Rat-a-tat-tat … I Smell A Rat
What does a rat even smell like? Well, I have no idea … even though I’ve seen a rat or two in my lifetime…
Literature
The Simple Joys Of Yukon Count
This past Christmas season, Yukoners were introduced to a new children’s book created by local illustrator Tedd Tucker.
Meals inspired by literature
Many classic stories have food and drinks intrinsically linked to their narratives. The Whitehorse Public Library has taken this idea and run with it, creating Page to Plate – a series of workshops for youth linking literature and cooking.
Murder and romance in small-town Alaska
With over 225 novels to her credit, Nora Roberts is a bestseller by any definition. Wikipedia says the books are all romance novels, so I’m not sure if that number includes the 47 mysteries in the In Death series. These sit on the light end of being science fiction and are clearly police procedurals, though …
John Henderson: Celebrating the Great White North
When he arrived in Yellowknife, back in 2004, with his wife, Serena, and baby daughter, Janessa, it didn’t occur to John Henderson that he might still be there 14 years later, have a thriving career as chief operating officer at the Det’on Cho Corporation and a side career in the arts as the editorial cartoonist …
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For those who answered the call …
“Yukon soldiers are buried in more than 50 cemeteries on four continents.” –Michael Gates Lest we forget … This is why Michael Gates (Yukon historian and Yukon News columnist) and D. Blair Neatby (military historian, Yellowknife) have co-authored the memorial book, Yukon Fallen of World War I, a collection of more than 100 biographies that …
Let be whatever may befall
To be, or not to be. For advocates of plain writing, Shakespeare’s most famous monologue is a touchstone. Its opening sentence consists of nine one-syllable words in a row, followed by one containing just two (depending on whether one reads “question” as two syllables or three). It’s a simple sentence, based on a four-letter infinitive …
The Northern Seduction
Sebastian Fricke and Rose Seguin share their journey, their “inner compasses” with us as they travel and write on their way through Alaska and the Yukon Having completed our undergraduate degrees, Rose and I were very eager to break free of the bureaucracy and daily grind of city life. We followed our inner compasses north, …
Where the Trump family fortune got started
“I’m a fifty-pager,” says Whitehorse writer Pat Ellis, commenting on her preference for producing short history booklets. Her latest, Financial Sourdough Starter Stories—“The Trump Family, from Whitehorse to White House,” the “Klondike Gold Rush” and “Harry Truman and the A-Bomb”—tops out at 64 pages, but the concept remains the same. “I’ve done a squatter book …
A dystopian life near the Blackstone River
The Wolves of Winter is Tyrell Johnson’s first published novel. It’s set in the Yukon, but he hadn’t actually been here until he came to Whitehorse for last month’s Yukon Writers’ Festival.
Magic on the Trail
Visual artist Hilary Lorenz will take hand-crafted cards along her art adventure on the Chilkoot Trail in July.
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.
Atlin Lit Up! lights up the Yukon writing scene
The Atlin writers’ festival not only offers music but also offers literature, readings and workshops.
The ecological web: A story of salmon caught in the middle
“Nature is not something else, isolated, out there; it is as much a part of us as we are of it, and neither can be altered without impacting on the whole.” – Adam Weymouth The Yukon River holds many roles—the namesake of a territory, the history of peoples for thousands of years and home to …
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Investigating lost bull semen
Marcelle Dubé has written the fifth novel of her Mendenhall Mystery Series titled The Forsaken Men. Her Mendenhall isn’t a subdivision of Whitehorse, but rather a fictive place in Manitoba.
The Northern Review looks at literature
The Northern Review, which is published by the School of Liberal Arts at the Yukon College, describes itself as “a multidisciplinary journal exploring human experience in the Circumpolar North.
A raw and real experience of the war in Syria
The sad truth was, you could not live in Syria and have a clean heart. How could you, when you live in a place where you’re randomly shot at and car bombs explode outside your home?
Zsuzsi Gartner: Aspiring to the darkly tragi-comic
Zsuzsi Gartner built her early career as a writer in journalism, working as a newspaper reporter, then a TV current affairs producer and then a magazine writer and editor, but has been interested in creative writing from an early age.
Putting Canada 150 between two covers
CBC/Radio-Canada got involved in the Canada 150 sesquicentennial celebrations in a big way, starting about a year earlier with an open call for submissions to be put in a 2017 yearbook.
Owen Laukkanen: “Keep writing and edit your own work ruthlessly”
Owen Laukkanen is unabashedly a writer of commercial fiction, also known as “genre” fiction, having produced a novel every year since The Professionals came out (and was nominated for four major genre awards) in 2012.
Tyrell Johnson: ‘Write the story you would want to read’
Lots of writers can point to a specific event or person that sent them in the direction of a career in writing; Tyrell Johnson isn’t one of those people.
