Klondike Sun ~ September 9, 2009

Illegally shot muskox had delighted tourists

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Romy Jansen captured the muskox on her camera about 24 hours before it was killed, demonstrating the proper way to shoot something you don’t plan to eat. Photo Romy Jansen

By Stephanie Waddell
Whitehorse Star, September 2, 2009

A $1,000 reward is being offered by the Yukon Fish and Game Association for information that leads to a conviction in the shooting of a muskox on the Dempster Highway.

Last Friday, a driver on the highway came across the bull laying about 500 to 600 metres off the road on the tundra, Torrie Hunter, the territory’s manager of field operations north, said in an interview this morning.

The bull had been shot in the shoulder and left on the roadside around Kilometre 455 of the highway between the Rock River Campground and the Yukon- Northwest Territories border. The muskox, which is illegal to hunt in the Yukon, was likely shot sometime between 9 a.m. and noon last Friday.

For three weeks before that, the animal had been the subject of discussion by travellers on the highway.

“It was actually quite a bit of a tourist attraction,” Hunter said. A press release about the death noted there were some reports of people travelling to that area to see the muskox, a rare sight in a territory where there are only about 125, which also roam into Alaska.

Hospital Location protested at Council

by Dan Davidson

Mayor John Steins will be telling the territorial government that the council would like it to consider other locations for the new hospital that the Yukon Hospital Corporation will be building in Dawson.

So far the town has not seen a design, a development proposal, or a footprint for the project, but has been told that it will be built on the site of an existing children’s playground behind the current health centre. The land there is owned by YTG but has been used as a playground for over three decades.

The government has committed to replace the park at another location.

Be that as it may, Minto Park, as it is known, is seen by many as a recreational site (playground, ballpark, site of the Dawson City Music Festival and a number of other annual events) that should not be lost to the community.

At the August 18 council meeting, former town councillor Shirley Pennell pointed out that the use of the area as a park actually extends well beyond a generation, with many historic photographs showing events taking place in this location.

At a Yukon Hospital Corp. meeting held here on August 27, YHC chair Craig Tuton was unwilling to discuss alternative locations, indicating that YTG had made this land available for the project. Any change in location would, he said, be a political matter which should be taken up with the local MLA and the government.

Yukon Party MLA for Klondike Steve Nordick is on the record as saying that the hospital location is fixed and cannot be changed. Reports from the meeting indicate that Nordick came under considerable verbal criticism at the YHC meeting.

Pennell attended this meeting and was distressed that the YHC board came to talk rather than to listen.

Sylvia Burkhardt was so upset after the meeting that she penned a lengthy handwritten letter on a sheet of yellow legal paper and posted it in the Canada Post office, exhorting any readers to save Minto Park, and “register opposition to this at City Offices…”

Not content with that, she arrived in delegations for the September 1 meeting and presented council with a lengthy critique of its own shortcomings in raising opposition to the hospital’s construction in the YHC’s proposed location.

She was unaware that council has been discussing this matter intensely since it was first raised earlier in the summer and has been delaying its own response to proposed projects by both the hospital corporation and the Yukon Housing Corporation because the requests appear to conflict with the existing Official Community Plan and Zoning Bylaw.

Just as importantly, so far the requests for approval from both crown corporations amount Hospital Location protested at Council

Continued on page 2…

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In this Issue (24 pages):
1 – Muskox Grief / Hospital Location
2 – Hospital / CDF project awards
3 – Rowdy Discovery Day / Muskox / Tr’ondëk Teacher Orientation
4 – Opinion: Omar Khadr
5 – Schools: End Social Promotion / RCMP seek Auxiliaries / Town Events
6 – Salvation for CIBC Building
7 – High-Tech paving / H1N1 in Schools / Tombstone Park Photo Opp
8 – Tombstone Park Plan Signing & Interpetation Centre Opening
9 – Xof1 Solar Car: Inspired by the Sun
10-11 – Police Blotter / Minto Resorts
17 – History Hunter: Jack London and Cabin Fever
18 – Chum fishery report, Yukon & AK
19 – Obituaries / SOVA’s Suzanne Hale awarded BMO 1st Student Art Prize
20 – Surrendering to the River: Rafting the Yukon from Dawson to Circle, AK / Dawson Kids thank Schmidt Mining
21 – Feathered Neighbours: Migration / Hӓ n Language Lesson #13 / Comics
22 – Max’s Colouring Page / Top 10 Fiction Paperbacks & Pop CD’s
23 – Classifieds, Business Directory and Outreach Job Board
24 – City of Dawson News & Pre-Election Announcements

The contents box page numbers will not match as some pages have been removed for copyright reasons