Photo by Jay Armitage

by Dan Davidson

The lineup went down King Street and along 3rd Avenue the night that Buffy Sainte-Marie came to play at the Palace Grand. Her concert, jointly sponsored by the Dawson City Music Festival and the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, had sold out about three weeks after the tickets went on sale in the winter, and the only people who didn’t make it to the show were those who got stuck in Alaska when parts of the Taylor Highway suddenly washed out.

The opening act for the evening was the duo of Boyd Benjamin and Kevin Barr, both also tapped to perform later in the week at the festival, but pleased and proud to be opening for a First Nations’ icon. They were well received, but it was always clear who was going to be the main event of the evening.

Buffy and her three piece band hit the stage to chants of “We love you Buffy!”

Her opening number, a country-folk tune called “Piney Wood Hills” gave no hint of the wide variety of styles and moods she would present before the evening ended. The set list was about half from her latest cd, Running for the Drum, while the rest came from the length of her entire career, and could mostly be found on such greatest hits collections as her 1996 album Up Where We Belong, which featured songs she said were popular in her concerts.

She was right about that. The audience was treated to “Universal Soldier”, “Up Where We Belong”, “Until it’s Time for You to Go”, and “Cripple Creek”, all either written by her or rearranged from traditional tunes, and each quite different than the one before.

For, as she told the audience, this Cree girl from Saskatchewan who was raised in Maine after her parents died, who attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and earned degrees in teaching and Oriental philosophy, hadn’t really intended to become a performer at all, and kind of slipped into it while she was in college. She’d been planning to go study philosophy in the Far East, but didn’t make it.

Her musical influences are vast, and so her output is far from being just one type of song. On the other hand, just one of her songs, “Until it’s Time for You to Go” has been covered by a range of artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Barbara Streisand, Neil Diamond, Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra, Roberta Flack, Françoise Hardy, Cher, Maureen McGovern, and Bobby Darin. Other songs were hits for Bobby Bare, Chet Atkins, Janis Joplin, Donovan, the Charlatans, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Gram Parsons, Neko Case, the Indigo Girls, Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes and Taj Mahal.

Most of the material she chose from Running with the Drum had a political or social critique edge to it, and the stage versions rock a lot harder and louder than the studio recordings. In fact, this 68 year old woman rocks as hard as any of the younger performers who have played the DCMF over the years.

The driving rhythms of “Starwalker” closed the show, but she came back for an encore with something totally different, the country styled tune “He’s an Indian Cowboy in the Rodeo”.

Singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, pacifist, educator, social activist, and philanthropist, as well as the holder of at least four honourary doctorates in laws, fine arts and letters, you’d have a hard time pinning Buffy Sainte-Marie down to any one category of anything at all.

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IN THIS ISSUE:

1 – Fred Penner and Buffy Sainte-Marie
2 – Highway Closure, RCMP
3 – Dome Race
4 – Uffish Thoughts
5 – Letters, What to See and Do in Dawson
6 – 7 – Fred & Buffy
8 – 9 – DCMF
10 – Wilf Carter
11 – Fire Centre
12 – Confluence Gallery
13 – Fire Report
14 – 18 – TV Guide pages deleted
19 – 20 years ago
20 – DCMF Volunteers
21 – DCMF Thank you
22 – Prickly Rose, Elfin Saddle, Poetry
23 – Bookends, Peel Land Use Plan
24 – Yukon Gold Mining Alliance, Visitor of the Week
25 – Our Feathered Friends, Cartoons
26 – Summer Housing, Community Garden
27 – Classifieds
28 – Trash to Treasures, Poetry

Story & Photos by Dan Davidson

The SS Keno celebrated the 50th anniversary of its final voyage to Dawson on July 3 with cake, kids games and tours of the boat.

While some 60 steamboats, along with a complement of tug and barges, were at the Dawson docks within a year of the Klondike Gold Rush, none of them have survived the toll of the years. Some sank, some burned, and more than half a dozen of them are decaying into the river bank north of town. The S.S. Keno, now on display alongside the Dawson dyke, was constructed two decades after the event, built in Whitehorse in 1922. It wasn’t built to serve the Dawson run but, as its name suggests, to haul the ore from the United Keno Hill Mine in Keno City and Elsa, operating out of Mayo on the Stewart River.

In 1960 the Keno made her last voyage along the Yukon River, perhaps ending its travelling life in Dawson at least partly because it would never have been able to get under the bridge at Stewart Crossing. As it was they had to take off the wheelhouse and lower the stack to get past the bridge at Carmacks.

It was the last steamboat to arrive in Dawson. Commissioner Geraldine Van Bibber, a child at the time, recalled the event vividly at the 2010 Commissioner’s Ball.

The boat was a hit in Dawson and became one of the places where the fledgling Klondike Visitors Association first entertained visiting tourists. Before the Palace Grand Theatre was rebuilt and Centennial Hall was turned into Diamond Tooth Gerties, the Keno was the home of tourist themed theatre productions.