Gearing up to explore ideas and the written word
PHOTO: Dan Davidson The Yukon Writers’ Festival takes place May 2 through 5, with events throughout the Yukon In 1990, a number of organizations joined together to meld the Young Authors’ Conference and the National Book Festival into a farther reaching Yukon Writers’ Festival to highlight the Canadian literary arts in the Yukon. The …
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Bridging the Divide
Author Kate Harris shucked her space dreams and, with her friend, Mel Yule, picked up the courage to embark on a different trip: to cycle the Silk Road from end to end.
13 Ways to look at Canada
With I Am Canada – A Celebration (North Winds Press) Heather Patterson has come up with a novel way of assembling an overview of special things about our country.
Strange things won from the midnight sun
In keeping with this column’s focus on Yukon related material, I’m returning this week to a successful thriller that is set in a version of Dawson City. It’s not quite my town in both geography and details, but Elle Wild didn’t try to pretend it was when I talked with her about it, and even …
A new narrative on gold rush history
“To most people, the pack ice looked like a cold, endless wasteland that spread across one’s entire field of vision. But, if one watched it more carefully, one could see it come to life.” — excerpt from No Time to Bury Them by Mark C. Eddy On the surface of national history, the Yukon is …
A tale of Arctic exploration
Yukon author Eva Holland has taken advantage of Amazon’s Kindle Singles format to produce what might have been a 45-page volume about the early history of Arctic exploration.
An afternoon of coffee and fresh ideas
On Sunday, December 10, you are invited to come out to the roastery at Bean North Café and listen to readings by several poets and writers.
Through dark to the light
Winter Child, the first novel by Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau to be translated to English, is a lyrical journey through a mother’s grief of losing and outliving her child.
Yukon writers gear-up for Frankfurt Book Fair
With over 280,000 visitors and 1,000 authors, the Frankfurt Book Fair is the largest book fair in the world and an important event for international trade deals, with over 7 000 exhibitors from 100 nations, according to the fair website.
Drifting Home covers 3 generations of Bertons
In the summer of 1972 Pierre Berton decided to recreate a trip he had taken with his mother, father and sister back in the 1930s and take his family rafting from Bennett Lake to Dawson City.
The Northern Review remembers World War I
Volume 44 of The Northern Review contains the complete list of the papers from The North and the First World War Conference that was held in Whitehorse, and in Dawson City, May 9-12 2016.
Canada’s first superheroine saved from obscurity
There’s no need to be a closet comic nerd anymore. The genre has exploded into accepted popularity over the last 10 years and it’s definitely something worth openly celebrating. If you’re like me, however, and relatively new to the scene, you might be surprised to find the roots of Canadian comic artists went mainstream more …
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What’s your digital footprint?
The editor at What’s Up Yukon doesn’t often receive handwritten letters, but there were two on file when I arrived. We’ve sent Mrs. Schorn a copy of her letter in print and I hope she’s found some new penpals from our efforts. The other letter on file was from Ray, a man who is currently …
At Home at Sea
“Ship’s logs, myths, stories of quiet exaltation and wrenching lamentations can all become poetry when the experience resonates deeply with the rhythm of the human heart…”— Anita Hadley in the introduction to Spindrift: A Canadian Book of the Sea. The sea, in Anita Hadley’s view, may not be a tangible part of your everyday, but …
An Unkindness of Ravens
It is easy to laugh at the antics of ravens. They are quirky, curious and yes, funny. A well-known title they carry among First Nations people is that of Trickster, known for their pranks and intelligence. They also carry darker histories, in literature and folklore: wise, feared, revered, portents of death. wreathed in mystery. I …
A Satirical Race Through a Parallel Universe
Once again I was about to die. Like every other literary artist before me I was about to die forgotten in a ditch at the side of the Trans-Canada Highway, beneath a blackened train trestle and a faded “dew worms for sale” sign, with a bullet in my brain. At least I didn’t have to …
Fresh poetic summer reads
Auguries, by Clea Roberts Whitehorse author Clea Roberts newest book, Auguries, is published by Brick Books. The title “Auguries” refers to an ancient practice of The Romans: reading the future from the sky considering the birds in the air and their style of flying. It is her second collection of poems and deals with the …
Slap on a Hat, Slip into this Book
Every summer, Rose and her family pack up and head to their cottage in Awago Beach. There, the long days melt into lake swims and beach fires, counting stars, five-cent candies, watching movies and running around with her summer-sister, Windy. It’s summertime, and the living is easy, right? But this year something feels off. In …
There’s Always a Stack of Books Hidden Under Their Quilts
The Yukon Imagination Library — non-profit organization that gives free books to Yukon children from birth to age four — is turning 10 this year. To celebrate the milestone we have collected reading stories from families who have used the library and from a few well-known Yukoners. We will be sharing them over the next …
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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 …
From stage to page
When Yukon playwright Patti Flather launched the book of her highly acclaimed play, Paradise, on a warm June evening at Baked Café in Whitehorse, Mac’s Fireweed Books sold out all their copies. “The thing about a play, is after it’s produced it’s done. A book lasts,” says Flather. Flather is a co-founder of Gwaandak Theatre, …
Memoirs of an Atlin School Marm
Simply stated, the best narrative I’ve read about country lifestyle in the contemporary north and the only one featuring Atlin and the Yukon.
