The community of Porter Creek has grown by leaps and bounds since the mid-sixties when the city of Whitehorse put lots for sale in the new subdivision at $300 for a 200 by 200-foot building lot. Times have certainly changed.…
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Joanie Mitchell said it best. "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got til it's gone." Prophetic...that line from the song Big Yellow Taxi.
Back in the 60s, I often met up with Archie Gillespie,…
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The first mayor, of the newly incorporated city of Skagway, was a Canadian. John Hislop was born in Galt, Ontario, and graduated from McGill University in Montreal as a civil engineer. At one time he taught highschool in Galt.
In…
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It's a stunning oasis, looking more like something you'd find in Wyoming or Colorado. Yet not far south of the arctic circle lies the most northerly mixed farm in Canada. When I first visited the Pelly River ranch in the…
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There may have been 300 steamboats in the Yukon in the heyday of river transport. Few remain today and none ply the river anymore. But in 1898, river was the only way to get from the coast to the Klondike…
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Now an historic attraction, the Commissioner’s Residence in Dawson City is the Yukon’s equivalent of the White House, or twenty-four (24) Sussex Drive in Ottawa. It was originally built to house the most senior government official in the territory, the…
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The Yukon has always been a land of opportunity for visionaries. And because of them, residents of Whitehorse saw the light when on July 2, 1901 the newly formed Yukon Electric Company was awarded a franchise to provide power. It…
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John McIntyre of Pembroke, Ontario sailed north on an ocean-going vessel from San Francisco to Saint Michael, Alaska in 1895. From there, he prospected along the Yukon river system, finally ending up in Circle, Alaska in 1897. By 1898,…
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The streets of Whitehorse are paved with stories...stories which go back long before the streets were paved. Those dusty, sometimes muddy, often frozen streets today yield nuggets about Lowe, Hoge, Jeckell, Taylor and Drury.
Last time, we walked the White…
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