It was damaged in the flood of 1979 and by the late 1980s it was clear that dry rot, the bane of many a beached vessel, was taking its toll. As part of the preparations for the Goldrush Centennials which ran from 1996 to 1998, the damaged portions of the boat were rebuilt over a period of several years and it is now open for tours of the freight deck, which contains interpretive panels describing its history, while a viewing station outside the boat deals in a more general way with river life.

The July 3 celebration began with a Parks’ staff skit intended to show how the population relied on the boats to bring them news, old friends and, most important of all, fresh food supplies and fruit at the beginning of each traveling season after the long winter’s isolation in the days before reliable highway transportation.

Folks lined up for cake and tours of both the freight deck and the normally closed off second deck. Kids made and sailed small boats in tubs borrowed from the goldpanning championships and entered races where they carried crates and loaded sacks up and down the grade to the top of the dyke.

In a tent shelter below the dyke on the boat’s starboard site, J.J. Van Bibber recalled his days on the river when he ran timber rafts on the Stewart and Yukon rivers and was sometimes a spotter on the steamboats.

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IN THIS ISSUE:

1 – 2 – SS Keno
3 – One Fish, Two Fish, Construction, Lightning
4 – Uffish Thoughts
5 – Letters, What to See and Do in Dawson
6 – 7 – Canada Day
8 – Humane Society, DCMF, and Parks Day
9 – Archaeology
10 – Meg Walker, Meet Lizzie
11 – Gold Panning Championships
12-16 – TV Guide pages deleted
17 – Moosehide Gathering
18 – Dawson City Town Tour, Cover Me Badd II, Foxtail
19 – Jeramy Dodds, Birthe Piontek
20 – Visitor of the Week
21 – Birds, Sudoku, Cartoons
22 – DC Minor Soccer, CKS News
23 – Classifieds
24 – City of Dawson

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Commissioner Geraldine Van Bibber’s many guests pose for a group photo outside the Palace Grand Theatre on Saturday night. This Klondike Commissioner’s Ball was the last one of Van Bibber’s term in office.

By Dan Davidson

The Old Post Office was the place to be for many locals and tourists on Saturday night as the guests arrived for Commissioner Geraldine Van Bibber ’s last Klondike Commissioner’s Ball. In spite of the attraction, once the ball goers were all assembled for the official photograph around 8 p.m., it appeared that they outnumbered the spectators.

Inside the Palace Grand Theatre the guests mingled and sampled the buffet catered by the Aurora Inn and visited the bar while they waited for the formal part of the event to begin.

The first speaker of the evening was the Yukon’s Administrator, Doug Phillips, who professed to be surprised to discover that the Commissioner Van Bibber’s last Ball was not to be seen as the opportunity for a roast. He said that news ruined half of his speech.

The other half was full of praise for his boss, as was that given by Acting Administrator and Senior Justice Ron Veale.

Veale noted that, as third in the official pecking order, he would be called on for action if both Van Bibber and Phillips were unavailable.

But it had never happened, he said.

Phillips and Veale noted a number of landmarks that had occurred during Van Bibber’s five year term. She was the first Palace Grand Packed for Van Bibber’s Last Ball Commissioner to actually dissolve a Yukon legislature and the first to become a member of the Order of St. John. In her case the title made her a Dame of the order, which Veale explained made it quite politically correct to refer to her as “quite a dame.”

Van Bibber has taken an interest in the past history of her position and, thanks to her persuasive efforts, a project is now under way to document the history and significant acts of past commissioners, a number of whom are still living.

Veale noted that Van Bibber has been advocating a name change for the office. In the provinces, those who fill this ceremonial constitutional position are known as Lieutenant Governors, and she would like to see this change for the territories as well.

During her term in the Commissioner ’s office, she acquired a coat of arms.

Van Bibber has also been instrumental in championing a number of worthy causes, most notably Ramish Ferris’s Cycle to Walk campaign for the eradication of polio.

Veale noted that Commissioner’s life has shown a pattern of being dedicated to public service and that it seemed unlikely, given this history, that the end of her term would cause any change in this pattern.

When the Commissioner took the podium, her male assistants soon discovered that there was some roasting to take place during the evening after all: of them, by her.

She good naturedly compared them to gems in the rough, which were being polished to greater luster by their wives and by the elevated company to which their positions exposed them from time to time.

In a year which celebrates the 50th anniversary of the last voyage of the sternwheeler SS Keno, which is one of Dawson’s many national historic sites, Van Bibber chose to outline the agenda for the evening in an extended nautical metaphor, complete with directions for where to smoke and drink, how to use a dance card, and wishes for a pleasant voyage during the remainder of the ball.

After that, the band for the evening, Wrong Track Freight Train (joined by George McConkey) beckoned everyone onto the dance floor.

