Yukon, North of Ordinary: In This Issue : Archives : Summer 2007

Summer 2007

Inside

Editor's note

Celebrate summer

Contributors' bios

Letter from Joe Sparling, Air North's president and CEO

Your letters

Extra! Extra!

Yukon newsmakers

Where are they now?

Catching up with former Yukoners Lucy van Oldenbarneveld and Candace Thompson.

Did you know that …

Yukon facts and stats

Venture north

Interviews with True North Gems Inc., Quantum Machine Works Inc.and Great River Journey.

Anthem for a nation

On February 23, 2007, a very simple act placed the Southern Tutchone Children's Choir in the history books.

Citysnap calendar

What's going on this summer in Yukon, Fairbanks, Inuvik, Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary.

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Features

Cover story: Lights. Camera. Carol!

While growing up in Teslin, Yukon, becoming a filmmaker was not a career Carol Geddes dreamed about. But while making her first film as a university student, she discovered that she loved, and had a talent for, bringing stories to the screen, by Al Pope.

It's late in the afternoon on the set of Anash and the Legacy of the Sun-Rock. A chilly November day outside, it's hot under the klieg lights, and the air in the Yukon Convention Centre is stuffy. The stars of the show, two teenage boys, have been remarkably patient and good-humoured during a long day of hurry-up-and-wait filming. They are portraying two young eighteenth-century Tlingit men, making their first contact with Russian traders. To complete their final scene of the day, the two youths, who are dressed in furs and traditional Tlingit woven hats, have to appear on one side of the set, walk slowly across and disappear on the far side. From her director's chair, Carol Geddes asks for one more take, a little slower this time. The cameras are rolling. The production manager calls for action. The boys appear and creep across the stage in a comic slow-march. Production time is expensive and hijinks are not generally appreciated, but these kids have earned the right to let off some steam. With a determined effort, the director stifles a smile and says firmly, "OK boys, let's take it again, and just a little faster." Places, camera, action. They sprint across the set. A restrained laugh ripples through the crew. The kids keep up the joke for four takes, judging the precise limit of the director's patience. Despite the wasted time, Geddes is smiling when the boys, their exuberance spent, get down to work and do a perfect take.

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True North artistic hub

KIAC, the School of Visual Art and the ODD Gallery ... Dawson City has become an unlikely centre for art and culture, by Jen Williams.

For many people around the world, Dawson City is synonymous with Yukon. The town's very name calls to mind the great Klondike gold rush, conjuring up images of untamed wilderness and adventure tales forever immortalized in the writings of Jack London and Robert Service.

There's much more to Dawson, however, than can-can girls, boardwalks and rusted-out dredges. A glimpse behind the false fronts and charming late-nineteenth-century veneer reveals a colourful and resilient community of artists and innovators who are not content to let Dawson exist solely in the memory of its former glory.

"People know the Klondike, and there's this kind of attraction and curiosity about it that serves us really well," says Mike Yuhasz, ODD Gallery and Artist-in-Residence Program co-ordinator at the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture, a contemporary art centre in the heart of Dawson. He credits the town's international profile with helping to attract almost overnight interest in the gallery from both art stars in the making and senior-level artists on the regional, national and international scenes.

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Holistic Yukon

Remote and pristine, there are good reasons why holistic health practitioners are setting up shop in Yukon, by Beverley Gray with photographs by Cathie Archbould.

Despite the small size of its population and its remote location, Whitehorse is fast becoming a holistic-health centre comparable to southern healing hot spots such as Nelson, in the Kootenays, and Saltspring Island, in the Straight of Georgia, which attract holistic health practitioners from across the country and around the world.

The clean air and water of the vast boreal wilderness are without a doubt major reasons why alternative-health practitioners arrive in the territory to pursue the practice of the healing arts. Whitehorse's holistic health community reflects a broad range of alternative healthcare options: naturopaths, acupuncturists, massage therapists, midwives, an osteopath, a medical intuitive, sound and colour therapists, shamanic practitioners, energy workers, herbalists, aromatherapists, yoga and meditation practitioners.

While the list of Yukon holistic health practitioners is varied, it's rooted in the work of pioneers of the region like Dr. Don Branigan. He attempted to bridge the gap between mainstream and natural medicine in Yukon for nearly three decades before he passed away in 1999. In fact, Dr. Branigan was responsible for bringing many health practitioners to Yukon, including Dr. Sue-May Zhang and her husband Jim Zheng, who own and have been operating the East West Health Centre, which has specialized in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) since April 1994. Dr. Zhang is also a general practitioner of western medicine, educated in Canada.

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Travel Outside

Good eats

Great dining in Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver, by Nadine Pedersen.

A not-so-secret garden

VanDusen Botanical Garden offers a fantastical escape just minutes from downtown Vancouver, by Eva Salinas.

R & R

Of note: Home is where the music is.

Brenda Barnes chats with the Avery-Hamilton family about their love of, and life in, music.

60 degrees of relativity:That's OK, I didn't really need my canoe anyway.

Chris McNutt tries to protect house and home from unexpected summer visitors.

Air North

Sharing our culture
Air North's dream cuisine team
Fleet facts
Our people, our strength—a class of their own.

p. 66

Tasty treats are to be found at this Whitehorse landmark, by Patricia Robertson.

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