The Yukon River, at about 2000 miles, is one of the world’s longest rivers. It is also one of the most important salmon-breeding rivers. Each year Chinook or King salmon return to spawn in the river’s tributaries such as…
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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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Mining has been a crucial element in Yukon development since the gold rush. In the mid-1940s, mining men were reviewing the old Treadwell Yukon’s silver workings on Galena Hill near Mayo. What geologists found led to the opening of…
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Ian Tyson is one of my favourite singing story tellers. Always has been. He wrote a wonderful song called "50 Years Ago".
If I could roll back the years,
Back when I was young and limber,
Loose as…
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That's cool. Real cool. What a great word - cool - especially when it has nothing to do with the weather. While slang and pop phrases come and go as fast as a Ferrari, the word cool is more like…
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2008 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Robert W. Service, who passed away on September 11th , 1958. He spent just eight of his 84 years in the Yukon Territory, yet the stories he told made him one…
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By the mid-1950s, a growing Whitehorse apparently needed more electrical power than could be provided by the Fish Lake power plant operated by Yukon Electric. But what to do? At the time, two parallel systems were operating. The Read more
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To understand the Distant Early Warning line, you first have to understand the dawn of the nuclear age and the phrase "mutually assured destruction." In the early fifties, both the U.S. and Russia could deliver nuclear warheads to each other’s…
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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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There were many cheechakos in the Klondike who made the most of their brief time to develop a taste for fame and glory. They included a future Premier of British Columbia, who learned the art of hard-ball politics during his…
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The Yukon Coat of Arms is a red, blue, gold and white shield surmounted by a malamute (or husky) standing on a mound of snow.
Wavy vertical white and blue stripes represent the Yukon River and…
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'Put Whitehorse on the map' was the motto of the local Jaycees club back in the summer of 1955. They couldn’t find a better way of doing that than to sponsor a local woman in the Miss Canada pageant.
Dalyce…
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