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IN THIS ISSUE:

1 – Commissioner’s Ball
2 – Commissioner’s Awards
3 – Commissioner’s Tea
4 – Uffish Thoughts
5 – Women’s Shelter, What to See & Do in Dawson
6 – OTAB Celebration
7 – DCAS Lift
8 – Miche Genest
9 – Letter, Wildfire Report
10 – The Insider
11 – Jessica Viens
12-16 – TV Guide pages deleted
17 – 20 Years Ago in the Sun
18 – Dana Stabenow, DCMF Profile
19 – DCMF Schedule
20 – Visitor of the Week
21 – Tara’s Birds, Cartoons, Sudoku
22 – Bookends, Obituary
23 – Classifieds
24 – Aboriginal Day Photos

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Photo by Dan Davidson

by Dan Davidson

Discussions about the future of Dawson’s dyke area along Front Street began within the now defunct Klondike Improvement Action Group over a year ago, but have since blossomed into a fully developed landscaping project which would reorient activities on the public greensward towards the river.

Several iterations of this plan have been presented at meetings of the town council and the latest was the main topic of discussion at the June meeting of the Chamber of Commerce.

Now known as the Take Back the River project, it has come under the general direction of the Recreation Department with consulting assistance from Mark Wickham of Across the River Consulting and volunteer design work by local landscaper Mike Crelli.

Rec. Director Marta Selassie explained that the governing idea has been to redirect attention to the river, which was once the main mode of transportation in and out of town. Contact between the community and its river roots has been severed over time by the primacy of the territory’s highway system and, more recently, by the flood dyke which blocks the view of the river unless one happens to be walking the dyke path.

Wickham outlined the major elements of the proposed redesign, which it is hoped will begin after this summer’s Discovery Week.

Starting from Front Street, there will be a boardwalk between the access road by the Old CIBC building to just past Princess Street. Along the walk people will find the relocated Camera Obscura display erected by the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture a few years ago, the gazebo (with a redesigned deck on the north side), and another boardwalk leading to a drinking fountain and a standalone town clock.

The boardwalk will continue on to a new feature, a community events shelter, and stop at the point where the farmers’ market and outdoor vendor stalls set up in the summer. Just beyond that is an open area where the paragliders generally land when they fly off the Dome.

The greenspace itself will undergo a few changes. Seating… Cont’d on p. 2

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IN THIS ISSUE:

1 – Dyke Revitalization
2 – DCTV & Slinky Mine
3- North WordsWriter’s Symposim
4 – Cell Phones and the UN
5 – A.J. Goddard, What to See & Do in Dawson
6 & 7- RSS Commencement
8 – Northern Storytellers
9 – Ilgvars Steins
10 – The Insider
11 – DCMF Profiles
12-16 – TV Guide Pages deleted
17 – Plaque, Fire Update, Apology Response
19 – Cap’n Dick’s Big Toe
20 – Triathlon, May 2010 Climate
21 – Birds, Cartoons
22- Bookends, CKS Thank You
23 – Classifieds, Jobs, Business Directory
24 – City Notices

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The Klondike Spirit was on the street on the evening of May 26 as owner Brad Whitelaw prepared to launch the boat for its third season. At a recent Chamber of Commerce meeting, the owner of the Triple J Hotel said he was looking forward to a strong season for the boat. Photo by Dan Davidson

Story & Photo by Dan Davidson

The Dawson Designated Office of the Environmental and Socioeconomic Assessment Board has completed its review of the Dawson Wastewater Treatment Plant project and has recommended, subject to certain specified conditions, that the project should go ahead.

Appendix 1 of the 56 pages report contains a summary list of 67 mitigations that the office has recommended be followed in the construction and subsequent operation of this sewage treatment facility.

The plant is being constructed by the Yukon government on behalf of the City of Dawson to comply with a court order originally issued in March 2003. Since that time there have been several extensions of the deadline for meeting the court order. There was also an abortive attempt to solve the problem by building a sewage lagoon at the junction of the Dome Road and the Klondike Highway. A citizenraised petition stopped the City of Dawson from allowing the zoning amendment which would have allowed that to happen.

The current project might almost be seen as a combination lagoon and mechanical treatment plant. The lagoon portion is a 100 m shaft which is essentially an aerated lagoon stood on end (two of them, actually, since there is backup redundancy on all parts of this project) using a proprietary technology known as VERTREAT.

The plant will be built by Corix Water Systems on 5th Avenue near the corner of Turner Street on part of the site of the former Dept. of Highways’ Grader Station. The initial contract was for $24.8 million though this has since be raised to $34.3 million and includes the construction of a biomass (wood chips) heating plant which will heat the SST plant as well as the existing reservoir pump house and the potable water system.

The water from Dawson’s wells is so cold that it has to be heated before it is piped into the system. It also has to be kept flowing constantly, which is one of the main reasons why Dawson’s water use per capita is so high.

