‘Sicles Built for Two

BY DAN DAVIDSON Two months trapped in the cold, ironically chained to this post, snow-ploughed up to the axles, rimed with forty-below hoar frost, two cycles lean front to back as if they could support each other against the weather. Ridden through summer’s dust and mud they ended here, stopped here, transfixed by this impromtu …

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Klondike Korner: How Dawson Does All that it Does

Chatting with Dawson International Short Film Festival producer Dan Sokolowski at the end of a busy weekend, he made the point that there were approximately 80 volunteers involved in putting the festival on and that they contributed something like 800 hours of their time between last year’s festival and this one. That’s typical of all …

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Klondike Korner: Livesey’s General Store

BY DAN DAVIDSON The highway passes it by now, elevated, two metres above where the entrance used to be. The pumps are long gone, leaving holes like extracted teeth in the muddy soil. “Private property” mocks the sign, surrounded by invading trees reclaiming the landscape as demolition by neglect destroys the builder’s dreams. The roof …

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Klondike Korner: Wave Forms

The snow comes off the roofs in waves this year, each layer distinct in its reaction to the waves of cold, warmth, ice fog and clear skies that have teased us this winter, each layer finding its unique coefficient of friction, allowing it to slip over …. …. and under the layers around it, suspended …

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Enjoying Frankenweenie, Together

Movie season has ended at the Dawson City Museum for another year. The last show was Lincoln, which played to reasonably sized audiences in late March. The Museum began its movie night program a few years ago, beginning with classic films in the audio-visual room. But the arrival of Turner Classic Movies on the city’s …

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Klondike Korner: We Struck Gold with the KVA

Before there was ever a Yukon Department of Tourism and Culture (including whatever earlier names it may have had) there was the Klondike Visitors Association (KVA). Tourists came to Dawson as early as the Gold Rush, the most famous being Mary Hitchcock and Edith Van Buren, who arrived with an entourage and all the comforts …

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Klondike Korner: What’s So Important About the Old CIBC Building?

The recent purchase of the Old CIBC Building on Front Street by The City of Dawson has raised interest across the nation. The price tag of $170,000 was a bit startling, but it’s the resolution to a problem that has been festering since 1989 when the bank moved out and sold it to a private …

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Dawson Looks After Those in Need

Food banks often start with the churches, which are acting out their faith’s instructions to look after the poor. In Dawson, the Transients’ Dinners that take place during the month of May are run by all the churches working together, using the available space and kitchen at St. Mary’s Catholic Church to make sure that …

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Klondike Korner: Handling the Quest is a Fine Tuned Operation

No matter how many words I log here to the contrary, it seems impossible to shake the impression that Dawson City goes to sleep when the tourists leave and, like bears in winter hibernation, only stirs when something happens to disturb its slumber. If you lived here you’d realize that the schedule can get pretty …

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Klondike Korner: Going the Indie Route with New Book

In my other writing life I produce a weekly column called Bookends. As a result I see a lot of books, an increasing number of which are self-published. The results so far have been rather uneven. There have been some that really needed an editorial hand, others where the copy-editing was enough to make you …

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Driving North in July

In this haze the Yukon skyline, normally full of distince edges, has become a Tony Onley canvas, vistas folding into each other, fading with the distance into smoke-smudged indistinct waves.

Klondike Korner: Whirlwind

BY DAN DAVIDSON The whirlwind materialized from nowhere, as if from another dimension. A small eddy of dust in the dirt parking lot swiftly gathering speed and substance until it had the form of a small tornado. Call it a dust devil, but it seemed to be more than that, sucking up the dry dirt …

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The Icing on the Season

BY DAN DAVIDSON There are signs of seasons changing that we all can recognize: falling leaves and boarded windows, filled with plywood cut to size.??Hotels close and shops cut hours and the RV parks shut down, and the last canoing Germans take their tours around the town.??But the icing on the season’s when the snow …

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Klondike Korner: Giving Directions in Dawson Can Be Confusing

Giving directions in Dawson can be a very confusing exercise, both for those of us who live here and those who are visiting. The legal surveys of the lots in the town tend to produce some weird results when translated into street numbers. My own house sits on what are supposed to be two residential …

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The Community That Sings Together

The community that sings together … My personal songbook is getting bigger every month. That’s thanks to the energy of a departed Dawsonite educator, named Nijen Holland (or just, Nijen, as everybody called him), who thought up the idea of having monthly coffee houses at various locations around town and encouraging local musicians to contribute …

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About the Rising of the Sun

The Klondike Sun, to which Berton was referring in his guest editorial in that first issue, has made it through its 21st year. Last issue, I dropped several hints that the origins of our little paper would be my subject this week. The paper was launched under the supervision of the Klondike Sun Newspaper Society …

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Klondike Korner: What about the “Nutty Club”?