Ordinary Bones of Extraordinary People
It was the summer he turned twelve, after his failed attempts to save the fox kits, that he began collecting bones, scouring the grass and pine duff for tracks and finding deer skulls, a pelvis, a sprocket-like vertebrae, the bones reassuringly solid in his hands. –excerpt from The Afterlife of Birds by Elizabeth Philips Henry …
Yukon’s Fictional Geography
Dan Carruthers’ more recent thriller, Anya Unbound (2017), introduces us to Sean Carson, a recovering widower, who stumbles across a 17-year-old Polish girl on the way to his bush cabin. He discovers she is part of a baker’s dozen of girls who have been lured to North America and are bound for the sex trade …
Imagine the Yukon – Part 1
The Yukon Imagination Library — a local non-profit organization that gives free books to Yukon children once per month from the time they are born until they reach age 4 — is turning 10 this year. To celebrate the milestone we have collected stories from families who have used the library and from a few …
Wilderness Living with a Canine View
… A wind was blowing from the mountains, and the surface of the snow was swirling along like snakes, the way it often did on the lake. The moon was at just the right angle to light up the swirling snow, but not the ground beneath it. We marvelled at the strange sensation of having …
An Inspiring Book, Found in a Unique Bookstore
MacLeod’s Books in Vancouver is a book lover’s dream. Books are piled up from floor to ceiling. Fortunately, the friendly staff helps you to navigate through the wide selection of books – some of them quite old and rare. When my partner and I visited this unique store last year, I found a book in …
Remembering Canada’s Centennial Year
I was in Grade 10 in 1967. For some reason my school provided high school students with tree saplings to take home and plant. Why they were willow trees instead of maple trees I have no idea. Mine has been growing ever since, and it was a monster of a thing when I drove past …
Books to Celebrate 150 years of Canada
The Story of Canada in 150 Objects Canadian Geographic & The Walrus Magazine format 130 pages plus pullouts $15 On an older note, there are other publications dealing with Canada’s sesquicentennial. One interesting item, which has been in my bathroom since I picked it up in March, is this one: a joint publication by two …
A Naturalist’s Guide to Spirituality
His Naturalist’s Guide to Spirituality, The Road is How, is a lyrical account of Trevor Herriot’s three-day, 40-mile journey
Beatle Stations
The first volume of Lewisohn’s trilogy The Beatles: All These Years. The main drawback is that at only about 800 pages, it’s over too soon.
The Things that Weather You, Shape You
“As Jack knelt in the bloody snow, he wondered if that was how a man held up his end of the bargain, by learning and taking into his heart this strange wilderness — guarded and naked, violent and meek, tremulous in its greatness.” –excerpt from The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey Often touted as a …
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 …
Playing in the Dark
“Think of magic as a tree. The root of supernatural ability is simply the realization that all time exists simultaneously. Humans experience time as a progression of sequential events in much the same way we see the horizon as flat: our reality is shaped by our limitations.” –excerpt from Son of a Trickster by Eden …
Good Advice
Jamie Bastedo is not new to the Yukon. He first came to the territory 35 years ago as a biology graduate student. “Think Never Cry Wolf,” he says. “My head full of book knowledge about northern landscapes and cultures.” The Yukon still means a lot to him and he is excited to be coming back. …
Poetry for Change
Sheri-D Wilson, who calls herself The Mama of Dada, is an award-winning spoken word poet, educator, speaker and activist, who has performed in literary, film and folk music festivals in Canada, USA, England, France, Mexico, Belgium, and South Africa. She is the author of nine collections of poetry. Her most recent – ninth poetry collection, …
All Her Roads Lead to Poetry
Yukon based writer Joanna Lilley has just published her second collection of poetry If there Were Roads by Turnstone Press; she says that there are no roads to the past. “You can never go back.” Inspired by a childhood memory, she wrote “The Devonian Period,” her first poem in her newest book. Lilley says that …
A Contemplative Celebration of Place
“To come here is to travel into a past that still intrudes the present.” –an excerpt from A Walk With the Rainy Sisters: In Praise of British Columbia’s Places, by Stephen Hume Our environment says much to those who will listen, and author Stephen Hume is all ears. Distilled from curiosity and personal ruminations, Hume …
Of Breasts and Beyond