The YESAB ruling covers both the construction and operation of the plant and concludes that there is the potential for the project to have an impact in the areas of public health and safety and aquatic resources.

“It was determined that the project will have significant adverse effects to public health and safety as well as aquatic resources without the inclusion of additional mitigations.”

W h i l e t h e 6 7 recommendations go into a lot of detail about what ought to be done, they are essentially summed up in the nine terms and conditions included in the report’s summary.

The treatment shafts are close to the town’s wells and so there are concerns about contamination of the aquifer. The first several recommendations deal with that issue.

1. Additional groundwater quality monitoring wells shall be installed up and down gradient of the DWWTP and up gradient of community wells PW-1, 2 and 3.

2. Monitoring well locations identified on figure 7.3-1 of the project proposal shall also be used for monitoring groundwater quality.

3. Total and fecal coliform shall be mandatory parameters to be monitored for groundwater quality.

4. Groundwater monitoring shall occur bi-weekly to ensure detection prior to well contamination.

5. Groundwater monitoring results shall be included in the Annual Report for review. There are concerns about the impact of the construction in a residential neighbourhood and the next few recommendations address those concerns.

6. Notice to neighbouring residents and users of the surrounding area shall be provided describing planned activities including expected noise levels during those times throughout every stage of construction.

7. Operation of concrete batch plant, drilling activities and prolonged use (running) of heavy equipment shall not occur before 9:00 a.m. and after 6:00 p.m. during weekdays; 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. on weekends.

Screened solid waste will continue to be disposed of at the Quigley Landfill but the sludge left over from the treatment process will also go there. As there have been water quality issues stemming from the landfill in the past, this area will also be monitored.

8. Groundwater monitoring wells shall be installed west of the disposal site (in addition to the proposed).

The final point is a table specifying what levels will be acceptable in the results from the monitoring in point #8. Monitoring should include Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), Total Suspended Solids (TSS) , Oil and Grease , pH levels, Fecal Coliforms, Toxicity (LC50 96-Hour Bioassay test), and Total Residual Chlorine.

The report was released on April 28, 2010.

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IN THIS ISSUE:

The Klondike Sun
1 – SST Approval
2 – YESAB Approval & Construction Sites
3- Disaster Planning
4 – Hospital of Dreams
5 – Letter What to See & Do in Dawson
6 & 7- Gold Show
8 & 9 – Break Up Theatre Festival
9 – Capstone Sponsors YHC Auction
10 – Gates’ Lecture / Humane Society
11 – History Hunter
12- Keating Wins Award
13 – Sub-Arctic Tours
14-18- TV Guide pages deleted
19 – Fire Report / Library Notes
20-21 – Gold Poke Run
22-23 RSS Awards Day
24 – DCMF News
25 – Art Invasion / Cartoons
26 – Bookends
27 – Classifieds
28 – Daycare Grads

Parks Canada carpenters were quickly on the site to repair the damage to the Bank of British North America building after a truck hit one of the pillars supporting the balcony over the main entrance. The pillar was split when a truck driver took the corner off Queen Street onto Second Avenue and misjudged the angle. Sources at Parks indicate that they know who did it and the person is very sorry. They promised to withhold the name of the driver so that person will not die of embarrassment.

Story & Photos by Dan Davidson

About 28 people attended two sessions of a YESAB sponsored open house to discuss plans for the new Dawson Hospital, and it seemed that many of the questions that have dogged this project from the beginning are still on peoples’ minds.

The real purpose of the open house was to discuss the site plan and design being proposed by the Yukon Hospital Corp. and designed by the architectural firm of Kobayashi and Zedda. This was complicated by the fact that neither the computer assisted design animation nor the posters on the wall, showing variations on the basic concept, were, in fact, designs that had passed muster at Dawson’s Historic Advisory Committee.

Committee member Shirley Pennell expressed her concern that the public was being shown concepts that had not been approved and were still due to be altered before they would be acceptable.

The hospital corporation’s senior project manager Mike Cowper admitted that YHC was behind in preparations and that they had “brought what they had” to show to the meeting.

While the information on the open house poster indicated that the project would begin this spring and cover two construction seasons, discussion at the meeting was that there would be three, with the facility opening in the fall of 2012. While it was not really within the purview of this gathering, a number of people still wanted to argue against the selection of this site, which is behind the Dawson City Museum and beside Minto Park.

6th Avenue resident Sylvia Burkhard, whose home will fall under the shadow cast by the new building, has been opposed to the site from the beginning and repeated her concerns about the loss of green space, the children’s playground and historical use of the property. Over 300 citizens signed a petition agreeing with her last year, but it was dismissed by the government when it was presented in the legislature.

The hospital corporation has typically declined any responsibility for the site selection, indicating that this is the site they were given to use by the territorial government. The government has refused to discuss any other site in the community.