It won’t be immediately obvious to anyone not involved in either history or journalism that this column’s title is a homage to a 35-year tradition that spanned the years 1954 to 1989. Ye editor wanted me to call this column “Dan’s Dawson”, a suggestion from which I recoiled in horror. Johnny Caribou, a sometime scribe …

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Film Festival Goers will be Reeling On Easter Weekend

On the day we met to discuss the 11th Dawson City International Short Film Festival, producer Dan Sokolowski was just finishing getting the 40-page program into final shape to go to the printers. He looked a little tired, but I was on deadline and showed him no mercy. “What’s new this year?” I snapped, clicking …

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Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs

Next week (March 25 to 27), we’re going to have the second instalment of last year’s popular Doors Open Dawson event, in which locals and visitors get to walk through a selection of Parks buildings, institutions, businesses and private homes that are not usually open to the public. Last year’s event was such a hit …

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Boardwalk Users Take the High Road

Dawson’s council got to talking about bylaws and boardwalks the other day and one councillor made the comment that there didn’t seem to be any point in keeping our boardwalks clear in the winter because it appeared that nobody used them anyway. Now, this column isn’t the place for me to engage in political badinage, …

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Klondike Korner: Poetry Corner: Framework

Today, we are advertising cloudy blue skies, gravel and shrubs. Yesterday, we were someone’s dream of success, prosperity on a billboard. Some called us progress; some, eyesore, then. Now, we frame the landscape and invite random speculation, art seeking commerce with economy. After 32 years teaching in rural Yukon schools, Dan Davidson retired from that …

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Klondike Korner: Poetry Corner

(June 1) Rumble of thunder in the sky Perhaps some rain will fall by and by Perhaps there will be lightning And that thought is somewhat frightening As the forests round about are tinder dry. (June 14) Hammer of rain above the ceiling. We listen as the heavens begin peeling By the time the flash …

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Klondike Korner: Pierre Berton’s Dawson Legacy

Pierre Berton was, for many years, Dawson’s best-known export and Canada’s best-known media face, better known even than Don Cherry. Having majored in the university newspaper at UBC, Berton went on to become a star reporter in Vancouver, an editor at Maclean’s magazine in Toronto, a daily columnist for the Toronto Star, a daily radio …

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Klondike Korner: When Life Influences Art and Vice-Versa

There are times when life influences art, and times when art influences life. At the Jack London Interpretive Museum in Dawson you can experience both in one package. There are three buildings on the site: the big one is the interpretive centre, and it contains the Jack London memorabilia collection that Dick North spent a …

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When Plaque is a Good Thing

Plaque is the subject of this week’s visit to A Klondike Korner. I’ve visited this subject before, but another one of our buildings is due to be plaqued on June 5, so it seems time to bring it up to date. Buildings, places or people that are plaqued by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board …

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Winter Snow Dropped Early this Year

My experience in Dawson says we first snow before Thanksgiving. But there are exceptions. One memorable year we had snow early in September

Klondike Korner: Picture This

Picture this: a journey through time marked in artifacts, some past, some present. On the wormtrail of the tailings, rusted machinery; a memory of dredges and cats combined. On the gravel below a Parks Canada sign offers an explanation, while two cables offer support to a power pole. All this is framed by an empty …

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When the Outhouses Get Running

Poetry à la Commode If you’re looking for good weekend sport then Dawson’s still holding the fort. Be real spiffy and bring your own biffy and then you will not get caught short. here was a time when Dawson’s Great International Outhouse Race was at least partly a serious affair. Hmmm. You may be wondering …

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The New Faces of Dawson

While it’s rare to find a weekend in the Dawson summer when there’s not a major event, things do tend to slow down a bit after the Discovery Day weekend and the Yukon Riverside Arts Festival. The next big thing here is the Klondike International Outhouse Race, but that doesn’t take place until Labour Day …

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Klondike Korner: Poetry Corner: Inukshuks

Though usually solitary sentinels, except in gift shops, where they line the shelves in mute plastic mimicry, these grey figures cluster in groups on stone pedestals, or stand single and alert on the crest of a lichen patched hill. Just past the border station on the Top-of-the-World, outlined against the horizon, they are not border …

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When will the Ferry Be In?

