Whitehorse (Day 1)

Fishing along the Yukon River in Whitehorse, YT 

With a population of about 28,000, Whitehorse is the largest city in the Yukon, and northern Canada. I've hung out here for a couple of days before heading north again. There are a surprising number of things to do here, in between checking for email at the visitor center.

Totem pole in Whitehorse

Art Walk

What a great way to start getting to know the city. There are walk/bike paths all over the place, but especially by the Yukon River.

People walk by the river, fish in the river, cross over the river, have dammed the river. It's the historical center of everything.

Rivers were the easiest routes to follow in an otherwise roadless land: in the summers by boat, in the winters by dogsled.

But I get ahead of myself.

There are a series of art installations along the river and in town. There is a totem pole (loved the raven at the top), quite a number of murals, and statues. Most of it did not photograph terribly well, or I just wasn't that excited about it. The "Raven House," made from recycled iron work was interesting, but reminded me of something from Gormenghast or from Tim Burton's imagination — a little dark and freaky.

Dog sled bike rack

My favorite might have been the dog sled bike rack, which combined both art and function!

I visited the brand new cultural center, which is right next door to the Whitehorse Public Library. As it was just beginning to rain, I ducked in there as well, thinking I might take the time to write a post while it was inclement, but internet access was strictly doled out in one-hour per day bytes. It takes longer that that to write these posts, so I retreated!

Cultural Center

The cultural center was an amazing installation. It serves as a center for the Kwanlin Dün First Nations people. There is a long house, meeting rooms, a prayer/smudging room with a firepit, offices, a place for food, a canoe house, and a museum room.

Finely beaded leather dress

There were archaeologic exhibits on some recent digs nearby. There were tools of all sorts, made from local materials. I had not heard of "microplane" technology, where small slices (maybe 3 cm long) of sharp rocks were imbedded in a slot of bone or antler to make a cutting surface. This technology was abandoned at some point (5,000 years?) for larger darts and spearheads.

They also featured some artwork, and probably my favorite piece was a beaded dress, bordered with flowering fireweed.

While they used to employ actual seeds and porcupine quills to embellish clothing, once trade beads were introduced, the First Nations people embraced this new media, and became expert beaders. The colors are bright; the designs (generally of flowers) are traditional; the craftsmanship is exceptional.

I really want to find out how they sew these small beads onto leather.

In the visitor center, I found a booklet on fashion, and read about the traditional clothing for men and women. Historically, the clothing for men has been more decorated — elders said that in nature, the male was generally more showy, so they were following suit, so to speak!

Detail of dress beading depicting fireweed

There is a workshop weekend in Haines Junction this August... I am so tempted to go and learn some of the traditional techniques, but that it just a little over a month away! So many things to do!

McBride Museum

It was time to learn about a little more recent history. The McBride Museum is a fun place. Obviously many things had been acquired or donated: from rock samples to stuffed animals to treasured clothing, letters, household articles, signs, posters, musical instruments, gold nuggets... you name it, they had it.

I was kind of surprised at how helpful it was to actually be able to get really close (like next to, or within a few feet) of the stuff animals. You really got a sense of how big (or small) they might be.

Parka made from waterfowl

There was a small collection of traditional clothing and the most intriguing one here was a parka made from waterfowl. The birds had been tanned with the feathers left on, and the comment was that it was warm (think duck down) and waterproof (think oily feathers). How ingenious is that?

They had so many other things: a room that was set up as a bar, complete with a stuffed wolverine amidst the bottles of liquor and a honky tonk piano and bass fiddle; a store with cash register and all sorts of trade goods; a printing press and exhibit on the Yukon news; a mini-movie theater with movie posters of Yukon-themed movies: Rose of the Yukon (1949), Alaska (1939), The Call of the Yukon (1938), Call of the Wild with Clark Gable (1935) and more, with one of them playing.

It was interesting to read about the men and women who had come to the Yukon Territory, whether in search of furs, gold, solitude or adventure. Some of the people I'd like to learn more about are Robert Service, poet "Bard of the Yukon," and Martha Louise Purdy, who left her husband and two children in Chicago to adventure in the Yukon with her brother. After she delivered a child 11 months later, she and her husband divorced; she needed a lawyer and the lawyer, George Black, proposed marriage two weeks after meeting her. They finally married two years later and became one of the premier couples in Canadian politics. The pictures of her fire the imagination.

In talking with the girls in the museum, one of them said, "We don't know whether the Yukon and the Far North attract strong women, or whether they develop here."

Interesting question.

Only part of the fish ladder

Fish Ladder

I really wanted to see this: the longest wooden fish ladder in the world, which was installed so that fish could continue upriver from the Whitehorse dam on the Yukon. The dam was built in 1957, the fish ladder a year later. During the year that there was no ladder, they actually netted salmon and trucked them upriver so that at least some fish would survive to spawn that year.

Naively, I thought that the salmon would be running by now, but... that's in Alaska, not here.

The Yukon is SUCH a long river  — the salmon have to travel almost 2,000 miles upriver to their spawning grounds — that they won't be here for another week to ten days. So I missed seeing that sight.

However, it's still impressive. They had models of the fish, and they are BIG fish, fully two feet long. The salmon do not eat anything for the three months it takes them to swim upstream, they lose fully 30% of their body fat during the journey. The friendly docent said the first fish might take a week to find and get up the ladder; but mid-run a fast, relatively healthy fish might take nine hours to get from the bottom to the top.

Meanwhile, the clouds were lowering, lightning flashed and thunder was reverberating throughout the valley, unleashing heavy rain.

I left, only to find the streets flooding from all the rain. Exciting times! People were out directing traffic away from the flooded lanes; some cars had tried to get through the flooded intersections and died mid-stream, thereby clogging traffic even more. I carefully watched cars going through, and thankfully I do have a high-clearance vehicle. I made it through, thereby washing off the underside of the carriage of all the nasty sealant from the dusty gravel roads I've been on. Win!

Crossing a flooded intersection

I was fortunate to be able to "attend" a book club meeting that night via Starbucks wifi... so good to be able to catch up with friends from afar. The connection was decent, if a bit disjointed...

Darkness here doesn't fall until about 11:30pm; I awoke early one morning (4:30am) and it was already light. The days will be getting shorter, but I'm heading north, so it will probably balance out for a bit before it really becomes noticeable.

==> Next post will have an update on the house situation...