The presentation by Cowper and Jack Kobayashi conceded that the site presented problems. It was small for both the project and the construction phase. It is located beside a working nursing station and doctor’s office which will be affected by the construction. Lane access to both the ambulance ramp at the Health Centre and the Dawson City Museum, must be maintained throughout the construction.

Access to sewer and water utility connections will have to be from 5th Avenue, a block away, rather than from 6th Avenue.

Glenda Bolt indicated that the building was going into too cramped a space, would overpower the residential neighbourhood, and would detract from the stature of the Dawson City Museum, a recognized building of historical significance.

Burkhard and senior Barb Hanulik both felt the new hospital was extravagantly large for a town Dawson’s size and wondered where the patients were going to come from.

Cowper and YHC CEO Joe MacGillivray indicated that the size of the project was based on population projections running out to 2020 and taking into account Dawson’s aging population. They failed to mention what has been said in earlier meetings, that the hospital is intended to be a regional unit serving Old Crow, Mayo and as far south as Pelly Crossing.

The issue of just what to call this building arose once again. Sharon Edmunds asked that its functions be defined.

“What is a hospital?” asked Shirley Pennell, who felt that the term needed qualification. Surely it was merely a “cottage hospital” and should be advertised as such, she said, before people get exaggerated expectations.

The new building will, said Cowper, be a hospital in that people will be able to stay in it overnight. It will be staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, as opposed to the daytime hours plus on-call system currently in use. In addition to a nursing station it will contain a doctors’ clinic, space for a dentist, inpatient rooms, an ambulance bay, training rooms and spaces for a variety of health related offices and programs.

“You’ll have a single place that you can go to receive health services,” MacGillivray said.

On the other hand, there will still not be birthing facilities here and it’s likely that many blood tests will still need to go elsewhere for processing.

Town councillor Stephen Johnson raised the issue of staffing. He noted that Dawson’s current full time doctor, Gerard Parsons, has indicated he will be starting a sabbatical year as of July 1. He has not been able to recruit a replacement for his services and so far the territorial government has not addressed this issue publically.

Where, Johnson wanted to know, was YHC planning to find the staff to answer these and other needs?

“Recruitment’s always going to be an issue,” Cowper said. “It’s hopeful that having a more modern facility will attract more staff. It’s also hoped that having this hospital will maybe encourage more specialists to come to Dawson.”

This, apparently, is part of the logic behind the construction of medical staff housing in Whitehorse.

“We’re improving the accommodation there so we can get more specialists to come north to Whitehorse,” Cowper said. “Then the idea is that hopefully they will go to both Dawson and Watson more often.”

Housing for an increased cadre of medical services personnel is another issue that was raised. There is a housing shortage in Dawson and a number of people at the meeting were among those who have lived here for some years by house sitting for vacationing home owners. Where would new staff be housed and are there any plans for building more staff houses?

There was no answer to these questions. The only major Yukon Housing Corporation project announced for the near future is the replacement of the Korbo Apartment Building, slated to begin this year.

The only expansion of residential lots under discussion is the one in the former Dome Road Gravel Pit which is also the site of the contentious Slinky Mine. The impasse between these competing projects has still not been addressed in any meaningful way by the territorial government.

P e n n e l l , a l o n g wi t h councillors Johnson and Bill Kendrick, did have a number of questions about the design of the building itself, beginning with the wall of windows by the proposed main entrance. With the exception of the Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre (also designed by Kobayashi and Zedda), no Dawson building has roof to ground windows. The town’s new Heritage Management Plan specifies that new large buildings should, where possible, be historically sympathetic to the historic motif and perhaps mimic the look of some preexisting building.

Johnson questioned the use of flat roof space in the design. It was pointed out that most of the flatter roofs in town (the dangerously compromised curling rink being a prime example) have problems with snow load weights and with leaks caused by the melting/ freezing glacial effect of heavy snowpack on a roof.

One of the concerns over the course of this debate has been the impact the hospital might have on the Dawson City Music Festival. DCMF preseident Jenna Roebuck says the society has been assured that the annual festival can continue. Cowper confirmed that construction work will actually cease during the festival weekend over the three year span of the work.

The building has been designed so that there are no windows on the Minto Park side of the structure. This will cut down on noise and any chance of damage from excessively long homerun softballs hit out of the ball diamond there. Inpatient rooms will be on the north side of the building for the same reason.

Because 6th Avenue is quite narrow the main entrance to the new hospital will be situated off the back lane that leads past Victory Gardens and continues to the Museum parking lot. There will be a drive-through EMS entrance off 6th Ave.

The open house was in two sessions, with about 18 people at the earlier hour and around 10 at the later session.