Write about things that are going to happen about 10 days after you write them, the editor says. Oh, to be a Nostradamus at such times. About 10 days from now, the George Black ferry will slide down the wooden rails leading from its winter berth to the Yukon River, chasing away the ravens trying …

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Klondike Korner: It’s the Bazaar Season in Dawson

As you read these words we have just exited the Bush-designated season for Daylight Saving Time. We are now 20 days away from the start of the Christian season of Advent, which begins this year on November 28. This is the official beginning of the month-long countdown to Christmas. But really, for those who have …

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The Odd Places Some People Live

Dawson City has long been known for unique answers to its housing shortage, especially in the summer, when the place is flooded with summer people (or summerdoughs) looking for work and a cheap place to live. Some of them live in run down buildings that probably don’t meet any kind of safety standard. Some have …

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Dawson Poised for a Dramatic Comeback

Caili Steel is full of good news when we meet at Klondike Kate’s for coffee and a chat during that restaurant’s opening afternoon. “I just found out today that I got funding from the ArtsFund.” Steel has been busily organizing this year’s version of Dawson’s spring drama festival and has been working pretty much without …

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Klondike Korner: ‘Tis the Season of Bizaarness

November is always a bazaar month in Dawson. Strangely enough, the word does seem to share the same 16th century Italian root – bazarro – as “bizarre,” the word it is sometimes confused with. Perhaps this is because Middle Eastern bazaars are so noisy and frenetic that it almost seems as if people in them …

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Klondike Korner: Poetry Corner

This frame once served as a sales pitch to the world. Now, stripped of its painted enticements and weathered to a natural grey, it offers a another kind of frame, a way of picturing the world, a means of focusing attention on the interplay of light and shadow, blue, white, green and brown, the image …

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Bugged!

Bug time: The sun is flirting with the edge of the mountain and the heat is leeching out of the day. Insects, paralyzed by the August brilliance, begin to rise from their shelters, bobbing in the evening air like dust motes caught in the shaft of light from a crack in the window blinds. Encouraged …

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A Day to Remember

The first time you read this might be on Remembrance Day, November 11, a day which has a lot more significance now than it did before our troops began operations in Afghanistan in late 2001. The day is a little confusing in its national application because, while it is a holiday here in the Yukon …

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Klondike Korner: It’s a Recycling Depot, Not a Garbage Dump

Conservation Klondike has been trying to assist folks in this region to recycle more and throw away less for a number of years now. It has a recycling depot in the lane between 2nd and 3rd Avenues and another facility at the Quigley Dump, which it operates in cooperation with the City of Dawson. The …

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Klondike Korner: Dancing in the Summer Breeze

The leaves have exploded this week. Two weeks back they were small brown buds huddling against the nighttime frost, waiting for sunlight. Then the buds split and small green extrusions peeked forth, just testing the air. Tiny leaves replaced the buds. Miniature photosynthetic factories took nutrients, sunlight and water and enlarged the original blueprint day …

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Where Did You Say That Was

There are lots of people in Dawson who couldn’t give you street directions to save their lives. Part of the confusion is the problem with street and house numbers that I wrote about last time, but that’s not the only reason. Simply put, building functions, locations and names keep changing over time and people tend …

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Developing a Painless Pageant

BC Radio One has been running a survey to find out when people think it would be okay to play Christmas music, and a lot of the on-air replies seem to think that December 24 would be just fine. I suspect it’s not that people actually know the difference between Advent and Christmas, but that …

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A Celebration of Northern Words

I’m sitting in my trailer in Whitehorse as I type these words, but I can almost hear Buckwheat Donahue hoowwlliingg with delight all the way from Skagway, where I spent the last several days, attending the very first North Words Writers Symposium. Buckwheat likes to begin and end every event he’s involved in with a …

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Afternoon and Evening Delight on Commissioner’s Day

At the last of the Transients’ Weekly Suppers this year, one of the special speakers at the event made reference to the Commissioner’s Residence and the upcoming Tea and Ball, which take place there. At the word “commissioner”, blank looks passed over the faces of those summerdoughs who were here from Outside for the first …

