Cathy and I attended the June 21 National Indigenous Peoples Day celebration in Whitehorse. Before we entered the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre, we noticed the large streams of water across the Yukon river. There was a fire truck and crew across the river apparently testing their pumps. The canoeists were forced to hug the opposite side of the river to avoid getting drenched.
The plaque in which Jason (in red) is posed with Keith Wolfe Smarch (on his right) was moved to a position near the totem that Keith restored in 2018. The women in hats to Jason’s left were either tribal leaders or Provinicial officials. The Totem and plaque are prominently placed near the government buildings at the Provencal Capital.
This lady was demonstrating scraping a moose hide; she is chief of her clan.
Inside he hall, we viewed a fashion show of Indigenous apparel. These two very young girls were part of the music that accompanied the show and participated in a rousing parade around the hall.
Outside, in a tent, we got to see a couple of rappers performing. The ladies behind the rappers were participating in a bannock cooking contest. Bannock is a form of fry bread that was very good. They served a free a lunch of stew and bannock to all visitors. Before the lunch, everyone was asked to kindly respect the elders and allow them to be served first. By the way, the rappers were making up the lyrics in real time, focusing on the contestants behind them. The lyrics were all clean!
We happened to meet artist Terrence Shorty, representing the local Kwanlin Dün. It was pretty timely as we had just purchased a couple of his print cards at a local store.
One of the participants in the fashion show was this gentleman; he was patiently explaining the regalia he was wearing to a couple. It was amazing that almost everything he had on represented something meaningful about him.
After spending the morning at the festivities, we decided to go to Miles Canyon and find a back way into the 1898 town site of Canyon City.
We saw this marker just outside of the site. The trail we took from the unmarked dirt road was also unmarked so we were fortunate to pick the right one!
After hiking most of the way, Cathy decided to avoid the steep decline into the town site.
I continued to the original town site (a tent city) and located the dump and the remnants of the rail system that was used to haul the prospectors’ goods around the rapids, downstream to transfer to steam powered paddle wheelers to continue their trek to the gold fields at Dawson City. The quickest way to the the Dawson City area in 1898 was take a steamship to Skagway, hike the Chilkoot Pass or White Pass route to Lake Bennett, build a boat, travel the length of the lake, take the Yukon River to Canyon City (at this time the Yukon had a deadly set of rapids that had to be avoided), transfer the supplies to a hastily designed freight system rolling on logs, not rails, and portage around the rapids, then re-load your supplies and continue downstream on the steam powered paddlewheelers to Dawson City..
This photo was taken from up the hill, looking down at the Yukon River. In the distance you can see a powered boat heading upstream.
Travelling with the Schinglers 