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IN THIS ISSUE:

1 – BNA Bank & Hospital Meeting
2 – YESAB Open House
3- Sled Dawgs Rule
4 – Uffish Thoughts
5 – What to See & Do in Dawson
6 – YQII Meeting
7 – CDF Grants
8 – A Dramatic Announcement
9 – A Golden Weekend
10 – Home Sweet Home
12- DCMF Profiles
14-18- TV Guide deleted
19 – 20 years Ago
20 – The P-Mail Network
21- World Heritage Part 2
22 – Bookends
23 – Tar Sands or Oil Sands?
24 – 7 Days / Empathy
25 – Geese & Cartoons
26 – RCMP Blotter
27 – Classifieds
28 – City Notices

Story by Dan Davidson
Photos by Glenda Bolt

While the general trend of Yukon River Breakups has been graphed by local engineer Stephen Johnson to show that it is happening earlier and earlier, breakups in April are still the exception rather than the rule.

Added to that is the fact that most places in the Yukon received between 50% and 70% of the precipitation they usually get over the winter. Less melt water should mean less of a force to flush the ice.

When the annual flood prediction for this year was circulated it could almost be boiled down to two words: don’t worry.

After last year’s tumultuous breakup, with massive bergs that scoured the river banks from Minto Landing through the brush along Dawson’s waterfront and down to Alaska, where it wiped out Eagle Village and did tremendous damage to homes and businesses in the town of Eagle itself, this year looked to be pretty mild, and some of the dikeside discussions by river watchers in Dawson included the thought that the increasing fragile looking ice might simply rot away this year.

It didn’t. It began to flush quietly during the evening of April 29, cutting away the ice around the tripod and flowing on past as if it would just leave it there.

River watchers walked the dike, a film crew caught the sight and sounds and a solitary beaver, washed down with the ice, crawled out and began its way back to where ever it had come from.

Joyce Caley, official time keeper for the IODE Ice Pool, says the ice backed up after that and it looked like nothing was going to happen, so she went home.

The blockage finally broke in the wee hours of the night, washing the IODE marker away and stopping the clock attached to the clock on the Dänoja Zho Cultural Centre at 3:12 a.m. on Friday morning, when there weren’t many people around to see it. Nevertheless, someone did and contacted a member of the fire department, who dutifully sounded the siren at the fire hall.

Caley learned of it when CBC phoned her in the morning. Her son, Bruce, packed up her ladder and drove her down to the waterfront to check the time, holding the ladder steady while she climbed up to take a look.

Caley reports that sales of the tickets were good this year: 3864 of the 4000 printed were sold, bringing in $7,728.00. No one got the exact time, but two locals, Maria Fras and Aaron Burnie, were within two minutes, so they will split a prize that amounts to about $ 1 8 0 0 . 0 0 apiece.

For the IODE, this is their major fund raiser for the year and they use the proceeds to support a number of c h a r i t a b l e works and school prizes in the town. The river has now broken up five times on this par t icu lar date, Caley notes, in 1940, 1941, 1990, 1991 and 1995.

More pix on back page

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IN THIS ISSUE:

1 – 2 & 24 -Yukon River Breakup
3- AYC Report
4 – Uffish Thoughts
5 – What to See & Do in Dawson
6 – Background to World Heritage
7 – SOVA is 3
8 – Political Announcments
9 – Humane Society / Letter / Fire Bulletin
10 – History Hunter
11 – Growing Ideas
12-16 – TV Guide pages deleted
17 – DCMF Profiles / Eagle Trip
16 – DCMF Profiles
18- 7 Days & PRs
19 – Conservation Issues
20 – Nicholson Obit / Caribou Plan
21 – Birds & Cartoons
22 – Bookends / Slinky Mine
23 – Classifieds
24 – Break-up Pictures

MITY Professional Award winner Suzzanne Crocker (L) with Festival Producer Dan Sokolowski (R).

By Megan Graham
Photos by Jay Armitage

As an artistic medium, one of film’s distinctive qualities is its ability to transport viewers, whether geographically to new places, or mentally to different ideas and points of view. In its 11th year, the Dawson City International Short Film Festival continued the tradition of taking attendees all over the world, presenting films from locales such as Spain, Norway, Australia, and Italy, as well as films from the Yukon and other Canadian provinces. A number of films featured the city of Dawson itself, encouraging reflection and discussion on how our city is portrayed.

The festival began with the premiere of Nude Study, a feature length film created by KIAC Artists-in-Residence Stefan Popescu and Katherine Berger. Filmed in Dawson City in 2008, the film features local amateur actors and familiar town haunts. The audience, largely Dawson residents, audibly cheered and laughed when these hometown faces appeared on the screen. However, the mood changed as the film progressed and the themes and plots increased in intensity and extremity. For days after the film, residents discussed and analyzed the provocative film, and what it meant for Dawson to be portrayed as such.

The mood was lightened in the following program, which featured the films of musician and author Dave Bidini. The screening began with Five Hole: Tales of Hockey Erotica, a short written by Bidini and animated with motion capture and video mapping by Cam Christiansen. Following the animated short, Bidini’s 2004 Genie Award winning documentary entitled Hockey Nomad was screened to a rapt and delighted crowd. The heartwarming film follows Bidini as he travels from Dubai to Transylvania to Mongolia, seeking out devoted hockey communities.