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When the Fire Hall Got Hauled

Back in Column #2 of this series, I promised you a couple of moving stories about Dawson buildings. My last column should certainly have made it clear that I was thinking about actual physical relocation rather than a tug at the heart stings. When I moved to Dawson in 1985, there was a clunky complex …

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When the Whistle Blows

It seems only fair to warn strangers to the fair metropolis of Dawson City that there are certain hours of the day when it would be best not to be walking on or cycling past the boardwalk next to the S.S. Keno. This is especially true if you are easily startled. The hours in question …

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Something Different Comes to Town

Larry Graves and I spoke just after the band’s van had rolled into Sault Ste Marie on its way to Thunder Bay, a nine-hour drive from Toronto. “We’re only a fraction of the way to the Yukon,” Parks said, sounding tired over his cell phone. Before Mr. Something Something arrives to play the Dawson City …

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They Keep Coming Back

The departure of yet another Berton House writer, Jeanne Randolph, brought to my mind the number of writers in residence who have come and gone – and come again over the last few years. This happens to quite a few people other than writers, and is referred to locally as the Dawson Boomerang Effect. Randolph …

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Klondike Korner: Jeanne Randolph Analyzes Everything

Jeanne Randolph may have a different working title for the book project she’s writing during her residency at Berton House by the time she reads at the Whitehorse Public Library on June 29. It will be a study of pantheism, a look at our culture’s adoration of commodities, as demonstrated by the structures littered around …

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Klondike Korner: Tourism Promotion Goes Digital

When Klondike Visitors Association (KVA) executive director Gary Parker accepted the Tourism Industry Association of Yukon’s (TIAY) Innovator of the Year award on behalf of the KVA, he couldn’t manage to restrain himself. “I think we’ve started something new and exciting. And what’s new about Dawson leading the way?” When it comes to tourism, what …

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Remembering the Iron Man

Percy deWolfe, known as the Iron Man Mail Carrier, faced many unpredictable moments during his 38 years (1910-1949) on the trail between Dawson and Eagle. He did it all year round, so there were different factors every season. But sticking to the so-called “spring” when the Percy DeWolfe Memorial Mail Race is run, Percy would …

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Showcasing the ‘fur’ North

A few weeks before the 2011 Dawson Fur Show, coordinator Miranda Meade isn’t quite sure how many people she can expect to show up for the bi-annual event. That’s understandable. Trappers are a little hard to get hold of during trapping season and the organizing body, the Dawson District Renewable Resource Council (DDRRC), can never …

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Klondike Korner: Getting Ready For the Ball

They’ve been sprucing up the front façade of the Palace Grand Theatre recently, sanding off the old stain and lathering on the new. The contractor needed to get the job finished quickly, as June 4 was the date set for the Robert Service School’s commencement exercises, which have taken place in the grand old building …

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Cleaning up in the Klondike

Now that the snow is completely gone, it’s a little bit depressing to see how much garbage it was hiding. We had begun to notice this in a cursory sort of way once the warmer weather began transforming our dog-walking from a necessary chore to a pleasant outing. Later we took it more seriously, but …

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The Shadows Know

In the afternoon glare of October elongated shadows stretch north across the town,reaching for winter.

Remembering Tent City

As we get closer to the time when Dawson sees an influx of summer workers, I thought I would take this week to reflect on the glory that was Tent City. To begin with, there has been a summer housing crunch in Dawson from at least the 1970s on. The shortage of suitable accommodation has …

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Art Enrichment Time

The first Youth Art Enrichment (YAC) week in Dawson City was inspired in the early years of the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture (KIAC) by the long-running Youth Authors’ Conference that takes place in Whitehorse. It’s so successful in its own write – so to speak – that now it seems it’s just the …

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A Dawson Virtual Tour

I discovered Google Earth a few years ago. Our son was spending the winter in Fort Nelson and we figured out that Google Earth would allow us to zoom in on the street where he was living, actually find the hotel and move, in a jerky, foreshortened way, between there and other places that he …

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Watching Ice

This is the time of year when you find people looking at the river and wondering – when? There are different “whens”, of course. I happened across some gentlemen at a table just past the Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre a day or so ago. It was a beautiful afternoon and one could almost see the …

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Dawson and the Ted Harrison Effect

