There’s a neat well-maintained pathway with, of all things, stairs. It leads from Alexander Street to the airport. But when I was a kid in the fifties, the trail to the airport via Puckett’s Gulch hadn’t changed much since…
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You have to hand it to Frederick Schwatka. There was hardly a geographic feature in the Yukon that he did not notice and name. In the summer of 1883, he led the Alaska exploring expedition down the entire length…
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It has always been an honour to become a member of the Yukon Order of Pioneers, an organization with quite a Yukon history. It was created on December 1st, 1894 at Forty Mile when a group of men got…
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When I knew him back in the 1960s, he was a soft-spoken elderly gentleman who usually occupied a special place at Cal Miller's Capitol Hotel bar. Back then, that's where anyone who was anyone in the mining industry gathered.…
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South of Main Street, some of the streets reveal the presence of the White Pass and Yukon Route.
When the Close Brothers, a London based financial house, dispatched a survey party to study the feasibility of a railroad from Skagway…
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I’ve often thought that Whitehorse is such a proud name for the Yukon ’s capital city. The name has a ring about it and tells a story too. A story about the nearby Whitehorse rapids whose waters once churned and…
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In Dawson City itself, the first crude post office was operated by the Northwest Mounted Police from a tent on Front Street. Then, in 1897, Frank Harper was appointed the first post master; but the Mounties still staffed the office.…
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The Klondike gold rush attracted a strange mix of personalities. Dawson City was the land for adventure seekers as much as it was for gold diggers. The Klondike had it all - from major prize fights to big-league gambling nights.…
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When Mr. Ellis came to town, one thing was certain. Someone was going to die. Ellis, not his real name, was the name given to Canada's hangman. On December 10, 1962, Arthur Lucas and Robert Turpin felt the bite of…
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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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It’s a quiet little building very close to the hustle and bustle of downtown Whitehorse. It has the feeling of a sanctuary. And so it should. In 1900, when Whitehorse was just a few blocks wide and long, Anglican missionary…
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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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For years after the gold rush, the Yukon was a busy place both in summer and winter. River boats were the lifeline from Whitehorse to Dawson. But they were of no use in the winter.
So in 1902, the Yukon…
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The North Star Athletic Club building was the hub of Whitehorse recreational activity from 1900 until it burned down in 1943. This was the club in Robert Service’s poem about Bob Smart’s dream. It was the place where people…
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It was quite the show back in May of 1908 in Whitehorse. The town’s movers and shakers had been practicing in private for a good part of the winter. And now they were gonna strut their stuff on the long…
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