“The Secret Life of Artifacts”

a RRS student heritage program

by Glenda Bolt

February 27 is National Heritage Day and all through the month of February people all over Canada are taking time to celebrate their heritage. Here in Dawson Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in, Parks Canada and the Dawson City Museum have joined together to create a new heritage activity for Robert Service School students from grades 2-6.

Freda Roberts guides students at the Danoja Zho Cultural Centre. Photo by Glenda Bolt.

The project goal was to give students a better understanding of what an artifact is, how they are cared for and what we can learn from them. The students discovered that artifacts have hidden stories that once revealed give us information and clues that can help us understand the past, the world we live in, and who we are.

The students made a visit to either Dänojà Zho, Oak Hall or the Museum to examine, document and draw one of three artifacts. With a bit of encouragement the students let their imaginations fly free to dream and scheme of what the artifact might be, where it came from and the secret life it had before it came to be collected and protected.

On Wednesday February 25 the students stories and art work will be displayed at Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre. A couple of students from each class will be chosen to brave the stage and using their story expose the secret life of their chosen artifact. The evening presentation is part of the Myth and Medium heritage event being hosted at the Cultural Centre from Feb. 25 to 28.

The Secret Life of Artifacts event begins at 7:00 pm and all are welcome and encouraged to attend. Reception to follow.

Centro Flamenco

By Jessica Green

On Saturday, February 7th, Centro Flamenco, a Vancouver based Flamenco dance and music group, teamed with Bombay Peggy's to deliver an impassioned aficionado experience. The cocooned Dawson audience coveted every available chair and floor space, unfolding from their winter chrysalii to be engaged and enthralled by the provocative dance, resonating guitar, and prolific songs of this extraordinary group of three.

Rosario Ancer, the Flamenco Dancer, describes her life work as an exploration of 'human nature primal needs and passion.'' The improvised dance is a "true expression of the dancer's interpretation''. Flamenco's hand gestures and body poised aesthetic designs are decorative in nature contrasting with the more scripted symbolic hand movements of Indian, Middle Eastern and African cultural origins. The foot merges as a percussion instrument functioning, from a solitary drum to a staccato tap.

The three primary music and dance categories include Jondo (profound and deep), Intermedio and Chico (small or light). Each casts light over segregated groups of emotional gradients. Victor Kolstee, the Flamenco guitarist, describes, his music as both an "understanding and reacting in despair, in sadness and in love. It is boundless."

"Every song tells a story,"says Antonio de Jerez, the singer/story teller He compares Flamenco to American Blues and Jazz, for each possesses the similar qualities of survival under historical persecution. Antonio's family heritage introduced him to Flamenco story telling and from his beginnings in Spain he has moved to California to continue with both his passion and work. "[This music] contains answers," he says.

Travelling Singer Tackles Robert Service

by Dan Davidson

Aengus Finnan has spent some time getting ready to address the poems of Robert W. Service. He felt he had to pay his dues, travel the country, and spend some time in the North before he would have the right. In that time he managed to visit Dawson City twice, and on this third visit he felt ready to give it a try.

Aengus Finnan recording poems at Service’s Cabin. Photo by Dan Davidson.

Finnan, an Ontario based singer/songwriter, could be found sitting on the porch of the Robert Service Cabin on February 10 , a microphone connected to a digital audio tape recorder, practising his delivery of "Farewell, Little Cabin."

The afternoon was crisp but beautifully sunny as he talked about his memories of hearing his father reciting Service as a boy and the history that led to this recording.

“It’s been a long time coming. It was eight years ago that I first began to look into the rights. Long before that his poems were part of our life. My father used to recite Service’s poetry in Ireland before we came to Canada. That was the romantic draw to Canada, was the poems of Robert Service.”

In Shelter Valley, Ontario, where he grew up, this connection was reinforced by an English teacher named Tom Lawson.

That was his stock in trade, was hauling out Service poems and reciting them at potlucks and sing-alongs and kitchen ceilidhs.

“The poems were always there but it took coming up here to take in the land and get a sense of where the words came from.”

His first visit to the Yukon was eight years ago, followed by a couple more spring and summer trips. This is his second winter trip and third time through Dawson.

“It feels legit now, though I’m sure there are old timers who have lived here who would dispute it. But on the trail of a songwriter, storyteller and interpreter you do have to take certain liberties.

“In the end it comes down to storytelling, whether you’re writing a play for the stage or ... stopping at historical markers along the highway to carve them into a song or picking over some dusty poems and bringing life to them.”

Finnan decided to ditch a potential teaching career after two years in Moosonie, Ontario. It wasn’t that an overaged grade 9 student decked him so much as the song he was inspired to write when the kid came by to apologize and spilled his life story at Finnan’s feet. He sang “Fly Away”, the story of that boy whose family was deserted by his father, and a number of other songs when he visited with the English 11 class at the Robert Service School earlier in the day.

“But all she said was ‘why'd he fly away,

have wind come take him to another day?

Who gave him wings to fly from here,

far away, nowhere near?’”

Those lyrics, and others, led to a lively discussion of imagery and storytelling devices.

Visiting schools is something he likes to do when he’s in a town, to talk about writing and get a taste of what it might have been like to continue as ” Mr. Finnan”. The visit went well and the students could heard chanting “And it's swing boys swing, God speed your hammers / Swing boys swing, grunt and heave and wail” around the school for the rest of the day.

His plan for this trip was to tape 15 poems at various locations around the town, places that seemed appropriate to each particular poem. The cabin was one such site. Another was a room over the bar at the Westminster Hotel for “The shooting of Dan McGraw”, while he planned to record “The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill” in the basement at St. Mary’s Catholic Church and something else on the empty stage of the Palace Grand Theatre.

Finnan said he also planned to simply walk around the town, along the river and outside town, just collecting background sounds to use on the CD.

“I want to do the poems in their rightful place, with as much atmosphere and natural sound as possible.

“One route would have been to simply admire the poems, then sit down and bang off a recording in my basement studio in Ontario, but anybody can do that, and it doesn’t serve the poems to simply recite them. I’m trying to find the home of the poems and literally walk up the snow covered steps of the cabin to place a poem back in its respectful and rightful place.”

The finished CD will have lyrics and pictures (taken by his partner, Maria Calderone) in a small booklet along with the recitations. Finnan hopes it will sell in the Yukon, but he’s not counting on that, The 32 year old is busy on the travelling folk and music festival circuit year round, as well as in Australia and Japan, and he sees this item as having an appeal to those who might come to hear him sing and recite live.

For those wondering who this guy is,, he has a website at www.aengusfinan.com, and it contains lots of information as well as legal, free downloads of half a dozen of the songs on his two CDs. His latest is 2002’s “Northwind”, an enjoyable mix of mostly story oriented material. He prefers to tell stories in his music, a preference which may tend to keep him off the radio much, but does make for good listening.