RCMP/ Police
Issue: 2020-02-05, PHOTO: Boombardier via Wikimedia Commons
Calgary snowmobile
I was driving to work this morning when I saw snowmobile tracks on the side of the road. It reminded me of the time me and my buddy Chubby had to drive from Calgary to Edmonton on an old Elan skidoo. Let me tell you about it... Read more
Issue: 2019-10-02, PHOTO: Pixabay
Vanishing point in an invisible car
I have a clean driver’s slate. I mention this because it shows that most people, no matter how many goofy things they do when they were young, will finally straighten themselves out. I really try to never speed anymore and I am usually in... Read more
Issue: 2019-07-31, PHOTO: Pixabay
No blues for this bootlegger
One afternoon, in the mid-70s in Inuvik, I was looking for some oddball thing for my vehicle. I looked almost everywhere and then I decided to go see John, a local who owned one of the taxi companies. Read more
Issue: 2019-05-29, PHOTO: courtesy of Liard Aboriginal Women’s Society
Creating a safer community through relationship-building
Building trust between a community and police is essential to addressing the extraordinarily high numbers of sexualized assaults and violence in the Yukon. Without this relationship, women at risk and women who have experienced violence are less... Read more
Issue: 2018-11-21, PHOTO: Dan Davidson
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... Read more
Issue: 2018-06-27, PHOTO: Dan Davidson
Dawson is gearing up to celebrate Canada Day with both new and old traditions. Here’s the scoop!
The biggest change in the Canada Day Parade, this year, is where it will end. With traffic being directed along Fifth Avenue as a main thoroughfare (as a result of sewer and water re-installation blocking the use of Front Street), the City of... Read more
Issue: 2018-06-13, PHOTO: Erik Pinkerton
Pride and joy … 24 Hours of Gaylight
This month, Yukon Pride: 24 Hours of Gaylight is happening for the sixth year in a row—and it just gets bigger every year. With more people involved and more events happening, 2018’s edition of 24 Hours of Gaylight is a hotly anticipated weekend... Read more
Issue: 2018-05-23, PHOTO: courtesy of Marcelle Dubé
Investigating lost bull semen
Marcelle Dubé has written the fifth novel of her Mendenhall Mystery Series titled The Forsaken Men. It´s published by the author under her own imprint Falcon Ridge Publishing. Her Mendenhall isn’t a subdivision of Whitehorse, but rather a fictive... Read more
Issue: 2018-02-07, PHOTO: Amazon
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... Read more
Issue: 2017-10-25, PHOTO: courtesy of the Klondike National Historic Sites
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... Read more
Issue: 2017-08-09, PHOTO: 2016 HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN IN RIGHT OF CANADA as represented by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
RCMP Musical Ride returns
“The best place to view the ride is from up high,” says Inge Sumanik. “But, for me, it is standing next to the fence and feeling the ground shake.” “The ride” that she refers to is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Musical Ride. Since 1876, the... Read more
Issue: 2017-06-28, PHOTO: Andrea McGee
Canadian Red
Ever since I was a child I would see the Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers and think, “Wow! Our national police force is beyond cool!” Today, I still think that. The Mounties definitely know how put on a good horse show and parade. Read more
Issue: 2017-03-29, PHOTO: May Stewart
Thank You, Grandma
Trekking around the vast wilderness behind my grandparents home, I remember my grandma taking me through the wilderness teaching me about traditional medicines. I loved learning what the medicines could be used for, when to use them, their... Read more
Issue: 2017-03-01, Illustration: Shauna Jones
The Cancan Under Arrest
Appearing nightly in vaudeville, burlesque, ballets and operas, on tiny rustic stages of the Wild West mining camps and in the frontier theatres of the Pacific Coast, by the 1870s the cancan was in North America to stay. Read more
Issue: 2016-10-26
The Dead Man’s Gold Pan: Fiction
There is a crack at the base of the Yukon River, a portal to the the underworld. It lays just above Miles Canyon at the deepest part of the mighty Yukon River and has seen ice ages come and go; the birth of mountains, the carving of canyons, the... Read more
Issue: 2016-03-17, PHOTO: Andree Lanthier
Sal Capone: The Lamentable Tragedy Of
“The play was inspired by the shooting of a young man named Freddy Villaneuva,” Vancouver-based playwright Omari Newton tells me. “A young man that was apparently unarmed, had no previous criminal record. He got into some kind of altercation with... Read more
Issue: 2016-02-25, PHOTO: Fiona McTaggart
Barb McInerney
Barb McInerney came up to the Yukon in the 1970s to work in a camp kitchen. Though she worked in mining before starting at Kaushee’s Place in 2000, she says that no matter what job she had, she was always trying to advance the most vulnerable of... Read more
Issue: 2016-01-14 PHOTO: Dan Davidson
New Numbers for Old Addresses
Not too long ago if you wanted to find Berton House, the home of the Berton House Writers’ Retreat, you would have been directed to 8th Avenue and told to look at the building across the street from Parks Canada’s Robert Service Cabin site. Read more
Issue: 2015-12-24, PHOTO: wikipediacommons.com
Hostel Hostility, Part 2
Before coming to Nicaragua's beach mecca of San Juan del Sur, I had undergone a hostel scare in Granada - a polite-seeming colonial city with awe-inspiring architecture, nouveau cuisine and two sports bars. I had returned from dinner and was... Read more
Issue: 2015-12-03 PHOTO: Dan Davidson
Brightening Up Even the Darkest Nights
I’m happy to record that, except for the arrival of the Sears Wish Book at North 60 Petro Express, everything else related to Christmas here in Dawson City seems to have been content to wait until after Remembrance Day to get started. Read more