June 14, 2010 by Rae

Red Spheres of Deliciousness

I asked a friend who has a small farm with greenhouse if he could bring me some tomatoes. Sure!

This is what I found on my porch last night:

Give a gal tomatoes, you feed her for a few days. Give her tomato plants and you feed her for a summer. 🙂

There’s already one on its way:

I was told to repot and stake the plants when they get bigger:

My outdoor shower lines up with the end of the porch, so the plants are in perfect position for watering. I was told to keep them nice and wet, so not having to deal with watering cans and whatnot will make it so much easier to get into the habit of keeping Larry, Curly, and Moe happy.

(yes, I’m silly, but I’m not going to change at my age. 😀 )

June 13, 2010 by Rae

The Commissioner’s Residence

After the Robert Service program I headed back to Front Street for an ice cream, then went to visit the Commissioner’s Residence.

Territorial administration is a little different from that of the provinces and I’m not quite up to speed on it. If I understand correctly, the Commissioner of Yukon is the Queen’s representative in the territory, similar to the role of the Governor General.

At the time when Dawson was the capital of the Yukon territory, the commissioner resided in a grand house on Front Street. It was grander once upon a time, but burned down during a Christmas fire and was rebuilt much more simply.

Today, it’s possible to tour the house and grounds at your leisure. There isn’t much information provided, so it’s not the best value attraction in Dawson. I’d do it as part of the Pick-a-Pack and consider it the ‘free’ option.

Like many buildings in Dawson, the gorgeous bright yellow exterior of the house is a façade belying the fact that most of the interior is a wreck. The front bottom half of the house was restored to Edwardian splendour and reminds me of Rutherford House in Edmonton, decorated in the same era. The back bottom and top halves of the house are almost in ruins. This actually adds a level of interest to the visit. In the second incarnation of the home, it was used as a hospital run by nuns, so wandering through the house you can see all the layers of history associated with it. I loved that I could open just about any door and peak inside, but was disappointed that the third story is off limits. My favourite part of the house was the huge second story porch. I can just imagine sitting up there with binoculars and watching steamboats go up and down the Yukon River.

A notable resident of this home was the Honourable Martha Black, Canada’s second female Member of Parliament (MP) who took on the mantle after her husband died in office. Mrs. Black came over the Chilkoot Pass with her brother and is one of the most famous women associated with the golden age of the Klondike.

the Commissioner’s Residence, all decked out for the tea on Saturday afternoon

Entrance

study

drawing room

parlour

I fell in love with this chair

interesting wallpaper pattern on the ceiling

dining room

sideboard in the dining room

lamp in the dining room

servants’ stairs

kitchen

this was a makeshift confessional for the nuns who turned the top of the house into a hospital

bathroom (hospital era)

there are several fuse panels like these throughout the house

original wallpaper discovered after paneling was taken down

pictures of a fire and water damage that gutted the house in the early 1900’s

view of the Yukon River from the upstairs porch

wicker furniture on the upstairs porch

door detail

overlooking the grounds

second story porch

water damage in an upstairs room

rear exterior

door going nowhere…

window details

Thus ended by mostly free day and off to work I went. I still have several attractions to visit!

June 12, 2010 by Rae

Pierre Berton Home and the Robert Service Cabin

After touring the Jack London cabin, I ambled a block down 8th Avenue, plunked myself down on the boardwalk in the sun, and enjoyed my picnic of a sandwich, apple, and iced tea. I made some notes about London and contentedly waited the half hour or so before the start of the 1:30 Robert Service program. It had rained, hard, during the London presentation and more dark clouds were rolling in, so I savoured the brief moment of sunshine.

Lunch finished, I took some discrete shots of the Berton home. Pierre Berton is Canada’s best known writer of Canadian history, with his most famous books being Klondike and The Last Spike. He spent some of his childhood years in Dawson and had that home opened up and turned into accommodation for Dawson’s writer in residence. The unassuming green and white structure can be seen across from the Robert Service cabin and one block from the Jack London cabin, but there is nothing to visit.

