Page 16 - DreamScapes Magazine | Fall/Winter 2022
P. 16
SPECIAL FEATURE SECTION
Dawson City
DREAMERS
PAN FOR A GOOD TIME
BY LISA KADANE
On the bank of Bonanza Creek in the Yukon Territory, two red Parks Canada Muskoka chairs appear, marking the legendary locale that sparked the 1896 Klondike Gold Rush. It’s eerily quiet here—the surge of fevered prospectors long since ebbed away.
Nearby sits Dredge No. 4, a floating barge used for gold mining that was considered an engineering marvel back in the day. Both these historic sites are close to Dawson City, now a town of about 2,000 residents living in Canada’s far north. During the gold rush heyday, however, the city swelled to 30,000 residents.
It’s humbling to think of those who trekked 55 kilometres over the Chilkoot Pass into the wilds of the Yukon to try and stake a claim. By all accounts, if it hadn’t been for the local Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation, whose name Tr’ondëk was mistaken for “Klondike,” many of the fortune hunters would have starved, explains guide George McConkey on a City and Goldfields tour with The Klondike Experience, a local tour operator.
The town’s hardscrabble past is fascinating, but after a few days in the land of the midnight sun, I come to understand that while its history shapes Dawson City, the town is so much more than a frontier outpost gripped by gold fever.
16 DREAMSCAPES FALL/WINTER 2022
