1942 Yukon Nuggets

The Story of the Keebird

Who hasn’t heard the Yukon's claim to fame when, back on February 3rd , 1947, Snag in the northwest Yukon, reached a North American record low of -81.6 Fahrenheit or -63 Celsius. On that infamous day, all of the Yukon was gripped in the icy bond of an Arctic low-pressure ridge that saw Whitehorse hit -60 Celsius. But it was a dry, windless cold. Oh, so they say!!

Still, it was good for me because my grade one class at the Lambert Street School was cancelled, and I stayed home, snug in the warmth of our Strickland Street house, where four-foot long logs, delivered by Ryders Fuel Service the previous fall, burned with an intense heat from the home-made 45-gallon drum, wood-burning furnace in the hole under the house that Dad called the cellar.

Yes, the Yukon was renowned for cold weather in the good old days. So much so that the men and women working on the Alaska Highway in the early forties formed a club, developed a mascot, and wrote a poem about it.

It was an exclusive, back-patting American military order called the Kee Club. They named it after a mythical bird that flies around the arctic wilderness near the north pole, crying plaintifily "Kee-Kee-Kee-rist but it's cold." Their emblem was a walrus tooth on a key chain. Membership was by invitation only, and to qualify, newcomers must have accomplished any two of the following four feats:

Completed a military mission above the Arctic Circle; ridden the White Pass & Yukon Railway from Whitehorse to Skagway; flown across the mountains from Whitehorse to Norman Wells on the Mackenzie River; gone down the Yukon River from Fort Yukon to the mouth.

The Kee Club was founded in the winter of 1942, in a wood-and-tar-paper barracks of the U.S. Army's Northwest Service Command at Whitehorse, by officers and civilian contractors who had just returned from a particularly chilly trip by train from Skagway. Its membership in 1943 totalled only about thirty.

They were a jolly lot - these Kee Club members - and they wrote a lengthy poem that became the inspiration for a 1960s song written by Yukon balladeer, Al Oster.

The Kee Bird

You have heard the wail of the siren,
As an ambulance sped down the street,
And mayhap you've heard the lion's deep roar
Down in Africa's grim desert heat.

Or the piercing cry of the tiger
At night as he stalks his prey,
Or the locomotive's high shrill whistle
As it sped through the night on its way.

But these sounds sink to a whisper -
You've heard naught, I assure you,

Till I've told you of the blood-curdling cry of the Kee Bird
In the Arctic's cruel frigid night.

This bird looks just like a buzzard,
It's large, it's hideous, it's bold,
In the night as it circles the North Pole
Crying "Kee, Kee, Keerist but it's cold!"

The Eskimos tucked away in their igloos
Toss fretfully in their sleep,
While the Huskies asleep in a snowbank
Start burrowing way down deep.

For this cry is so awe-inspiring
It freezes the blood I'm told,
As the Kee bird flies in the Arctic,
Crying "Kee, Kee, Keerist but it's cold!"

 

 

The Mounties abroad in their dog sleds,
Visting these wards of the Crown
Often hear this cry and stare skywards
With a fierce and sullen frown.

 

 

For odd things happen in the Arctic
And many weird tales they have told,
But their voices drop to a whisper
At the cry "Kee, Kee, Keerist but it's cold!"

And many brave men on this base site -
Strong and bold, from a Northwestern State,
Are taking the first train back to Homeland
To forget this fierce bird's song of hate.

They can 'take it', it seems, in the daytime,
But when the midnight hour is tolled,
They cover their heads in a shameless fright
Crying "Kee, Kee, Keerist but it's cold!"

So back to the States they are going
To sleep in a real bed, as of old,
To slip their strong arms 'round their loved one,
Her fair slender form to enfold.

Then off to sleep in warm comfort
And wifey's soft hand they will hold,
To wake, terrorized by a "Kee Bird" nightmare,
And the cry "Kee, Kee, Keerist but it's cold!"

 

A CKRW Yukon Nugget by Les McLaughlin.