Dempster Diary Update 7

The Fourth Day


I had no firm plans for today aside from walking around Whitehorse and ensuring my next two days' accommodations were lined up in Tok and Dawson City. Having gone through ten different hoops in my times in other countries, it's always such a blessed relief to have rank commercial interests work in my favour for a change.  You talk to people and have a credit card number, and voila, all is arranged.  The phone calls were made, the rooms booked and then I sallied forth to see what there was in Whitehorse.

Now the city has a population of about 25,000 and my drive through yesterday suggested it's really spread out, so I did not really expect that much in terms of a huge downtown, and so it is, but it's all very pleasantly laid out, neat, and efforts have evidently been made to keep some semblance of an old fashioned architectural ethic in place, quite aside from the huge number of buildings or facades of buildings that specifically are kept as heritage sites.  It was a pleasure to go wandering around, in and out of gift shops and native arts establishments. 

The difficulty was figuring out what to buy: I know I'm going even further north and the further I go the more genuine (in my view, anyway) the articles will be, and perhaps those articles in which I'm interested will also be cheaper since they're closer to source.  At any rate I resolved to wait until Dawson City and Innuvik itself until I purchased an Innukshuk and perhaps some items of clothing...fleeces for the girls maybe, with northern or Innu motifs.  Dunno yet.   Right now it was more fun just to see what was there.

Around lunchtime my tummy was growling and so I happened upon a fish and chip shop that piqued my interest because of its utterly rustic charm right in the middle of downtown: the Klondike Rib & Salmon BBQ.  It was crowded to the rafters with the lunchtimecrowd, but because of the malicious little drizzle, no-one was on the outside patio, where I seated myself with aplomb under a most convenient umbrella. I ordered a fish and chips and I'll tell you, that fish and chips was among the very best I've ever had, handily beating out Deckers where I've supped many a time. I liked it so much that I think I'll just include a picture here >>burp<<

That pleasant experience behind me, I continued drifting around without much purpose, following both the guidebook and my own interest in whatever -- I was actually looking for any museum where I could slake my curiosity about this place of so much romance and history --  and as luck would have it, I heard a young man giving a running commentary of Whitehorse historical detail to two elderly folks and inveigled myself into the group. At the time when I met them (below) he was just talking about the building in the frame: which he, with dry wit, noted as being the last building still left standing from the time when the Americans were building the Alaska highway...an outhouse.  That got me right on board.

Drew proved to be an informed and entertaining guide, and took us to the fire station, the railway, the telegraph office and RCMP station (where the only man ever hanged in Whitehorse -- a Russian -- is supposedly interred in the ground before the building), talked about famous people in Yukon history: policemen, miners, businessmen, civil servants, stagecoach drivers, priests and oh, on and on.  It was a fascinating tour of this city during its heydey of the gold rush.  I felt real regret when it was over. 

Drew and I stood talking for a bit afterwards, and he noted that my timing for the Dempster is excellent, since the tundra is just starting to change colour, and he noted that Air North has flights into "Tuk" further north still, only on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  That might require, I noted, some kind of adjustments to my plans up there, but filed that thought..it was too late right now to make any sort of changes.  As I talk to the people at Air North, I might make some rearrangements.

After that it was just a question of walking around until I felt tired, taking pictures of people and places so far as I was able.  The one place the I spent a long time at was the war memorial which, unlike many bigger cities where I've been in Canada, is not hard to find, but right there, in the downtown, and which commemorates the Canadian -- Yukon -- dead in wars that ended in 1902, 1918, 1945 and 1953.  I felt an odd sense of agelessness about it.  1902...wow.  That was the Boer war, and this small place sent people there for the empire, and some died there.

Thinking about that, I just returned to the hotel for a nap.  A quiet day.


Then it was packing, organizing maps, camera, GPS and doing all the now-familiar tasks of getting ready for another long drive tomorrow. It's 620+ km to Tok in Alaska, and I have to make sure my stuff is in order when I cross the border.


I'm just hoping my luck holds and I don't get any officious snooty border guard / immigration officer who feels he needs to hassle the guy whose accent is different from his own, rather than just sending me on my way


More on that tomorrow.  It's sure gonna be interesting