While doing what I call my Berton House exit interview with Sara Tilley, the latest writer-in-residence, she remarked that one of the things that made her feel comfortable and at home here was the colourful palette of our buildings. It reminded her of buildings in Newfoundland. That’s quite true. I noticed the colours, particularly in …

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Klondike Korner: Preparing for the Double Bob Bash

I’m writing this column on Robert Service’s birthday, January 16, which is appropriate since the event I wish to describe is the Dawson Community Library’s annual Double Bob Bash – a dinner celebrating the January birthdays of the two Roberts: Service and Burns. Burns, born nine days later, predates Service by nearly 120 years, but …

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Dawson’s Got Culture

Things generally slow down at the Dänojà Zho (Hän for Long Ago House) Cultural Centre once the summer season is over and the tourists are gone, but this fall season has been something of an exception. The place is a hotbed of activity, even in December. The building is approaching its 15th year of operation …

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Musical Months in Dawson

Dawson City is famous for the Dawson City Music Festival, which covers a long weekend in July. However, if that’s all we had happening here, the town could be considered musically impoverished. Not to worry, we do our best to bring in talent from elsewhere. And when we can’t do that, we play for ourselves. …

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Memories of Life in Dawson

Publishing timelines sometimes just don’t mesh with reality. Ten days ago I could have written three of these advance-notice style columns about the crowded schedule we’re having this week (November 7 to 11). However, the theme of this column, whenever possible, is to look into the future and there’s not a lot going on 10 …

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Ribbons and Scissors

As the summer winds down here in Dawson, and with no special occasion on the horizon, this week seemed a good time to sum up a few of the events that have preoccupied our social calendar without making it into this column. It has been a summer of ribbons and scissors, as project after project …

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Remembering the Lost Patrol

One of the last big weekends of this Dawson City summer will be built around an RCMP Regimental Ball, to be held here on August 27. The force has held a number of special events and anniversary celebrations in Dawson in the past, but this one, organized to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the Lost …

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A Look at Dawson’s Dike

It will have been obvious from my last column that I was truly expecting breakup to have occurred before I got around to writing the next one. It’s April 30 this afternoon, and while there has been a lot of movement on the Yukon River over the last few days, the tripod is still standing …

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Feeding Bodies, Hearts and Minds

Just had a call from the folks at the Community Gospel Hall to tell us that there were 90 people at this week’s edition of the transients/summer workers/summerdoughs’ Tuesday night dinner. That’s sharply up from the 55 to 60 that St. Paul’s Anglican played host to last week and still more than the group St. …

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Making Music in the Ballroom

The last of the monthly winter coffee house and open mic nights at the Odd Fellows Hall ballroom occurred on May 5. They are a tradition that goes back five or six years now, having been started by an educational assistant at the Robert Service School who wanted a place for the student band he …

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Roofalanches

You might not expect to have to worry too much about falling snow in the Klondike in April. After all, this is not Alberta, where blizzards in the middle of April are common events. Yes, it snowed on the morning of Easter Sunday here in Dawson, but it had turned to drizzle by noon when …

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Getting Down with the Trash

There were about two dozen people at Dawson’s recycling centre over a recent weekend. They were trying to do something about the mess that the place had become. While it’s true that the City of Dawson’s bylaw officer had served the Conservation Klondike Society (CKS) with a notice saying they had to clean the place …

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Dawson’s Writers’ Block

There’s an area of town in Dawson that I like to refer to as the Writers’ Block. I do this because of an inherent weakness for puns, and because three of the writers who helped Dawson outlast the fate of most mining boomtowns are connected to the place. Without them, it’s safe to venture that …

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Film Time

As we close in on Easter Weekend, otherwise known locally as the Dawson City International Short Film Festival (DCISFF), I have to wonder if Dawson’s obsession with amateur video doesn’t have something to do with the fact that the town has no theatre. Newcomers wouldn’t even know that there used to be one across the …

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Driving Depends on Icy Conditions

It’s hard to think of an icy road as being anything but dangerous, but that’s not always the case. In Dawson City it can go both ways. For those wanting to drive from downtown to the Midnight Dome subdivisions, Mary McLeod Road is often the preferred route, especially for those who live along the stretch …

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What is Thaw di Gras, Anyway?

