Yukon, North of Ordinary: In This Issue : Archives : Winter 2007/08

Winter 2007 - 2008

Inside

Editor's note

Snow much fun!

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

Miscellanea

Your letters

Making of "Carve it up"

North of Ordinary trivia

Extra! Extra!

Yukon newsmakers

Where are they now?

Catching up with Sherron Jones and Tahmoh Penikett

Venture north

Interviews with Tummies 2 Bummies, Icefield Discovery and ACR Systems

Yukon spotlight

Bucking the Tiger: Playing a hand of the card game that was golden during the gold rush, by Mitch Miyagawa

I leaned over the cards on the table, debating where to lay my last two chips. To my right sat No-French Pierre, dark haired and tall, looking calm. To my left, Sawdust Paul, face flushed from his streak of luck.

We were playing Faro, once the most popular card game in the Klondike. Location: a private Whitehorse saloon, under a midnight sun.

Well, not quite a midnight sun. More like a 10:30 p.m. sun. And more like a friend's kitchen with an oversized bowl of potato chips and a few cans of Chilkoot Lager. Close enough to the real thing for this group, most of whom are new dads. READ MORE IN THE WINTER 2007 ISSUE OF YUKON, NORTH OF ORDINARY.

Prepare thee for thine Quest

A guide to the best books, websites and movies about the Yukon Quest

Travel Yukon

Things to do in Yukon this winter

Citysnap calendar

What's going on in Yukon, Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary.

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Features

Cover story: Carve it up

The Canadian snow-carving team—which also happens to be the Yukon snow-carving team—is revolutionizing the snow-carving world with their attitude and technique: no snow monarchs in the repertoire of this team. But it's not just about "the carve". Over the last year, as the team defended its titles and toured the world it has been the subject of a documentary film, by Patricia Robertson

If Donald Watt hadn't carved a penguin out of snow for a grade-nine art class, it's very likely that Yukon wouldn't now be home to one of the championship snow-carving teams in the world. And if Donald's teammate Michael Lane hadn't suggested, six years ago, that Gisli Balzer join as the third member of the team, it's certain that Gisli's brother Thomas wouldn't be making his documentary-film tribute to the team—and might not have become a filmmaker at all.This is a story about four men who've chosen to do what they love best, in spite of the cost. And it's also a story about two brothers, one of whom inspired the other to follow his heart and, in the process, capture the joy of snow carving on film. READ MORE IN THE WINTER 2007 ISSUE OF YUKON, NORTH OF ORDINARY.

Picture-Perfect Yukon photo contest winners

The votes are in and we've chosen the winners. Click here to take a look at what we consider to be perfectly Yukon.

Digging in the dirt

The discovery of an old cellar-pit at the original site of Fort Selkirk has given a PhD student and a group of Selkirk First Nation teenagers a lot of history to uncover, by Al Pope, photography by Cathie Archbould

There are no roads to Fort Selkirk. Near the confluence of the Pelly and Yukon rivers, the historic settlement is among one of the most remote national parks in Canada. Accessible only by water, it's a piece of history off the beaten trail. And yet the town was once in the running to be the capital of Yukon.

A natural transportation hub, the area has been a trade centre for aboriginal people for centuries. Though it's best known for the August day in 1852 when the Chilkat Tlingit sacked the Hudson's Bay Company fort to cement their trade monopoly with the Northern Tutchone. The well-preserved buildings at the park represent a later era, when Fort Selkirk was a stop-off point between the Whitehorse-to-Dawson steamship run and one of the busiest centres in Yukon. It's the early twentieth-century history that is found preserved: stores, churches and graveyards, record books and photograph albums. Evidence of the fur-trade days is tucked away in archives, or buried under sand and silt by time and the Yukon River. READ MORE IN THE WINTER 2007 ISSUE OF YUKON, NORTH OF ORDINARY.

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Travel Outside

Outside highlights

Three things to do if you're travelling to Vancouver, Edmonton or Calgary this winter

Tea in two Richmonds

From museums, to fish and chips shops, to fine dining, to "the pathway to heaven", you can easily spend a day or a weekend exploring the historical and modern sides of the city of Richmond, text and photography by Diane Selkirk

R & R

The boreal chef: Take off your stalks and stay awhile

Miche Genest delves into the history, humour and taste that lies behind the unassuming rhubarb that grows throughout Yukon

Of note: coyote at the wheel

Brenda Barnes goes for a drive with Ivan E. Coyote and they talk stories, song and Yukon history

Air North

Yukon spirit in action
Fleet facts
Our people, our strength—a class of their own
Top transportation-honour for Air North

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Taking on the cold

A cluster of intelligence and innovation is working on solutions to cold-climate construction problems, by Erling Friis-Baastad

As northerners have long known, it's possible to thrive in sub-Arctic cold, but it helps if you have know-how. Thanks to the new Yukon Cold Climate Innovation Centre (YCCIC), that precious knowledge will be circulating more readily throughout the North and beyond.

The idea for the centre was born in May 2004, when more than 60 people from Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Newfoundland and Labrador met in Whitehorse for the EkoNorth Forum. Their mission was to brainstorm about establishing an "innovation cluster", a sort of one-stop shop that would bring the human and material resources of government, academia and the private sector together in one easily accessible facility. READ MORE IN THE WINTER 2007 ISSUE OF YUKON, NORTH OF ORDINARY.

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