THE YUKON'S RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM
by Scott Young, copyright 1999
Saturday night in the Sour Dough Saloon in Dawson City, and the
pneumatic Californian blonde girl with the industrial alarm voice is
whipping herself into a frenzy of stupid enthusiasm before knocking back
the severed, frost-bitten toe which floats in the bottom of a glass of
tequila. The Keeper of the Toe, as he is known, beams with delight, and
a new name is added to the Sour Toe Club, a local tradition which
typifies the Yukoners delight in the macabre - and their pride in
surviving the most arduous of conditions.
A few doors down the dirt paved street, and elderly Alaskan Legionnaires
are losing the emblazoned jackets off their backs in Diamond Tooth
Gerties, Canada's first legalised gambling hall. Can-Can girls high kick
and holler, and a big Aussie barroom belter urges 'all you good looking
fellas' to get up and dance. Later in 'The Pit', the accurately named,
authentically local saloon, farmyard smells compete with both types of
music (country and western) for your attention, and the Jack Daniel's
will flow for as long as anyone can stand it.
This is Nightlife in Dawson City, The Yukon, former boomtown of the turn
of the century gold rush. It is in Dawson that the squeaky clean,
goody-two-shoes character of Canada loses its grip, like Roman order
before Hadrian's Wall, or the British Raj turning shabby at India's
north-western frontier. Back in 1898, Dawson was home to the penultimate
of the great gold rushes, the final bonanza taking place in Nome, Alaska
in 1900. Within eighteen months the town of Dawson City had swelled to
accommodate around 35,000 people, home to that familiar frontier mixture
of muddy streets and moonshine, 'finest imported silks from Gay Paree'
and sturdy, painted ladies. Characters real as life yet taller than
truth; men like 'Swiftwater' Bill Gates, reputedly the Microsoft
tycoon's grand-pappy, who bathed in Champagne in his hotel suite and
seduced a veritable chorus line of dance hall girls. Or Tennessee Sam
McGee, who survived an attempted cremation with a smile on his face, and
inspired the famous poem by Robert Service: 'There are strange things
done in the Midnight Sun, By the men who moil for gold'... There were
some feisty gals in the Yukon too, like Belinda Mulroney, a waitress who
became the richest woman in the Klondike; a confidence trickster just
like her husband, the self styled 'Count Carbonneau' - in reality a
Montreal barber. There's no shortage of characters walking the streets
of Dawson today either.
I am struck again by how many self styled cowboys there are in Canada.
Due to typically efficient British colonial administration, Canada's
West was Mild. The trigger happy Americans had gunslingers and
train-robbers to mythologise, in Canada such mavericks were rare. Still,
the cowboy way persists. In roadside bars, in theme restaurants and
wailing from pick-up truck stereos, pours the sound of Country and
Western, the 'white man's blues'. "They oughta make a new kinda whisky,
one with a woman's name", or "He was a tall glass of water, six foot of
country". See, they do write 'em like they used to.
Now that the big strikes are part of history, the main business of
Dawson City is still gold-mining, which explains the city's roguish
charm. Unlike Dawson's American counterpart, Skagway Alaska, with its
gift shop lined streets, Dawson is not a museum piece - but a living,
breathing frontier town. Her residents do not all pack it in and head
for Florida before the minus fifty degree Celsius temperatures of winter
kick in, and the Yukon river freezes over. They stay on, and they cope,
in testament to the resilience of the human spirit. A fellowship
develops among the lifers that would be hard to intrude upon.
The next morning Ancient Voices, older even than the lust for gold, were
calling from up river. Ancient Voices Wilderness Camp is only an hour by
motorboat up the Yukon, yet a journey several hundred years back in
time. It is here that Peter Kormendy, from the Yukon's First Nations
tribe of the G'wich'in, and his wife Marge, a Yup'ik from Bethel,
Alaska, have recreated a way of life best known to their ancestors.
Ancient Voices wilderness camp is a tiny, working village of rustic
cabins, wall tents and tepees where the old ways are taught and
practised. People come here to immerse themselves in First Nations
teachings, whether that be listening to the stories of the elders by the
glow of the fireside or nature walks, where the age old medicinal
secrets of plants, trees and roots are revealed. Still others come to be
silent, to read, or just to hear themselves breathe. The Ancient Voices
website address is http://www.yukon.net/avwcamp but don't expect any
computer terminals or indeed electricity within the camp itself. That
after all, would be cheating.
I was shown around by one James Babineau, a French-Canadian who has
devoted his life to studying and adopting the ways of the First Nations
People of the Yukon. In his log cabin workshop, with little in the way
of modern tools and vast reserves of skill, patience and care, James
fashions traditional weapons and musical instruments. These are modern
day artefacts that collectors pay handsomely for, if and when he needs
or desires a little extra cash. He certainly isn't intent on opening up
on a street corner near you anytime soon. James will spend the winter of
98/99 alone in the camp, and I had the feeling, fanciful perhaps, that
one fine day he will recede into the forest and leave civilisation
behind him forever. But then Ancient Voices is the kind of place that
plays on the imagination.
Later, as the little boat pulls away that speeds back to the comparative
bustle of Dawson City, three of the women on board - all leaving the
camp that day - began chanting, whooping and wailing; laughter
alternating with the tears running their down faces. Which isn't
something you see a lot when people check out of the Ramada Inn.
The next day I arrive at the Dalton Trail Lodge in Haines Junction, an
upmarket fishing lodge located precisely in the back of beyond, with a
distinctly Germanic patronage who have come a long way, I presume, for
the elbow room - and to cast for trout as big as forty pounds and salmon
bigger than fishermen's tales. Watching these freshwater heavyweights
skip over the water on their way to spawn, I'm excited as a grizzly in a
seafood restaurant.
And finally, on my last day in the Yukon, I see an actual Grizzly
Bear. Three to be precise. I am a passenger on a helicopter ride over
the Kluane National Park with a flashily skilful pilot. The flight takes
us whirly-gigging through the ravines of the Kluane Icefields like
fighter craft in the final dog-fight on the Death Star, for all you Star
Wars fans. This is the way to travel, possibly the best and the safest
way to see mountain goat, moose and more to the point, Grizzly bear.
Definitely the closest you ever want to get to one of these surprisingly
swift, unpredictable animals. There's a story I heard about a
self-styled survivalist from the U.S. who ignored all the warnings about
grizzly sightings and went lumbering off into the woods on his own. Some
hours later the man who wasn't afraid of anything emerged from the
forest with his face torn off. When he awoke alone in his hospital bed,
and saw the death mask that stared back at him from a reflective
surface, he pulled the plug on his life support. Then again, Yukoners do
like to tell stories intended to scare the big city blasé baggage out of
you. It's all part of their ruggedly individualistic charm.
