The skies over Whitehorse were filled with planes and parachutes.The streets were swarming with combat-ready soldiers.The Alaska Highway was a battle-ground.
The frigid winter showed no sign of abating, but the heat was on around the world. Thousands of Canadian…
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The land is still here - listed as Group 2 in lot 243 - a nineteen-acre plot on the west bank of the Yukon River about three miles upstream from Dawson City. It is long way from Chicago, Illinois where…
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"Containerization." Today it is as commonplace as crocuses on the clay cliffs in the spring. Ports around the world are bustling with huge machinery loading and unloading goods. It wasn't always so.
Everything you buy today probably arrived from some…
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1959 was quite the year. Tumultuous some might say. In January, Alaska became the 49th U.S. state. In February, a chartered plane carrying Buddy Holly crashed in an Iowa snowstorm. It was, to quote song writer Don McLean, "the day…
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Robert Crawford was born in a little cabin in Dawson City, in July of 1899. His father had been the bailiff for the city of Seatlle before joining the hordes of gold-seekers heading for the Klondike in 1897. The Crawfords…
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In 1964, I had the pleasure of interviewing the famed Group of Seven artist, A.Y. Jackson. Then in his 70s, he was in the Yukon with his friend and fellow artist Maurice Haycock, making sketches and paintings of the…
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When James Harbic became the Parliament Hill Correspondent for the Whitehorse Star, Lester Pearson was Prime Minister, Erik Nielsen was gaining national prominence as an opposition backbencher, Canada was in the midst of the great flag debate and the…
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Have you ever driven behind a caravan of trailers on the Alaska Highway and wondered how you were ever going to pass them all? It’s a reality. Trailers bunch up on the highway. So imagine a week back in the…
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Liquor played a significant role in everyday life in the Klondike during the gold rush. Saloons were scattered around Dawson like Bonanza Creek nuggets, and finding the booze was usually easier than finding the gold. But not for a moment…
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His dad has been the architect who designed the Parliament buildings in Ottawa, among other great Canadian buildings. So there was good lineage for the man who designed the Yukon's first official post office. The first post office in Dawson…
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Dr. Maurice Haycock wasn’t a Yukoner, but he could have been. I first met him in 1964 when he accompanied his friend A.Y. Jackson to Whitehorse on one of their many northern painting expeditions together.
At the time, Read more
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My first encounter of the close kind with Hollywood’s funniest man occurred in 1984. His brother Erik Nielsen had just been sworn in as Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister. Yukon Erik was, against all odds, the number two man on…
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It’s a long way from describing the Sourdough Rendezvous dog races on radio to doing the play-by-play broadcasts for the San Jose Sharks of the National Hockey League. However, it’s a journey Randy Hahn made with relative ease.
He…
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A time long ago and far away, I produced a series of radio programs for kids called The Adventurers of Ookpik, the arctic owl. The stories of Ookpik’s adventurers were brought to life through a variety of arctic animals who…
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