Dawson City Citizen's Forum

In pre-contact times, the population of the Dawson area was somewhat nomadic, about 500 people, in the 1970s it was around there too. In the Gold rush it went as high as 20,000 and now it is about 2000. Some aspects of our society would work better if we had more people- in some ways we have the expectations and infrastructure of a southern community of 10,000- while other aspects are being strained by our present population. We always assume our population and economy will grow indefinitely; indeed if the economy stops growing or the population falls, our politicians are deemed to have failed. It is widely agreed that we need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst effects of global warming, yet we shall never be able to reduce our GHGs if our population and economy keep growing.
What do YOU think our population should be? What policies would help us achieve this goal?

> What do YOU think our population should be? What policies would help us
> achieve this goal?

Another important factor to consider is the demographics of that population. Age, family structure, financial status, type of employment, etc, all play a role in our production of GHG.

I believe there is room for growth if we are willing to accept the necessity of higher density developments. So long as we continue to embrace the urban sprawl style of development, moving further and further from the population and service centre, we will continue to increase our production of GHG.

Policies to address this should encourage the provision of infrastructure that will facilitate a more environmentally friendly lifestyle; should include the ability to subdivide current country residential lots (to help address the apparent shortage of lots); and should severely restrict rural development outside of existing areas.

Politically I can't see these measures being very popular given the type of people who are attracted to the "wide open spaces" of the north, but minds don't change unless discussion takes place.

> Politically I can't see these measures being very popular given the type
> of people who are attracted to the "wide open spaces" of the north, but
> minds don't change unless discussion takes place.

I think the measures you propose stand a far better chance of acceptance than the paradigm shift required to transform from a growth society to a steady state or no net environmental cost to society.
I agree that in some places such as Dawson we could become so much more efficient without to much trouble that we should be able to thrive and prosper and even grow without any additional costs.

Unfortunately whenever one starts to ponder such questions as this in the Dawson context one quickly comes to the fact that the town only exists in its current state thanks to the generosity of our fellow Canadians. It is upon their hard work, innovation and sinful growth that we rely for the free on-demand health care and other essential government services we take as our right.

A truly self-sustaining population would probably be very similar to that of the First Nation population pre Gold Rush and would likely require a similar lifestyle, i.e. semi-nomadic, and life expectancy and hard work.

We can be way more efficient and better to our earth upon which we live for sure but please allow us to enjoy ourselves while we are here too. Seriously, some GHG campaigners are coming to resemble the harsher churches, preaching sin and guilt everywhere we go.

If you over do it, people will switch off.

I suspect every single one of us that lives this far from the urban centres of Canada is a GHG nightmare because we import just about everything thousands of km from the rest of the world. So it doesn't matter if you live up the highway or Downtown, if I follow your track we should all switch the lights off as we leave and head for Vancouver.

[i]A truly self-sustaining population would probably be very similar to that of the First Nation population pre Gold Rush and would likely require a similar lifestyle, i.e. semi-nomadic, and life expectancy and hard work.[/i]
The fact is we do have technology available to us to live a far more comfortable life, and to support far more people- we have agriculture for example- I'm sure it took the original people some time to find a long term sustainable lifestyle with their technology; it only makes sense it will take us some time too, let's hope we can get there before we cause too much damage! Many of us are semi nomadic now.... Mexico anyone?

The City and TH are circulating a consultation form relating to implementing chapter 22 of the THFA, which is the economic development chapter.
In it we are asked to comment on a series of value statments. The final statement reads:
"There are some services missing but if we could grow to about 3500 permenent residents that would be the critical mass needed to attract them and also preserve what we have now."
I have no idea where that came from; if it is a personal opinion or the best guess of a professional demographer. It is interesting though: it implies an increase of 75%; by most accounts a large increase. There are no timelines in the statement, nor any suggestions on how to achieve this level of increase. The old Klondike Valley Land Use Plan from the mid '90s, assumed we would have close to 10,000 by now.....

I believe that number and the rest of the statements come from real previous interviews with community members and is an instinctual 'best guess'. In the context of that document it is merely meant to stimulate discussion and comment.

Consulting on economic development and planning in this way is actually extremely progressive, forward-thinking and interesting. Way too often economies can be pushed by the elite in directions that a local community population will not support at the grass-roots level. This is a problem if your most important economic resource, your people, don't want to work in that economy, won't promote it, and won't support the laws, policies and programs needed to support it.