Breasts, boobs, tits, tatas. Mind the title, because, yes, this really is a story about tits, but it’s also, oh! so much more than that. Because, what are breasts to women? I won’t overstep boundaries and assume to know everyone’s relationship with their own; however, whether we have them or we don’t, and no matter …
Chronicling the Vanishing Alaska Highway Lodge Community
I’m very jealous of what Whitehorse based Lily Gontard and Mark Kelly have managed to pull off with their delightful book, Beyond Mile Zero: The Vanishing Alaska Highway Lodge Community (published last month, Lost Moose, 240 pages, $24.95). They’ve taken an idea that I turned into a measly two or three columns in the Whitehorse …
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Writing as a Full Time Profession
James Bernard MacKinnon, commonly bylined as J.B. MacKinnon, will be coming to the Yukon from Vancouver to be the Yukon Public Libraries’ choice as a travelling writer to visit a number of communities during the Yukon Writers’ Festival taking place May 2-7. During his Yukon visit McKinnon will do presentations and readings in the Dawson …
Filling the Gaps in Our History
“Everyone talks about the Goldrush. I’m interested in the gaps in history. The points in between,” says Yukon writer Michael Gates, author of From the Klondike to Berlin. Published last month, this book is, perhaps surprisingly, the first to offer an in depth account of the Yukon’s contribution to World War I. Gates says that …
Using Stories to Make People Think
This is the second of a five part series by Dan Davidson about the professional authors participating in the Yukon Writers’ Festival and the Young Authors Conference during the first week of May. Whitehorse based writer and filmmaker Kelly Milner grew up in the Yukon. She cut her writing teeth doing feature articles for a local …
Domestic Bliss
Do you or someone you know love books almost as much as their pet? These three books draw on the animals in our outer lives to illuminate the complexity of our inner lives. For the Dog Lover: Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls A boy and his two dogs become much more than …
Superhero Highschool
Growing up is hard. And the microcosm of high school — with its changing expectations and responsibilities and the push-pull of social dynamics, while, at the same time, you’re trying to establish emotional coping mechanisms and, above all, dealing with the omnipresent questions about the rest of life…? Phew. It’s exhausting just reading that, nevermind …
A Mentor for Yukon Young Writers
Born in England, but transplanted to Newfoundland when she was very young, Kathleen Winter credits libraries with kick starting her interest in writing. “We moved around a bit and in one village the only library was ‘the bookmobile,’ a van filled with books that came to town once a week – I loved that van,” …
Books to Spring Forward
It’s (hopefully) coming to the last wintery blows before the ice breaks; the spring will soon rush in and soon after we can cast our mittens aside for a season. Enjoy the longer nights – while they last – by burying yourself in one (or all) of these books, based around the “Three R’s” of …
History Offers Timeless Perspectives
Stories are invaluable teachers, says B.C. author Caroline Woodward, they have the ability to “give us whole worlds.” Old stories, too, are relevant artefacts that help us gain perspective on how much, or how little, progress we have made. Fictional stories, the writer continues, are able to relate emotive experiences in a way that nonfiction …
The Grass is Greener Wherever Convenience Resides
“We imagined ourselves free of the hassles and troubles we’d accumulated in Toronto. We imagined a life without rushing, without the subway, without neighbours at each other’s throats, without the noise and frustration of daily commutes. Life with space. Life without the massacre of endless winter, frozen pipes, cracking plaster and mountains of snow to …
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A Fable of Feminist Lore
“… but also they were a family, because this story is all about that. About humans and human-ness. Fathers and daughters, brothers and sisters. Love and betrayal and loyalty and madness. Lovers and heroes and the passing of time and all those marvellous baffling things… those things that make us human.” –excerpt from The One …
Bringing Yukon literature to the world stage
Each October, the city of Frankfurt in Germany plays host to the second largest literary trade fair in the world, with 7,153 exhibitors representing 106 countries present in 2016. The Frankfurt Book Fair (known as the Frankfurter Buchmesse (FBM), in German,) is a tradition spanning more than 500 years, with the first book fair being …
A Pioneering Memoir to Keep the Brew True
“This is how you want to talk about your beers — with pride and a bit of humour too — and to do that, you have to produce beers that you’re proud of.” –Excerpt from Brewing Revolution by Frank Appleton It’s not too soon to say: Canadian craft beer has wrenched the baton of good …
