Oh, the Places We'll Go

Day 85 - Friday August 11/17

(Written, formatted with photos, and posted on Thursday August 31st at Battleford, SK)

Slept in until 9 am – and did that feel good!?! We took our time to enjoy a granola breakfast and shower. Michael struck up a conversation with a friendly family from Alberta in the trailer beside us. They had been in Dawson for three days, and their son Tyson (about 12 years old) gave us several good ideas of things to see and do.

We set off for the National Parks Visitors Centre in drizzle. It was 11C. After picking up maps and a ‘Golden Ticket’ which would allow us free admission to one of the locations or tours operated by Parks Canada we headed down the street. The entire town of Dawson has been restored or rebuilt as close to the Gold Rush period as possible. Many buildings are owned by Parks Canada and rented to businesses. Others are museums with the interior as well as the exterior restored. Many of the buildings are painted in pastel colours reminiscent of St John’s Nfld or a Caribbean town.

We decided to start our explorations following Tyson’s suggestion and visited the Keno – a paddle wheeler that operated on the Yukon River but was now dry-docked in town.

On the top deck - where we weren't supposed to be!!

We were greeted by a Parks Canada employee from London ON as we boarded. We were the only people on the boat so we got lots of attention and information. We learned that while the Keno is smaller than most of the other paddle wheelers used on the Yukon - it had a shallower draft so it could be used in lower water levels - it was still designed with enough power to push barges up and down the river, bringing supplies in for the mining communities and taking ore and gold out, as well as passengers. We also got to watch a short CBC TV documentary from the early 1960's of the rehabilitation and reflecting of the Keno, and its final voyage downstream from Whitehorse to Dawson to become a Park's Canada National Historic Site exhibit.

We came upon a stairway to the upper deck and climbed up. We got some fantastic views of the city but were scolded by another employee who told us we weren’t allowed up there. We told her the rope had not been across the stairway indicating that there was no public access but we don’t think she believed us. She clicked the barrier into place as we came down.

With our tails between our legs we left the Keno and decided to have some lunch. We went to a restaurant called Sourdoagh Joe's for fish and chips. We shared a bowl of superb fish chowder with fresh sourdough bread and then sampled both cod and halibut with chips. We both preferred the flavour and texture of the halibut, but the exercise was very tasty. We also sampled and shared a Yukon Gold English Pale Ale and a Yukon Red Amber Ale (which prompted us later to get a 'sampler pack' of 4 Yukon Breweries beers)

We then browsed a few shops before heading off the main street to find the cabins of Robert Service and Jack London. Both are very small log cabins located on the same street at the east edge of town.

Robert Service's cabin

Jack London's cabin

Being in this location has had us both remembering the poems by Robert Service that we read back in school and in fact have become cultural reference points like “The Cremation of Sam McGee” or “The Shooting of Dan McGrew”. But here, in the North, we have heard more of Service’s poems (he is quoted on many tours and on many signs) and we have been moved by several of his poems that we hadn’t known before. Here are some of the final lines of “The Spell of the Yukon” that have touched our hearts.

"There's a land where the mountains are nameless,

And the rivers all run God knows where;

There are lives that are erring and aimless,

And deaths that just hang by a hair;

There are hardships that nobody reckons;

There are valleys unpeopled and still;

There's a land -- oh, it beckons and beckons,

And I want to go back -- and I will. …

It's the great, big, broad land 'way up yonder,

It's the forests where silence has lease;

It's the beauty that thrills me with wonder,

It's the stillness that fills me with peace.

On a whim, Nancy decided to do a little genealogical research. Her great-great uncle on her mother’s side – Alexander Garvie – came to the Yukon during the gold rush. Her grandfather had a stick pin with a half centimetre long gold nugget on it given to him by his uncle. She had grown up with the image of this uncle’s wagon etched in her memory from a photo she had often been shown so she stopped by the Dawson City Museum to see if she could learn more about this long ago relative who had also come to Dawson.

A wagon much like the one etched in Nancy's memory

Serendipitously the archives assistant was working and was more than happy to help. First off she found that Alexander had indeed run a livery business not in Dawson but in a smaller location called Grand Forks. ”It is a ghost town and former community at the confluence of Bonanza Creek and Eldorado Creek in Yukon. First settled about 1896, it became the second-largest settlement in the Klondike. With approximately 10,000 people living in or by Grand Forks during the Klondike Gold Rush” says Wikipedia.

The archivist helped Nancy find a photo of the town with Garvie Livery identified. She also found Alexander’s name on a list kept by the NWM Police indicating he had come into the Yukon on July 3, 1897. The final discovery was on microfiche. It was a land claim Alexander had filed on Bonanza Creek in 1901. Nancy was able to have a copy printed for herself. The very helpful and patient archivist gave Nancy some other sources to pursue and emailed even more suggestions the next day. While at the Museum we watched a video on the gold rush narrated by Pierre Berton - another famous Dawson City author.

The family history discovery was a very emotional experience for Nancy – a feeling of connection to the past and to the place. That evening we drove out to the former location of Grand Forks (there are no buildings there now) and Nancy got to stand in the place she imagined her relative to have stood. It was a time for peaceful reflection.

Following supper back at Rocinante we returned to the Parks Canada Office to participate in a tour of the town called “Dawson – Past and Present”. We joined a group of about 20 visitors and were led by a uniformed Parks Canada Interpreter. We walked from location to location and our guide told us about her life in the community today and the buildings we were seeing. We were frequently met by another Parks Canada Interpreter in costumed role as a historic business woman of 1898 Dawson. This lady told us of life in the days of the gold rush. It was a very effective and interesting way to see the historic sites – the original post office, a bar, a Bank of Commerce, a gambling hall, and several others (photos)