Joining Popescu, Berger, and Bidini were other featured visitors and filmmakers including Chris Landreth, Marv Newland, Karen Hines, and Monique Simard. Landreth, an Oscar winning filmmaker, presented his new film The Spine, a dazzling and thought-provoking CGI animated short, and gave a master class about the technical aspects of his work. Newland gave a special presentation as well, and screened his new work Postalolio, an animated film in which every frame has traveled through the international post. Hines, another KIAC Artist-in-Residence, gave an artist talk about the challenges of transforming her stage works into films. Simard, the Director general of the National Film Board of Canada’s French Program, hosted the “Call of the NFB” program, which featured seven NFB shorts.

In addition to the many screenings at the Odd Fellows Hall, the festival presented special programs at other venues in town. There was an outdoor screening in front of the Odd Gallery with complimentary hot chocolate, the Youth Screening at SOVA for films made for and by kids, and the First Eyes screening at the Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre, featuring films by First Nation filmmakers from the Yukon and beyond.

The weekend ended on Sunday night with a ceremony for the Made in the Yukon (MITY) awards. The 1st and 2nd place awards for the MITY Professional Award went to two Dawson filmmakers—Suzanne Crocker for Time Lines, and Evelyn Pollock for Miles to Go, respectively. Sophie Fuldauer’s Blinking Brain won first place for the Emerging Artist Award, and Old Crow filmmaker Erika Tizya-Tramm’s Pom Poms and Bells won second. The MITY Youth Award went to Northern News by Whitehorse filmmakers Stephanie and Sierra Storm-McIsaac. The Lodestar Award for best Canadian or International film went to Ontario filmmaker Marcia Connolly for Ghost Noise. Finally, the Audience Favorite awards were presented to Alexandra Monro and Sheila Menon’s No Way Through and Hines’ A Tax on Pochsy. Following the awards ceremony, DJ Whitebread Soundwave provided songs and Youtube videos for a late-night video dance party.

With a total of over 1600 attendees at screenings of over 80 films, not to mention classes and talks, delicious concessions, and fun contests and giveaways, the 11th annual Dawson City International Short Film Festival was a hit, and quite possibly stole the show of spectacular northern lights displayed over the weekend. The fun of Film Fest continues with the ongoing Super 8 camera 1 Minute Film Challenge, and a forthcoming screening of these films, tentatively scheduled for the end of April.

Download full online edition: (pdf – 6.3 MB)

IN THIS ISSUE:

1 – Dawson Film Fest
2 – Ping Pong
3 – Seedy Saturday
4 – Uffish Thoughts
5 – Letters
6 – Hakonson’s Farewell
7 – KIAC News
8 – Sunnydale Classic
9 – Growing Ideas
10-14 – TV Guide pages deleted
15 – 20 years Ago in the Sun
16 – DCMF Profiles
17 – Birds & Cartoons
18 – Bookends / Wendy Perry
19 – Classifieds, Jobs, Business Directory
20 – City Notices

by Dan Davidson

Hans Gatt took home $3000 on March 27 by winning the Percy DeWolfe Memorial Mail Race, coming in just over an hour ahead of his winning time from the 2009 race at 22 hours and 30 minutes.

Gatt wasn’t the first musher to arrive back in Dawson on Friday afternoon. That honour went to Wayne Hall, who won the Percy Junior Race by mushing from Eagle to Fortymile on Thursday, staying over night and then continuing on to Dawson the next day.

Gatt was, however, the winner of the big race, arriving at 3:07 in the afternoon, about 20 minutes after Hall.

Next to arrive outside the Visitors’ Information Centre was veteran Cor Guimond, who had managed, yet again, to bend some part of the race rules so that he was disqualified. At the banquet on Saturday night, Hall would say that Guimond was the real winner but, as race official Matt McHugh noted, to much chuckling from the audience, Guimond is the undisputed master at finding some way for the officials to have to disqualify him.

Second place in the Percy went to Crispin Studer, who was so close behind Guimond that the latter almost didn’t have time to check in at the finish line. They were two minutes apart.

Gatt’s partner, Susie Rogan, took third place, arriving about an hour later, followed, in descending order, by Hugh Neff, Gerry Willomitzer, Maren Bradley, Brian Wilmhurst, Colin Morrison, Ryan Kinna, and Fabien Schmitz.

One team, run by Paula Ciniero, had to scratch.

In the Junior Percy, Hall was followed by Nate Becker, Marie- Claude DeFresne, Craig Houghton, M.C. Leroux, Alexandra Rochat, Ed Hopkins, Jason Biasetti, Elie leFebvre, Sebastian Jones, and Mike McDougall.