Thaw di Gras (sometimes misspelled Thaw di Graw, especially in Manitoba) is the peculiar name Dawson City gives its spring carnival. The event will be held from March 15 to 18. The name is, of course, a reference to the Mardi Gras, which actually took place on February 21, the Tuesday before the Christian religious …

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The Trek Celebrates Year 19

It’s the 19th year for Trek Over the Top, and the second year the Klondike Visitors Association (KVA) has the Yukon side of the operation under its umbrella. The first run of this year’s Trek fortnight will begin in Tok, Alaska on March 1, with a return planned on March 4. The second Trek will …

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Myth and Medium Returns to Dawson

The Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in (TH) Heritage department is reviving its Myth and Medium program during the week of February 21 to 23. The program ran for two years, in 2003 and 2004. Then, as organizers Jackie Olsen, Jodi Beaumont and Sue Parsons recalled when we sat down to chat about it last week, it simply got …

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A Fortnight in the Freezer

Today was one of those overcast days when the sun didn’t break through and all we got was indirect lighting. When this happens I can’t help but feel cheated. The sun has been back for a couple of weeks now, and while it isn’t quite hitting the streets (except for a bit on Front Street) …

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Klondike Korner: Preparing for the Quest

The 2012 running of the Yukon Quest will launch in Fairbanks on Saturday, February 4. There’s a countdown clock on the Quest website (http://yukonquest.com) indicating the number of days, hours and minutes until the race begins. Sometime within the three to five days after that (depending on the race conditions), the first of the 24 …

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From Winter Sports to Poetry

I’m inclined to blame the Germans. It seems that every year for the last half dozen or so out of the 12 years that the Fulda Extreme Winter Sports Event has taken place, the arrival of the red-suited FuldaFolk and their logo-emblazoned SUVs has coincided with the a precipitous drop in temperature, draping a curtain …

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Lots of Snow in the Klondike

welcome to a new year of news and musing from the Klondike, where the most descriptive word for the several weeks seems to be “snow”. It’s ironic since I’ve only lately written a piece for another publication explaining that great amounts of snow at one time are rare here. It seems to have been snowing …

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The Origins of Berton House: Pt. 2

When I left off with this history of the Berton House, Pierre Berton had bought back his childhood home for $50,000 in 1989 and donated it to the Yukon Arts Council. The council collaborated with the Klondike Visitors Association (KVA) to set up the Berton House writer-in-residence committee to make decisions about how to handle …

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A Vision Becomes a Reality at the Gathering Place

“We had a vision in the fall, last year, of building an outdoor classroom at Robert Service School,” Hän Language teacher Melissa Hawkins explained to the assembly of several hundred students, teachers, parents, and community members on a sunny Thursday, September 6. Everyone was gathered around the antler-crowned arbour-style entrance to ?enähjin Tr’ëdëk, or the …

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Saving a Language and a Culture

Doris Roberts hates to fly, but when it came time to go to Tanacross, Alaska, to retrieve the songs and stories that Chief Isaac had taken there for safe-keeping many decades earlier, she knew she had to do it. Roberts had lost much of her Hän language while at residential school from 1946 to 1949, …

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All Dolled Up

Sewing Our Traditions: Dolls of Canada’s North will be on display at Dawson’s Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre until September 21, held over from the centre’s regular summer season so that it can be part of a school-related program. Students at the Robert Service School (RSS) have already had one shot at doll making and the …

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Picking the Greatest Klondiker

It has, unfortunately, been a number of years since a really top-notch piece of stagecraft graced the boards at the Palace Grand Theatre on a regular basis. Since the demise of the Gaslight Follies Parks Canada has been trying to find ways to bring people into this exciting old building and has sponsored a number …

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The Storyteller’s Story

“I was born under a tree (on September 6, 1920), way up the MacMillan River, at Russell Creek,” J.J. Van Bibber told the Klondike Sun back in 2009. “Whenever a baby was ready to be born, mom (Eliza) just holed up for a week, and then put us on her back, and just keep going.” …

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How Scrooge Made his Fortune

Around this time of year I usually devote a few columns to some of the literary lions that have helped to make Dawson City famous since 1898. This year I’m going to diverge a bit and write about another bit of fiction. It is, perhaps, not known to the general public that the fortune of …

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Dawson Blooms in the Summer

I managed to mow our lawn before the rain began to sprinkle this morning and was pleased to find that several of the dog damaged areas that I reseeded earlier in the summer no longer stand out as patches of bare earth. Indeed, the new grass there is greener and thicker than some of the …