A Provocative Gold Rush Mystery From the Other Side of the World
“Mannering was in the august high noon of his life. He was prosperous, and well dressed, and he owned the largest and most handsome building on Revellstreet. There were gold nuggets hanging from his watch chain. He ate meat at every meal. He had known a hundred women — maybe even a thousand — maybe …
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Modern-day Cartoons for Historical Folks
How to Survive in the North is a graphic novel where three northern tales — two historical and true, one fictional and set in present-day — are woven together in an artistic cartoon arrangement. While the title suggests the book may provide guidance through an icy winter, it’s more likely to urge you to consider …
Cedric Wants You
Whoooo the heck is Cedric, anyway? We’ll come back to that later. About a year after Beth Hawkes moved to Salt Spring Island with her husband, she saw a small ad in the Gulf Islands Driftwood about a literary competition for unpublished B.C. writers over the age of 50. “I just looked at the ad, …
Birdie – Tracey Lindberg
“Maybe she didn’t cry because tears were a currency in her life for so long that holding them back meant she was richer.” Birdie is an experience. Here the written word weaves between oral and written history, dreamtime and shared reality; it wraps and warps time and memory, ancient knowledge and new experiences, into one …
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 …
Writing Down the Soul
Anyone who has ever put pen to paper knows it can be a daunting experience. To stare at a blank page waiting for the strike of inspiration. When something is finally put down on paper, is it something others might want to read? What works? What can be done differently? Brave New Words is a …
How to Choose a Library Book
Libraries are the most thrilling silent spaces to walk into; to me, they’re goldmines of intrigue. But when going in blind, the variety and selection can seem a bit overwhelming. With so many titles how do you make sure you’re choosing the right one? First off, that’s the magic of libraries: you’re only committed to …
Life Lines
Faye Ferguson understands the value of documenting one’s life stories, for both the writer and the eventual reader. Ferguson is a personal historian based in Victoria, B.C. who helps people fashion their life stories into print or digital forms, either as full-length memoirs or as scrapbook-type snippets that highlight specific remembered moments or stages of …
Comics capture real life stories
“People always blame strange occurrences on a full moon, but I think shit is weird every single day.” “That’s a lie.” “I’m going to get us some wine.” –excerpt from Time Clock by Leslie Stein Up until a year ago, I was unenthused about graphic novels, but Time Clock by Leslie Stein captured my interest. …
The Wonder builds up slowly to a thrilling ending
You may know Irish Canadian author Emma Donoghue by the fame she has gained from her 2010 novel Room, and its film adaptation. I must admit, I have neither watched the film, nor read the book. However, when it came to reading Donoghue’s ninth novel, The Wonder, which was published this year, I had a …
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Birds and Loss
“His mother used to say the soul was a bird that lived in the nape of the neck. At night it flew out of the mouth, and when you woke it returned; and when you died, it flew away forever. The world outside the glass that night seemed entirely an abstraction, a dream. Here, in …
Writing toward inclusion
Practically unheard of – the top 10 books reviewed last year were evenly split between male and female authors. And never before: the number of men and women reviewing books in Canada is nearly equal. That’s what the Canadian Women in the Literary Arts (CWILA) discovered in its annual investigation of female representation among reviewers …
Predator and Prey 14,000 Years Ago
Zhoh, the Clan of the Wolf: Fiction of the first humans to inhabit The Yukon. I knew Bob Hayes novel would be physically accurate.
The Collapse of Family
“While a part of me was glad I wasn’t like my brother, no part of me wished to be more fortunate than my mother. To be luckier than her was to be different from her, it was to be apart from her, it was to have a life that would take me away from her. …
Doubt, Delight and Discomfort
“That night I went through my reprimand sentence by sentence, word for word, and it got better each time.” “I put on a CD of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, but soon swapped it for one of Sting’s albums, only to switch to Dire Straits and then John Cougar Mellencamp. I didn’t really feel like …
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 …
This is Home
Former Yukoner Jerome Stueart and Yukon author Marcelle Dubé will read together form their books on Dec. 13 at Baked Cafe. It will be an evening about fantasy novels.
