Ken Bolton is the former Co-Editor for What's Up Yukon. Ken is a passionate, hardworking, and dedicated freelance writer before and after his editor position. Currently Ken telecommutes from New Brunswick. Columns Include: A Little Off The Top, Behind The Curtain and Wasting Away in Geezerville.
Issue: 2019-11-20, PHOTO: Pixabay
Never, in any previous column, have I considered the need to provide a trigger warning. Regular visitors to Geezerville are generally mature, clear-minded and emotionally stable enough to put up with whatever nonsense I spill into this 450-word frame Read more
Issue: 2019-11-20, PHOTO: Tonehenge
In one sense, Jennifer Scott’s newest CD, due to be released sometime in the next few months, is a fitting tribute to the Vancouver singer/pianist’s own musical upbringing. Read more
Issue: 2019-11-13, PHOTO: Pixabay
This morning, Kyle showed up with his bulging leather tool belt, his cordless shop vacuum, and a clutch of 16x25x1 furnace filters. It’s one of those annual rituals I’ve come to both welcome and dread. Read more
Issue: 2019-11-06, PHOTO: Pixabay
How do you solve a problem like “flibbertigibbet?” Unless you had a grandmother like mine, that’s a word you’d probably never heard before Oscar Hammerstein II used it to describe a postulant manquée named Maria... Read more
Issue: 2019-10-30, PHOTO: David Beecroft
Without question, Phil Dwyer was the only first-year law student at the University of New Brunswick in 2014 sporting an Order of Canada pin in his lapel. Read more
Issue: 2019-10-16, PHOTO: Pixabay
I love my cellphone. Let me rephrase that. I am addicted to my cellphone. I’m enslaved by it. In its absence, I feel abandoned, disoriented, slightly less than a whole person. Read more
Whatever your language or culture, your gift to the future is to provide wonder for kids to chew on in their strollers. Read more
Issue: 2019-10-02, PHOTO: Erik Pinkerton
After an absence of two decades, eight low-rent vaudevillians trying to evade the secret police in their homeland have returned to Whitehorse. The Guild Theatre opens its 2019/20 season this week with a remount of the wacky comedy, El Crocodor... Read more
Issue: 2019-09-25, PHOTO: Marzena Manganaro
One person’s trash is another’s treasure. When Larry Fuller’s older brother brought home an upright piano a cousin was discarding, the “little kid” from Toledo discovered a passion that would take him to the forefront of North America’s jazz... Read more
Issue: 2019-09-25, PHOTO: Pixabay
Six hours after I email this column to Danny Macdonald, and long before you read it in What’s Up Yukon, these words by Cole Porter from the 1948 Broadway smash, Kiss Me, Kate, will be part of my remembered experience: Read more
Issue: 2019-08-21, PHOTO: Pixabay
I recently wrote about my new vocation as a DIY coffin maker. OK, strictly speaking it’s not a coffin. It’s a casket. On a draped bier. Read more
Issue: 2019-08-14, PHOTO: Pixabay
Things sometimes turn on a dime. Recently, with only three days’ notice, my summer job as a kiddie-train engineer suddenly vanished in a puff of steam-engine smoke. I won’t dwell on the details, except to say I was disappointed. Read more
Issue-2019-07-10, PHOTO: Pixabay
They say the fastest land mammal of all is the cheetah, capable of running as fast as 120 km/h without breaking a sweat. But “they” are wrong. Read more
Issue: 2019-07-03, PHOTO: Pixabay
Opinions are like belly buttons. Everybody has one. Except Adam and Eve, reportedly. Even a casual glance at Facebook, Twitter, or similar social media platforms confirms a disturbing fact: opinions are actually far more numerous than belly buttons. Read more
Issue: 2019-06-26, PHOTO: Danny Macdonald
The last entry in this space provided a platform for a more-or-less true tale of undeserved punishment recalled (and still resented) from the mists of time. Read more
Issue: 2019-06-05, PHOTO: Pixabay
Anyone who has ever worked in a printing shop, or who has helped teach a youngster learn how to print the alphabet, knows the importance of minding your Ps and Qs. And your Bs and Ds, for that matter... Read more
Issue: 2019-05-29, PHOTO: mvipond / everystockphoto.com
I was 12 years old in 1955 when my oldest brother, Robin, went away to university. As siblings in a close-knit family, we had shared many delightful (and less-than) hours around the dinner table. But the six-year difference in our ages meant we... Read more
Issue: 2019-04-10, PHOTO: Rick Massie
The German term zeitgeist is generally rendered in English as the spirit of a given time, as shown in prevailing thought or customs. (Think, perhaps, how Carnaby Street reflected the social values of mid-1960s Britain.) In 2019, are Yukon... Read more
Issue: 2019-04-03, PHOTO: Erik Pinkerton Photography
With the stage still in darkness, a disembodied voice expresses the speaker’s dislike for plays that require theatre-goers to interact with performers who break the traditional fourth wall. When the lights rise on the latest Guild Theatre... Read more
Issue: 2019-03-13, PHOTO: courtesy of Katie Thiroux
A legendary bass player who died almost two decades ago indirectly influenced Katie Thiroux’s decision to inject a healthy dose of standard jazz content into her concerts and recordings. “I learned a lesson, by way of Ray Brown, that it’s a good... Read more
Our goal at What's Up Yukon has always been to be a true reflection of Yukon's living culture. Before we started this little magazine, our family knew there was way more happening here than we could keep track of. Read more