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The Berton House Boomerang Effect

I was enjoying an hour’s quiet reading on our front deck last week when a familiar French-Canadian voice hailed me from the street. I wasn’t entirely surprised to see Mylène Gilbert-Dumas coming through my front gate. She is a Facebook friend and my minimal high school French does allow me to pick through some of …

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Michael Mason’s Single Line

It’s a slow Sunday afternoon and Michael Mason is a little discouraged at the low turnout for his one-man art show at the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Community Hall. It probably doesn’t help that there’s work being done on the roof of the building and the entrance looks a bit like a construction zone. Mason muses that …

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A Klondike Korner: When Dawson Celebrated Independence Day

As the calendar moves inexorably towards Canada Day, with all the busyness of the holiday combined with the Yukon Goldpanning Championships, which fill up much of the afternoon, I find myself thinking back to how close we came to celebrating a different national holiday instead. In my last column, I mentioned how Luella Day (or …

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Caber toss

Come Toss a Caber

Having spent a bit of time in Scotland, I can attest that the scenery in the Highlands bears more than a passing resemblance to the Yukon, albeit in miniature. That being so, the idea of holding Highland Games in the Klondike is less odd than it might seem. In fact, according to the members of …

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Dawson Dresses Up

Breakup is usually followed by a week of damp chilliness as the cool air moving off the exposed river hits the town, but this year we got six to eight inches of snow as well during the first week of May. I can’t recall this happening before during my time here. With the river breakup …

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It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like “You Know What”

Here in the Klondike we are currently forging through Advent and into the Christmas season. The month of the Christmas bazaars – otherwise known as November – is behind us. That shopping season is bookended by the two large events: the Daycare Bazaar in the Robert Service School gymnasium and the Last Minute Bazaar, a …

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A Gift from the Odd Fellows

Last night I attended the delightful Dawson City showing of the David Mamet play, Boston Marriage. Two days earlier the KIAC Christmas Art and Craft Extravaganza filled a room with handicrafts and artwork. On the same date there was a Karaoke Night with visiting artist-in-residence Curtis Grahauer. Two nights before that Grahauer offered a showing …

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The Ice Bridge Begins

I finally managed to spot the place where they are crossing the Yukon River yesterday (November 19). I’ve been hearing stories of people making the trek since about two weeks after they pulled the ferry out, but the ice build-up has been so erratic this year that I hardly knew what to believe. It looked …

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Another Housing Crunch

First, and most obviously, it is now attached to its sister institution, the new campus for Yukon College (or Tr’odek Hatr’unohtan Zho), as noted here two issues ago. Then there are new staff members, with Sam Cheuk coming on board to take the English instructor’s post and Nicole Rayburn filling in for a semester on …

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Boardwalks and Visitors

It figures. Leave town for a week and they change things. In this case, it’s the boardwalks they’re changing, and I can’t complain about that at all. Every few years it needs to be done. The boards rot away; the ground moves beneath them; and a year after they were last replaced what was straight …

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Dawson Goes to the Dogs

In early February the sun begins to kiss the streets in Dawson City. It’s been lurking along the tops of the hills for some time, and those who live on higher ground in West Dawson or in the Dome subdivisions have continued to get a bit of direct sunlight even when there was nothing but …

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The Joys of a Good House Concert

Here in Dawson we’re into the second year of working with the Home Routes organization to stage a series of House Concerts. These help to tide us over between music festivals by bringing festival quality acts into town. They’re called house concerts because, with a few rare exceptions, they take place in peoples’ homes and …

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How Others See Us PDF

It’s always interesting to learn how other people see us. Three creative spirits passed our way a couple of weeks ago and left us with some thoughts connected to our sense of place. Iain Baxter& said he thought the drive to Dawson was like living in a Monet painting. I would have picked one of …

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Klondike Korner: Wake-up Call

BY DAN DAVIDSON Who visits the neighbours at five a.m., exciting the watchers in the lane? They pass the word from house to house, so quickly as to be almost simultaneous, yet slowly enough to be a round, fading now in the morning twilight, dissolving into my dog-eared dreams. After 32 years teaching in rural …

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The Best Remembrance

There is service at the battlefront, a Calling to be sure, though not for God and Glory, that old lie from days of yore. Those who served and did their best, they have no fear of shame; it is those who failed to stem the tide of war who own the blame. We others, though …

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