NaNoWriMo Memoirs
It was one of my former writing students who managed to shame me into signing up for NaNoWriMo this year. If you’re not familiar with that acronym, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. The deal is, each participant undertakes to knock off a 50,000-word novel during the month. No big deal. That’s only 1,667 …
Write through the winter
While others hunker down against winter’s wrath, the local literary scene is hotter than ever. The winter Writers’ Roundtable organized by the Friends of the Whitehorse Library (FOWL) provides a thorough overview of events for the coming season. Ongoing events include: Every Wednesday writers work from noon to 3 p.m. at Bean North Cafe, kilometre …
Titles Hot Off the Presses
Every December since 2009, Lise Schonewille, manager of Mac’s Fireweed Books, celebrates Winterval, the start of the holiday season, with local authors in the store. Over the years the event has showcased a diverse collection of Yukon literature, subjects and writers as our literary talent grows. This year is no different with a mix of …
Humanity in a Post-Apocalyptic World
“She was thinking about the way she’d always taken for granted that the world had certain people in it, either central to her days or unseen and infrequently thought of. How without any one of these people the world is a subtly but unmistakably altered place, the dial turned just one or two degrees.” –Emily …
Book Fair Fever in Frankfurt
British artist David Hockney displayed his latest piece here: a complete collection of his artwork in a huge book. The book costs about 2,500 Euro and contains 62 years of Hockney’s work. It was set up on a stand so visitors could browse through it. The Arts+ exhibition shows that books are not only about …
The Threads that Hold Us Together
“Stories are not only words, you know. Words are just the clothes that people drape on stories.” – Brian Doyle, author of Mink River I was drawn to Mink River without knowing the author or the story. But at that time, and since then, it’s reminded me of the lyricism of life and the love of home …
A Good Read for Halloween Night
Do ghosts exist? For some they do. The main character in Marcelle Dubé´s novel, Shelter, moves into a haunted house in a small town in Ontario. Dubé started the story as a gothic novel and in the end it became a ghost story. Marcelle Dubé is well known in the Yukon and she usually publishes …
Celebratory Mad Libs
Welcome to What’s Up Yukon’s first mad libs. With winter on the horizon, it’s time to renew our
The Importance of Numbers in Our Lives
As humans we are obsessed with counting things. We keep track of the numbers in our lives. We are always keeping score, measuring, recording and counting. For some of us the first thing we do in the morning is check how our body mass relates to the law of gravity (hop on the scale). We …
Long Live Print! Long Live What’s Up Yukon!
Ever since the advent of the internet, pundits of all description have been predicting the demise of print journalism. Traditional newspapers and magazines, once so prolific and influential in Canada and elsewhere, are undergoing seismic change and downsizing in an age of instant access to news, opinions and images from the most remote corners of …
Just Write
I have been writing for this paper for three years, now. I remember the day my first piece was published. It was my first publication ever, even though I had been writing a lot in German. I remember holding the issue with my article in my hands at the drugstore. It was wintertime and snowing. …
Engaging Historical Fiction
I am not one who likes to read dry historical tomes. I like to absorb my history through the sugar coated pill of historical fiction, written by an author whose research is meticulous. And in this genre, Louis de Bernieres is a master. His works include books such as Birds Without Wings and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. …
Doors are Open for Culture Days
The Yukon is recognized for its rich cultural diversity, and you are invited to experience it during the seventh national Culture Days and Doors Open celebration, from Friday, September 30 through to Sunday, October 2. “The best place to start your Culture Days experience is at The Old Fire Hall,” says Michele Emslie, co-ordinator and …
Learning how to Live Joyfully
Ever since she was a little girl, Teva Harrison drew. She studied art after high school. But, as it often goes, “needing to make a living, I digressed.” After the explanation, Harrison laughs. A joyful, full, belly laugh. To make a living, she worked as the director of marketing for the Nature Conservancy of Canada. …
Rooted in the Yukon
Toronto-based poet Claire Caldwell’s role as writer-in-residence at the Berton House in Dawson City ends this month. Caldwell is no stranger to the Yukon. She lived in Whitehorse from ages three to nine. These years had a deep impact on Caldwell. That’s where she found her fascination for nature and the outdoors, she says. “Certain …
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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Strange things make a great story
Inspired by the Yukon winter and the road closures that lead to a feeling of isolation, Elle Wild wrote her first crime novel and set it in Dawson City. The novel, called Strange Things Done, won the Arthur Ellis Award 2015 for Best Unpublished First Crime Novel from the Crime Writers of Canada. Based in …
Searching for Inner Truth on the Chilkoot Trail
Whitehorse resident Maureen McCulloch wrote her debut novel to bring a message into the world. She wrote the book under the pseudonym, Maureen Senecal. “I used Angels and Aliens to bring the message that mankind needs to work together for the survival of our planet,” McCulloch says. “The book also points to the critical need to …
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 …
Fresh Words and Deep Roots
