Whitehorse blues
© Carolyne Weldon
To me, the Yukon has always been a mythical place. Two of my cousins were born and raised there, in a cabin with a wood stove, no running water and a three-legged dog named Amina. Growing up, I loved hearing hearing stories about life in the Yukon.
There was my little cousin Andrée, bundled up in hand-knit wool sweaters, being sent out to pick wild cranberries. Back at the cabin, her mama always had to make sure to winnow the berries from the frozen artic hare droppings Andrée had also collected in her basket. Makes better jam, she said.
Without having ever met her, I also loved stories of Amina, the brave dog that left a front leg in a hunter’s trap but could still swim as fast as a canoe. At my grandma’s house, there was a framed photograph of my uncle and aunt’s Yukon wedding. It showed the two of them standing outside, glowing with youth and adventurousness : Mona, pregnant and fresh faced, beautiful in her hippie dress, with Scott on her side, smiling mischieviously behind a fire-red beard.
Of all my travels across Canada this summer, the parts I enjoyed the most were definitely the two extremities : Yukon and Newfoundland. Part wild and untame nature (the wide-open vistas, craggy shorelines, fireweed strewn meadows, driftwood beaches, ramshackle dwellings, abandoned roads, stellar night skies and midnight suns), part crazy locals ; frontier lands are also memorable for the eccentric characters who choose to inhabit them. Between the characters who grow up there and find reasons not to leave, and the characters who come and go (or more likely come and don’t go), looking for adventure and/or fleeing their erstwhile lives, you can pretty much always count on a good party.
Thirty years later, the Yukon hasn’t lost its soul. Though Mona and Scott now live in a condo in Montreal, and Whitehorse, Yukon, now suffers from a mild case of urban sprawl (I bought a two-pack of OFF Bug Spray « Extreme Backwoods Edition » or something equally serious at Wall Mart when I was there…everyone else was out), kids still flock to the North with the same happy-go-lucky furiousness as ever. Skinny dogs, pretty girlfriends, can openers and harmonicas in tow, they go the way the Klondike believers did, leaving nothing but rolled cigarette butts and VW van tracks behind them.
I will tell you some other time of my drive down the Dempster Highway (700 km of gravel roads from Inuvik, NWT to Dawson City, Yukon.) For now, I leave you with photos of pretty Whitehorse, from sometime this past July. Enjoy.