For the second year there was also a skijor event with three entries. Jonathan Lucas was the winner, and the only one to complete the course, Darryl Sheepway, had to scratch on the second day and Gaetan Pierrard was unable to start.  (See download edition for photos)

Download full online edition: (pdf – 12.59 MB)

In This Issue:

1 – Gatt Wins Percy
2 – Percy Pix
3 – Gatt Interview
4 – Uffish Thoughts
5 – Letters
6 – 100 Dollar Duet
7 – Thaw di Graw
8 – History Hunting
9 – Daycare Open / Vet’s back
10 – DCMF Profiles
11 – Mylène Gilbert-Dumas on BertonHouse
12-16 – TV Guide pages deleted
17 – Trailer Fire
18 – Door Open Dawson
19 – Doors Open / Kate’s Recycles
20 – Ogilvie Part 4
21 – Bookends / Cartoons
22 – In One Here …
23 – Classifieds, Jobs, Business Directory
24 – City Notices

Story & Photo by Kathy Jones-Gates

What a Woman…What a Pioneer!

If you were new to Dawson City, one of the first people you might have met would have been Madeleine Gould. She was never afraid to introduce herself to newcomers and to pepper them with questions about who they were and where they were from.

Feisty, self-reliant, stubbornly independent, a Dawson icon and a one-person Welcome Wagon, some would also say she was outrageously nosy; but her friends might suggest that she was simply incorrigibly inquisitive.

She had a heart filled with genuine Yukon Gold that embodied the spirit of the Yukon.

It was the end of an era, when 88 year-old Madeleine Gould, a long-time, and very colourful Dawsonite passed away at home, surrounded by her family, on Sunday, March 14th, after a brief battle with cancer.

Madeleine Anita Lavigueur was born to French-Canadian parents in St. Chrysostome, Quebec, October 4th 1921.

She came from a family of 7 children that moved first to Ottawa, when she was 4 years old, and then to Maxville, Ontario where she attended high school until Grade 9. The Lavigueur family then moved to the small community of Greenfield, Ontario, which had no high school, so Madeleine went to work instead.

She worked as a housekeeper in Montreal followed by employment in a cotton mill in Cornwall, Ontario.

In 1942, during WW II, she began working at a small-arms plant that manufactured Sten Guns. To boost employee morale, monthly dances were held, and at one of these, she met and fell in love with Royal Canadian Air Force pilot John Gould.

She wanted to dance and so did he, and, as they both loved to tell you, they have been dancing ever since. They were married in Greenfield, Ontario, October 6th 1945, and Madeleine’s first taste of Dawson City was the following summer, when she joined John at the Gould family’s gold mining claims on Nugget Hill.

Used to rural living, she quickly picked up the daily chores necessary for keeping a log cabin clean and tidy. She often said that the cabin had running water, but only when she ran up the hill with the buckets!

This community icon worked at Chappie’s Drug Store as a clerk in the late 1940’s. She followed this with many hours of babysitting for others, and then became self-employed with a janitorial contract for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

She was a tour guide at the Dawson City Museum in the 1970’s and then assisted husband John when, for 11 years, they were owner-operators of the commercial campground at York Street and Fifth Avenue.

Perhaps Madeleine’s legacy can best be felt in the multitude of volunteer activities she engaged in throughout her life. Her first volunteer activity in Dawson was with the Catholic Church Women’s League from 1946 to 1960.

During her membership in the Dawson Chapter I.O.D.E from 1950 through 1968, she eventually served as Regent.

She was an active curler and associate member of the Top of the World Curling Club, beginning in 1950. She was also a founding member and Vice Chairperson of the Golden Age Social Club from 1988-91.

She was a founding member of the Klondike Sun newspaper and took on the task of finding advertising for the community journal. Madeleine was made for the job. A force to be reckoned with, she could, it was said, sell advertising space to Martians.

If that volunteer workload wasn’t enough, she was on many committees, including the 1st Dawson City Boy Scout Troop, the Dawson Humane Society, the Dawson Centennials Society, and the Dawson Radio Society, where she also sold advertising.

She was a long-time member of the Community Library Board and volunteered at Rob -  (Farewell to a True Pioneer Cont’d on p. 6)

Download full online edition: (pdf – 6.08 MB)

In this Issue

1 – Farewell to Madeleine
2 – Trek #2
3 – Ride for Diabetes
4 – Uffish Thoughts /Nemo
5 – Letter / Cartoons
6 – Farewell to a Pioneer
7 – Break-up Theatre / DCISFF
8 – Arctic Roller
9 – DCMF Profiles
10 – The Real Deal / Meet Megan
11 – YESAB on Slinky
12-16 – TV Guide pages deleted
17 – 20 Years Ago
18 – Savard / Best Winter
19 – Green News / River Tenting
20 – Klondike Valley Nursery
21 – Bird Column / Bookends / Cartoons
22 – Obituaries
23 – Classifieds, Jobs, Business Directory
24 – City Notices