Writing poetry since she was a child, Nova Scotia based author Shauntay Grant says she has always loved creative writing. “The oldest poem I’ve kept is from fourth grade,” she says. The vocalist, poet and author began a residency at the Berton House Writers’ Retreat in Dawson City in April. She is working on Proof, …
Mark Zuehlke and the Remittance Men
Mark Zuehlke grew up in the Okanagan, hearing tales of Remittance Men – those eccentric British immigrants sent here in the late 19th century by their families who didn’t know what else to do with them. They were called Remittance Men because of the funds they received from their families to support them. The funds …
The Last Word in Wordsmithing
Most writers would be delighted if something they wrote could survive 10 minutes after they shuffle off this mortal coil. But 400 years? To use just a smattering of the literary inventions credited to William Shakespeare, such a “madcap” thought would be “laughable”, something to “arouse” either “excitement” or sheer “amazement”. According to various reckonings …
A Candide Account of Voltaire
For years I have heard the name Voltaire and have not had a chance to locate any of his works. Then the fateful day came when I went into Well Read Books and came across Candide. As I flew through the first couple of chapters at the Gold Pan, I found the charm of …
Nurturing Good Writing
Unlike many a published author, Saskatoon writer Sandy Bonny didn’t study to become one. It just happened. “I haven’t got an English degree,” she says, “and didn’t train or apprentice purposefully with literary mentors before my first publications, but I did always enjoy writing and continued writing recreationally long after it was required for school. …
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 …
A Very Literate Year (Part 2)
July: The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers (American, 1951) Hopefully hopeless, Anna Karenina details the rise and fall of a Russian beauty who is ultimately destroyed by the strength of her desires and her willingness to seek out her own sexual and romantic happiness. While it has been interpreted as a morality …
A Very Literate Year (Part 1)
Dark satire about one of the most hopeful and ultimately oppressive revolutions in history, Animal Farm cuts deep into the heart of Soviet communism while simultaneously exposing disturbing parallels to our own fragmenting culture. Plus, at a slim XX pages, the book fits right into your pocket and can easily be read, say, in an …
Books for Armchair Mushers
Mushing season has begun. While waiting for the Yukon Quest or the Iditarod, here are some suggestions for armchair mushers. Racing Toward Recovery by Mike Williams and Lew Freedman This book is a set of four true stories from the North. The main story, “Dog Team to Dawson,” is about the author’s sled dog trip …
Poetry in Action
Poetry, spoken, plays and short stories at Brave New Words. An evening of music poetry and cocktails. The brave can get up, it’s an open mic.
A dispatch from the Frankfurt Book Fair
The Frankfurt Book Fair is the biggest book fair in the literary world. Publishers, agents, authors and readers from all over the world come to the five day event. It is a place for business, readings, culture and discussion. This year 300,000 visitors came to the book fair. During the event there are many literature …
Three Books for Adventurous Souls
It’s the fall season, which means two things: the slow-creep of cold weather and a near-existential dread of the aforementioned. It also means, for thousands of Yukoners, a frantic dash to enjoy those last, fleeting moments of liveable outdoor weather in the form of fishing, hunting, hiking, mountain biking, kayaking or whatever your outdoor poison …
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 …
This place is in my blood
It’s a dark and rainy night, when Kate Williams finds an injured stranger on the Highway. She pulls over to help him, not knowing that she will be soon in danger. That’s how Marcelle Dubé’s short story Night Shift starts. Dubé has recently published her short story collection Night Shift (Falcon Ridge Publishing). Readers who …
A word or two about memory, memoirs and waterfowl
The kaleidoscope of memory is a wondrous thing. A quarter twist, and tiny fragments tumble themselves into a startling pattern of perception. Another twist, another vista of the past, another “aha” about the present, or the future; perhaps an insight into an unknown temporal dimension. And, like the river into which you cannot step twice, …
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Review Haiku
“We want to freshen up the image of the library … as the cool place that it is,” Sarah Gallagher tells me with a sideways glance. We both giggle. It’s funny, because she’s a librarian and I have a degree in literary criticism and books are a big part of our lives. The library is …
Joanna Lilley Shows Her Love for the North in The Birthday Books
Joanna Lilley’s craft extends beyond poetry. With the publication of her new book, The Birthday Books (Hagios Press), the author shows she can write prose too. Lilley’s short story collection is a book like no other. It touches readers and makes them fall in love with the North, but it also shows people in relationships, …
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Off to Skagway to Explore Language
By the time you read this I’ll be “Exploring the Frontiers of Language” in Skagway, attending this year’s edition of the North Words Writers Symposium. I’ve been at most of these gatherings since the first one in 2010 and have found the trip a pleasant way to begin summer travels with our trailer. North Words …
Mind Stretching Poetry
What does knitting have in common with writing poetry? Both must be done carefully. One mistake can ruin the whole image. Jamie Sharpe knitted a one meter wide and two storey long scarf and wrote a poem about it. Sharpe’s second book of poetry is entitled Cut-up Apologetic (ECW Press). His work has appeared in …
Some Writers