Robert Service is known as ‘The Bard of the Yukon.’ A Scottish banker of English origin who came to Canada to be a cowboy and retired in the south of France a millionaire poet, he had an incredibly colourful life. While his best known poems, such as ‘The Shooting of Dan McGrew’ and ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’, are about the Klondike gold rush, Service did not come to the north until a full decade past the rush.

After being transferred to the CIBC bank in Dawson, he quit and became a full-time writer. He spent some time living in a cozy log cabin on 8th Avenue. The cabin is just as it was back then and in the same location, and it is only the roof and birch steps which are not original. Or so our interpreter claims. 🙂

The program lasts an hour and is a mixture of fanciful retelling of Service’s life mixed in with a recital of his poetry. Our interpreter was perfect for the job. He was funny, obviously knew his stuff, and delights in it. This attraction is well worth the admission cost and makes for a fun afternoon.

Robert Service cabin

not quite what I expected; very pretty and homey!

birch twig steps

sod roof

path leading to 9th Ave trail

Service’s desk (or a replica thereof)

our Parks Canada interpreter who knew the poems by heart

This was written by Service on a piece of wall paper

the Pierre Berton home, now used as private accommodation for the writer in residence

Here’s my favourite Robert Service poem, which could have been written for me if you take the word ‘man’ as meaning ‘people of both genders. 🙂

There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they’re always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: “Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!”
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that’s dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life’s been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone;
He’s a man who won’t fit in.

June 12, 2010 by Rae

The Jack London Cabin

Dick North, a Yukon historian now based in Whitehorse, can be credited for finding the facts about novelist Jack London’s year in the Klondike. There has been so much myth and conjecture, but he found irrefutable pieces of evidence that form a picture of the year that served as a catalyst for London’s writing career.

Jack London was born into desperate poverty in Oakland, California. He laboured part-time as a child until he left school at 14 to work sixteen to eighteen hour days, seven days a week, at a pickle factory. When he’d had enough of that, he became an able bodied seaman and traveled to the most far flung corners of the world.

When news came to the outside world in 1897 that there was gold in the Klondike, London was ripe for adventure. He headed north with his brother-in-law, their outfit financed by London’s step-sister. London came over the Chilkoot Trail in August 1897, a year ahead of the column of people who would eventually make it to the gold fields.

Dick North found, while searching through archives, a photo of a group at Sheep Camp and by identifying each person in the photo he was able to identify Jack London. This photo is the only known photo of London not only on the Chilkoot, but in the north.

London made it to the Klondike and staked a claim at Henderson Creek, this fact supported by a document found by north: Jack London’s claim registration, dated October 1897 and signed in Dawson City!

While London was only in the north for a year, forced out by scurvy, it proved to be a transformative experience for him and inspired him to write many novels, the most famous of which is Call of the Wild. He sold the rights to this book to MacMillan publishing for a few thousand dollars. This book has not been out of print since and contributed to making MacMillan the powerhouse publisher that it is today.

As if the Sheep Camp photo and claim registration documents weren’t enough, Dick North found his holy grail: one of the cabins Jack London stayed in during his long, dark Klondike winter. This cabin was identified in two ways. The first is that it is described in perfect detail in one of London’s books. The second is a piece of graffiti: London’s signature in pencil scrawled on the inside of a wall.

The cabin was falling to ruin and at risk of getting lost in the wilderness. Funds to rescue it were hard to find, but when the city of Oakland got wind of North’s discovery it offered to finance the rescue on the condition that the cabin be brought to Oakland for display in their Jack London Square.

North decided that this wouldn’t do and he had a crazy, but rather brilliant, idea: split the cabin in two. There are now two Jack London cabins to be seen, one in Dawson, Yukon, and one in Oakland, California. The Dawson cabin’s bottom half is original while the top is a reproduction. The reverse is true for the one in Oakland!

Next to the cabin in Dawson is a bear proof food cache and a newer building that houses pictures and documents related to London’s life.

This excellent exhibit and talk from the Klondike Valley Association come with a $5 admission fee, but it’s only $2.50 upon presentation of an entrance coupon from Diamond Tooth Gerties.

