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Yukon Nuggets

Results 43
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2000

Jack London Square, Oakland California

Marg and Rolf Hougen visited Oakland, California, in 2000 to see the Jack London Square. The Oakland area was London’s home. Thanks to the dedication and hard work of Dick North, the Jack London cabin on a creek in the…

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1999

Amy Sloan

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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1993

Randy Hahn

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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1993

TED HARRISON

He was trained as a classical painter in England.  He served with the British army in the 40s.  He came to the Yukon to teach school in the late 60s. Here, the scenery changed the way he looked as things,…

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1984

Leslie Nielsen

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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1982

ALAN INNES-TAYLOR

Alan Innes-Taylor was a real gentleman. And for me, as a young radio reporter in the '60s, he was an invaluable source of historical knowledge about the Yukon.

Whenever I wanted to know something about the river boats, or dog…

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1981

Dr. Maurice Haycock

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,

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1980

Thomas Fuller, Klondike Architect

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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1967

Hide a Case of Whiskey

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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1965

Climbing Mt. Kennedy

It was the highest unclimbed peak in the St. Elias. Standing at an impressive 13,900 feet, the unnamed mountain was a beauty to be behold. For the untrained mountaineer, however, it was a formidable foe.

When Mount Kennedy was named…

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1965

Wally Byam

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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1964

A.Y. Jackson in the Yukon

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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1964

James Harbic

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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1962

Foxy

It all began in 1959 when the Minister of Indian Affairs, Alvin Hamilton, invited Tom Patterson to visit Dawson City. Then, the gold rush town was a crumbling shadow of its former self.

Yukoners wanted to change that and the…

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1961

Robert Crawford

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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1960

Al Raine

When Al Raine arrived in the Whitehorse in December of 1960, he had no idea that his stay in the Yukon would be the beginning of a lifelong career in skiing. The Vancouver-raised youngster was still wearing his west-coast rain-coat…

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1959

Royal Visit

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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1957

White Pass The Container Pioneers

"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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1955

The Big Inch Company

In the 1950s, millions of North American kids owned land in the Klondike. They dreamed about mining, farming, fencing, building cabins, raising sled dogs. They dreamed the dreams of early Klondikers, and like the majority of the gold seekers of…

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1954

Five-dollar Bill

I learned a new word today. It is difficult to pronounce, but it means a lot. The word is Paradoli. It was coined in 1994 and means mistaking something perceived as recognizable. Like shapes of angels in clouds. Or the…

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1954

The Big Inch Saga

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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