A voice in her periphery, one that was indelibly twisted into her memories, rose above the unfolding dialogue in her mind and, like the instinct to swat away a buzzing fly, she had to look. She’d been occupying a tucked-away booth — her books and writing utensils strewn about the table in an organized mess. …
The Dream of a Normal Life
Living in the suburbs, having children and a husband, driving a minivan: for some this may sound boring, but it is Cea Sunrise Person’s dream come true. Person’s memoir, North of Normal (published at HarperCollins) describes her childhood with her hippie-family in the wilderness. When she was only a few months old, she came up …
People Will Always Need Stories
“ One hundred writers from around the world in 86 events”, was the motto of the 2014 Vancouver Writers Festival. It kicked off with an author many were looking forward to hearing from: Karl Ove Knausgaard, a literary sensation from Norway, who has published an autobiographical six-book-series called My Struggle. He writes about big issues …
Exploring Good Service in Whitehorse
When I first travelled to Canada and the United States I was impressed with the service I got — from the smallest breakfast restaurant, to a fancy steakhouse. Among other things, I enjoyed being called “sweetie” and “honey,” by servers, and I found North Americans have higher standards than Germans. Back in Germany I told …
Poems Like Flower Seeds
A good poem can be a flower seed planted in the mind of the reader. Everything is in the poem; it just needs fertile ground to grow, inspire, make you smile, make you think. Joanna Lilley’s seed of poetry has grown into The Fleece Era, published by Brick Books, based in Ontario. She will be …
The Atheist Doth Protest Too Much
I’ve come to realize that atheism sure ain’t that sexy. When you compare all the trappings and incentives that other belief systems have, we come up pretty short. You don’t hear of teens packing an arena to hear the latest atheist rock band. “Here’s our next song – How entropy will bring about heat death …
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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Farewell, We Hardly Knew Ye … Heck, He Hardly Knew Ye-self
Perspective, use it or lose it. I pulled that one from my dog-eared copy of Illusions, by Richard Bach. It’s a fun read that takes a little more time expounding on the feathery philosophies he was discussing in his more famous work, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I usually pick up the book once a year and …
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Comic Books – Fun and Free for All!
I once made the happy mistake of surfing on eBay, shall we say, under the influence. I say “mistake” as I found out, in a haze the next day, that I had won an online auction for something to the tune of 150 dollars. But I say it was a happy accident as, a few …
These are a few of my favourite things …
Before your vocal chords burst into the chorus from Julie Andrews’ “My Favorite Things” (dash it all, I hate to spoil your fun), I’m not talking about those kinds of things Something better. Some wonderful resources for writing and editing, which include books and websites. Now, wait a minute … I saw those fingers over …
Putting hope in the hands of children
Imagine children, some as old as 17, who have never held a book – never read a book in their own language … Liesel Briggs and her daughter Rosemarie have handed books to children in Nepal and India. Their passion is to provide “books and basics”. Where did this passion come from? Liesel has volunteered …
The Snowplough Went By at Noon Today
??BY DAN DAVIDSON The snowplough went by at noon today; I think it’ll go by again. The reason I think this is plain to the eye: you can’t even see where it’s been.??It started to snow in the morning on Friday, big, fluffy, white flakes wafting down. The lawn disappeared, then our boardwalk filled in …
I Am In Love With David Sedaris
I have been voraciously reading David Sedaris’ books for a few weeks now. There are few writers who can make me laugh so hard that the tears stream down my face. He has such a quirky worldview. Sedaris is Greek, he is also gay; either of those could contribute to his quirkiness. I first bought …
A Teller of Tall Tales Ended his Journey in Dawson City
There are many gravesites marked on the downhill side of Mary McLeod Road, but the only one with a beaten path to it belongs to Jan Welzl, a man for whom Thomas Wolf’s famous phase, “You can’t go home again,” might have been written. Welzl was born in Zábreh, Moravia, in 1868, at a time …
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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 …
Early Adventures in Yukon Tourism
Watching visitors to town wander about taking pictures of things that seem quite ordinary to those of us who live here is a reminder that Dawson is a rather special place that still has a hold on the imaginations of people who come to see us in all seasons. It started early. Not counting the …
Process of Imagination
One thing his early journalism career taught author Lawrence Hill was to pursue the adventure of his stories. Alongside working on final drafts of his eighth novel, Illegal, due out early next year, over the past few weeks the Berton House writer in residence has been embracing the Yukon and doing preliminary research for a …
The story of bones
Being in Dawson City for a residence at the Berton House is a dream come true for Winnipeg writer Joan Thomas. This is not the first time that Thomas has been to this area. In 1996, she spent a month camping in the Yukon with her family. At the time, Pierre Berton’s childhood home was …
Knowing when to begin again
If you were to write about the northern hairy-nosed wombat, each paragraph would reveal something new about it. A paragraph contains one facet of a subject and it may consist of one word, one sentence or be much longer. What kind of creature is it and what does it look like? (first paragraph). Where does …