Before I share pictures, here is a quote from Jack London that echoes something I said last summer about my own Klondike experience:

It was in the Klondike I found myself. There nobody talks. Everybody thinks. You get your true perspective. I got mine.

the building on stilts is a bear-proof food cache

London’s eldest daughter; looks just like him!

London’s notebook

London at Sheep Camp on the Chilkoot Trail, and him dressed as a tramp for some research he was doing for a novel

map of the routes to the gold fields

London and his youngest daughter, circa 1904. He looks like a Kennedy!

London wrote an average of 1,000 words a day for more than seventeen years

document proving that London staked a gold claim in the Klondike

June 11, 2010 by Rae

Dawson City Walking Tour With Costumed Interpreter

I had a full day this overcast and cool Friday, and covered four attractions, posts for which will follow over the next few days. I’ll start off with the Dawson City walking tour led by a Parks Canada costumed interpreter.

This 90 minute tour covers only a tiny portion of downtown Dawson, pretty much just two blocks square, and doesn’t touch on three quarters of the subjects I would have expected it to cover. It is a great tour that, to my immense delight, took us into buildings I thought were just façades.

The tour starts at the Palace Grand Theatre, but doesn’t go into any details about it.

The Palace Grand today is where you can buy tickets for the Parks Canada attractions as well as a ‘Pick-a-Pack’, which gives you access to three attractions for the price of two. There will be a big shingding there tomorrow, with ladies in gowns and men in tuxes, an annual event known as the Commissioner’s Ball.

Our first stop was Lowe’s Mortuary where we learned about the different ways folks made their fortune in Dawson, from placer mining to saloon keeping to prostitution. One fact that I learned was that before the cold came, an estimate was made of how many people might die over the winter and that many graves were dug before the ground froze!

this furniture maker diversified to include a line of caskets

Next stop was the Bank of British North America.

This was the first bank to operate in Dawson, starting business in a tent in 1897. Today, the only bank in Dawson is a CIBC, across the street on 2nd avenue. As a bonus, you can see in the background the original CIBC bank where Robert Service worked.

Going into this building was neat since I walk by it so many times in an average week.

inside the Bank of British North America

The next stop was Ruby’s Place, the site of the last brothel in Dawson, which shut down in the 1960’s!

Behind the brothel is a row of little cabins:

these ‘cribs’ are from the Gold Rush era and were the ‘offices’ of ladies of the night

Imagine an alley lined with these things, all holding a girl plying the oldest trade in history.

Rather than outlaw prostitution, the Northwest Mounted Police regulated the profession, requiring the women to have monthly checkup. They would have to present their ‘clean bill of health certificate’ upon request and they would be fined or even expelled from town if they did not have it.

The next stop was my favourite simply because I’ve always thought that this was a building with a great front and that it’s a shame that there’s nothing inside. Joke was on me!

inside the Red Feather Saloon

This building housed several saloons. The Red Feather Saloon was the last one and the name on the building when it was taken over by Parks Canada. However, the inside was modeled on an earlier saloon, the Hub, simply because it’s the only one for which a picture of the inside remains. Note that gambling was outlawed in Dawson in the early 1900’s, so the only games played in the Red Feather Saloon were of the pleasure variety, such as cribbage.

The final stop on the walking tour was the original 1898 post office.

exterior of the original 1898 post office

inside the original 1898 post office

The arrival of a post office and bank in Dawson confirmed its identity as a proper town that would not simply fade into history the way so many other gold rush towns, such as Dyea, did. There was a time when Dawson was a major city of 30,000 souls, one that got electricity and telephone service well ahead of what are now major North American cities. Today, it is a shadow of its former self, but it is still a thriving community and one that is not likely to fade quietly into non-existence.

The tour over, I headed across the street to the current post office, down to Front Street to the Riverwest Café for a sandwich to eat later, and then I hoofed it up to Writer’s Row, 8th Avenue, to learn all about two of the three famous authors associated with Dawson, and see the home of the third. To be continued… 🙂

Check out the gallery for more pictures from the walking tour: